Somethings to Say When Someone Wants to Kill Themselves

I don't appreciate people saying that anyone who attempts suicide is attention seeking. If you've never been in a deep depression and haven't felt as if there was no other way to stop the pain, you need to think before you post or speak to a person who is in agony.

I'll admit that I have attempted suicide. My pain was excruciating and I thought everyone would be better off without me. I had a moment of clarity and was lucky enough to be able to call 911. My stomach was pumped and I was hospitalized. Do you know what I got in return from my loved ones? Anger and neglect. That made it worse than it should have ever had to be. I understand that they were hurt. I remember thinking "Oh, no, I can't do this to my son!" before calling for help. It never occurred to me that my parents would care because they had made me feel like a burden to them and had asked me to stop talking to them about my depression. I was totally lost. My son had moved away and I was here alone. The whole family was out of the state. I just wanted my pain to end and then I was accused of doing that to get my parents' attention. WTF? If things had gone as planned, I would have been dead so how would I know I got their f***in' attention?!

f*** them and anyone who believes I am weak for having this illness. I've been fighting it for more than half my life and there are many people who don't make it through. I don't think said people are weak. They just feel that they have no reason to go on.

I wanted to take my life during and after the holidays due to having a mixed episode (manic-depressive) and some issues that came up that I didn't think I could deal with. My mother had told me she loved me but did not like me. My son attacked me over something that he shouldn't have. I felt that I had no reason to keep living. There was so much rage in me that I wasn't myself anymore and by that I mean that I stopped caring about people. That is not the real me and I didn't know how to get rid of the rage and gain my compassion for others ever again. (I'm sitting here crying just thinking about it.)

My parents had told me to just kill myself and get it over with a few months before. Then they wondered why I threatened to. The police were called and I was lucky I had an appointment with my doctor. I told the policemen that I was getting ready for the appt.

Why in hell didn't my mother come help me when I called her 5 days earlier to say I felt like there was no reason to go on? Why didn't she try to help me when I called her two days later? None of that s*** should have had to happen, but she was more concerned about showing her remodeled house to a friend than coming to check on me. THEN she and my dad FINALLY showed up AFTER calling the police and telling me to f***in' do it?! I know now that she didn't come because she hasn't "liked me" for a long time. Well, to hell with her. I call that woman to check on her health on a regular basis and do what I'm capable of doing for her and my dad. I don't like the way they treat me but I know that if they needed me, I'd be there. If my son called me and said he wanted to die, I'd drive over in a heartbeat.

So, NO! Not all people who attempt suicide are weak attention seekers. I have a VERY strong will and that is why I am alive today. None of us really know what's going on in another person's mind so the last thing we should do is judge or call someone crazy or tell someone to "take their meds"! If that is the way you treat people with mental illness, f*** YOU! (These comments are not directed at any particular person.)

Been there done that, all thought for other people isnt taken into account at all, maybe it is selfish, but if your that down that does not matter, it is DEF NOT ATTENTION seeking,your in so much pain, you dont care, your minds on one thing and thats it, maybe not the same for everyone, but if you have never reached rock bottom, you have no clue, and no idea, so your not quallified to comment really, it makes you sneaky, cunning, planning, you dont let on to no-one, it makes you feel at ease, yes it is depression at its worst, but what f***s me off is people think your totally nuts,but your not, your mind as broke, like an arm a leg, but it cant be seen, sometimes your head can only take so much, i am not ashamed i had a totall break down, i didnt go around eating flowers lol, i slept for weeks and weeks and wanted out, and in the end the only person who can help you is yourself, x

Hear hear, go you! Depression isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign you've been strong too long. I'm sorry you had to go through that with your family though, I can see how that must be so affecting.

I personally am content with life but have, personally, viewed suicide as an alternative option if I've ran out of resources and am going to die anyway.

Such as if I lost my home and was fated to wander the streets until I died of starvation or if It was imminent that I was going to die slowly from an incurable disease.

In all other instances where death is not imminent anyway, I strongly encourage others to keep going as there's usually light on the other side of those temporary tunnels that they pass through.

