Taking to counselor today, he shares your perspective.
He also pointed out the obvious: permanent solution to temporary problem. (In most cases)
Jesus. That’s the most banal and insulting cliche to ever address such a serious, complicated and nuanced issue. I swear to God, if I had a therapist that ever used that with me, it’d be the last session I ever had with them.
More specifically, there is no objective measure of pain. If we’re discussing physical pain, some people shrug off things that other people find completely debilitating. Likewise, I think that people have different capabilities for handling mental pain.
I question if someone suffering from depression is capable of objectively assessing the situation.
I think the situation where suicide doesn’t cause pain to others, or makes the world better, is an extremely rare one.
I don’t know anyone who likes cleaning up after dead people. Not even for dead people who expired due to, say, old age or where death is a release, like terminal illness. I certainly did not enjoy discovering the two dead people I’ve encountered while commuting to work and I have no idea if they were suicides or accidents.
At best, for those cleaning up, suicides are annoying jackasses who created a problem where their didn’t have to be one. And that’s the neat ones. The jerkass who offed himself by putting himself in the way of a fully loaded train going 80 mph certainly caused some problems for those of us on the train, and for our loved ones who were extremely concerned about that “train accident” with a fatality their loved ones were involved with, and certainly for the engineer who was in such distress he had to be sedated before being removed from the train.
So yes, there are different levels of pain caused but sorry, you can’t exit the world without being, at best, annoying to someone. Now, you may feel being an annoyance is justified… but most of the time I think the suicide is causing a crap load more distress and pain than they think they are.
That’s leaving aside those who intend to cause pain, which also occurs sometimes.
I think there’s another category who is so caught up in their pain they simply don’t consider the effect on others, leading to shit like an acquaintance of mine who blew his head all over his bathroom with a shotgun while only his 7 year old daughter was at home. Of course she ran to daddy when the scary noise happened… Oh, yeah, I think seeing her dad’s somewhat headless corpse and gore and brains dripping off the walls and ceiling caused her some pain. The kid is still in therapy. Nice job, dad. I don’t, however, know the situation well enough to know if that level of horror was intentional on his part or not. If, however, he thought he was sparing his family pain by his manner of exit he was very sadly mistaken.
It’s not necessarily “scaring” people. Cleaning up after, say, a shotgun suicide is gross and it’s a crap load of work because you wind up having to replace drywall and carpets and sometimes flooring and other stuff. That’s a bit more than a half hour scrub. Dead bodies don’t scare me and gore doesn’t scare me but that doesn’t mean I like it, and I get pissed off when it occurs for preventable reasons.
Yes, it depends on the circumstances but it’s never a Hollywood ending.
The most “considerate” suicide I ever heard of was related to me by a paramedic. An old lady with failing health used pills to do the deed. Among other things, she spread a shower curtain on the bed to help facilitate clean up