This statement says to me that you have no true grasp of what suicide entails or the emotions that cause it. It's easy to say. "It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem." True, but a depressed, irrational mind is in such dire pain they won't begin to think that. Imagine feeling so horrible about your life that you can't go on. Not everyone has the fortitude to keep going when they see no hope. Not everyone has someone who will listen. Even in good homes with caring parents, people frequently hide their emotions out of shame or fear, I posted this months ago and it's now being discussed.
I'm still reeling over the death of my daughter. She had leukemia, and very little time left. Something happened that caused her to end things early. The doctor, gave her no hope, and her pain was so severe, she was unable to think straight. She just wanted to sleep, but in her weakened condition the pills stopped her heart and she died in my arms. I was in denial at first and then angry. Her boyfriend broke his arm hitting something and the entire family was in shock. Maybe she meant to kill herself, or maybe it was an accident. All I know is that three weeks later, I'm still not coping well and cry all the time. You can call suicide stupid, but until you're in that emotional place, none of us really know. I've wanted to go with her more than once, but wouldn't do that to my son.
Did you know that women tend to kill themselves in less messy ways than men because they don't want someone to have to clean up?
Suicide is complicated and to be judgmental, just says that you really don't understand that part of the human psyche. I don't approve at all, but the why is more important that the, how could you do that to your family. Read every word in that link and then make callous comments. If it's about attention seeking; why does someone need that kind of attention? It's all very sad.

https://www.medicinenet.com/suicide/article.htm

The effects of suicidal behavior or completed suicide on friends and family members are often devastating. Individuals who lose a loved one to suicide (suicide survivors) are more at risk for becoming preoccupied with the reason for the suicide while wanting to deny or hide the cause of death, wondering if they could have prevented it, feeling blamed for the problems that preceded the suicide, feeling rejected by their loved one, and stigmatized by others. Survivors may experience a great range of conflicting emotions about the deceased, feeling everything from intense emotional pain and sadness about the loss, helpless to prevent it, longing for the person they lost, and anger at the deceased for taking their own life to relief if the suicide took place after years of physical or mental illness in their loved one. This is quite understandable given that the person they are grieving is at the same time the victim and the perpetrator of the fatal act.

Individuals left behind by the suicide of a loved one tend to experience complicated grief in reaction to that loss. Symptoms of grief that may be experienced by suicide survivors include intense emotion and longings for the deceased, severely intrusive thoughts about the lost loved one, extreme feelings of isolation and emptiness, avoiding doing things that bring back memories of the departed, new or worsened sleeping problems, and having no interest in activities that the sufferer used to enjoy.

I'm an extremely strong willed person who gets upset and then moves past it and finds ways to conquer my grief. I'll never be the same, but I still have things I want to do with my life, I won't end it.
My physical pain is 24/7/365- I refuse to let it change who I am, but that's just me. How do I decide what's right for someone else, it's not my place, is it ?

I'm so sorry about your daughter, Jazz. May she rest in peace and you find peace soon.

I have no words, nothing I could say could ease this, I'm so sorry hon.

I will say I agree completely with your post.

I'm so sorry

You are right though, we can never really understand just what it's like to go through something like that unless we have been though it ourselves. And even then people experience different things. I think in that way it is harder to know how to help those in need, but even so we shouldn't stand by and do nothing if we know that there is the slightest chance that someone we know may be in trouble. It doesn't matter whether they are attention seeking or not, if somebody says something this serious then you have to do what you can to help them from one human being to another. It's the morally right thing to do, isn't it?

I just want to add one thing to this, whether or not it's viewed as insensitive or it's a popular perspective on it. While there are indeed genuine attempts meant to end a person's life and to say that it's all always about attention is nothing short of trolling for a response, there are many, many cases where the person is in fact only making minor attempts for the sake of gaining attention.

While this in itself speaks of a deep emotional instability, I want you guys to just imagine this for a moment before you comment. Imagine being the person who is called to respond a friend that has just done this, to hear them sobbing to you over the phone that they have cut themselves or overdosed. Imagine the panic, having to rush over there and clean their blood or make them vomit before rushing them into the er, having to counsel them through it all, find the right words in the middle of everything to calm them and to get the situation under control. Not once, but many times.

Then once everything's all done and they've gotten their fix of that attention, that frozen, sickening smile appears on their face as they tell you that they're fine now, as they tell everyone that could actually help them that they're fine. They go off for their useless three day hold, all the while promising everyone that has an actual chance of helping them get better that they'll never do it again, and then they are released and back to being your burden to bear.

Not once, but over and over and over. It's draining. It overwhelms your very soul to the point that you wish to die yourself rather than being doomed to repeat this tormenting cycle. What they're really saying when they say that they are fine, is that they don't want help, not real help. All they want is this person's attention, to trap them in their sick web and bleed them dry of any sort of happiness they once felt themselves. There is no reguard for what it is doing to that person, how it is destroying them; they nod along when the person tries to talk about these things to them, but it is secondary to their own needs, whether it will kill the other or not.

And it's not as though you can just not respond. It's a deadly serious topic, and could have a deadly serious outcome that one time you say you've had enough, or simply saying you've had enough could be what pushes the situation to deadly serious. There is still a deep emotional instability there, and the person could very likely be but a few steps from an actual attempt, or they could simply slip and go too far accidently. You can't see how much they're bleeding, you don't know if they're really dying, until you are there cleaning their wounds and repeating the cycle.

It literally can rip you apart.

Now, I don't know or care if any of you truly believe that I'm anything more than a sheltered little girl spouting insensitive nonsense, but I have experienced this topic from every f***ing angle possible, be it attention-seeking, genuine, or self. While I can understand how offensive it is to someone who has tried to end their own life or lost a loved one to suicide, I can also understand how deeply scarred such an experience can leave a person towards the entire topic. It can create a haze just as impenitrable as those who attempt suicide are forced to see and judge the world through. It can leave a person deeply and permanently jaded to the whole topic; the only aspect they can see of it is all the horrible things they went through. While these statements of attention-seeking and selfishness can understandably offend those who have been through a different angle of the experience, their position on it is not unjustified, or even wrong given what they have gone through.

The automatic response is to curse any who so much as mention the attention-seeking aspect, but to actually go through something like that is absolute f***ing hell. And not many can come through hell and still look at it objectively from other perspectives.

While I understand what you say, about the hell the other person who rushes to their aid goes through (i've been on that side of it), I still vehemently stand on the side of the fact that if a person has to go thru such pains for attention then there is something VERY serious going on in that person's psyche that needs TREATMENT. A cry for help, not just attention.

And while i feel for the people who are in this situation of running to a friend's aide, with panic and fright, I still say the person who needs to use suicide as an all out attempt for attention (and i am only referring to the ones who might be doing so, surely not the bulk of people who have attempted it) there is something serious going on that needs to be addressed.

I had an ex who did this, and I believe it had an attention getting feel to it and it put me through hell and back when he would do it, but I also know the guy has some serious issues he needs to address, so I won't say 'oh he is just an attention getter' because for him to even THINK of doing such a thing suggests a serious need for therapy because something is very amiss and he needs more help than he needs my or anyone else beating him up over attention getting tactics.

I truly believe he did it to "get to me" and never really planned on doing it, but at the same time I know there were some serious underlying issues in his life and childhood that would even lead him to do such a thing for attention. After we broke up and he did this I would send him the suicide hotline number and tell him the name of a good therapist and urge him to get help. I didn't run to his side, and maybe that was wrong, but it wasn't my place at that time and he had done this before when we were together. I just always took the threats serious and gave him information on how to seek some help.

And I agree with you Chisa, its draining, and it is why when we broke up I decided I was not rushing to his side any longer, but I would provide him with much information he needed to get help.

All that is fine and good, and I do most definitely agree that such a person has deep-running issues that require help, but when they deny it all in the face of those who can actually provide them with that help, when they refuse flatout to seek any true help you suggest for them, it doesn't change anything.

And while I eventually did the same as you with your ex, by then it was too late to not understand that perspective of suicide.

You know deep down that you should do something, but you're totally burned out. This is where professional intervention needs to come in. As hard as it is, you have to give them a hot line number . If they refuse help, you have to walk away; you can't stop anything at that point. It's also not your place to feel the least bit guilty. Didn't you try as hard as you could? I'm rusty- they can be 411d to a mental hospital because they are a danger to themselves. My husband gets about four suicide intakes a night. Call an ambulance, never try to handle them on your own. As I said in my post, people who need this much attention, are seriously, mentally ill. I understand your frustration completely.

While it's appreciated, the post was not for sympathy or to vent any frustration. I no longer have any in reguards to the situation described, and am instead grateful for the perspective gained from the experience that I would not have otherwise.

The post was simply meant to put another perspective, that there are indeed many who do it for attentiion, out there for consideration, either to dispute, or just ignore, or maybe to keep in the back of the mind the next time someone comes along ranting about it.

I'm just nice.

Just be careful. I'm not particularily, and I have been to known to be argumentative. It can clash in conversations with nice people.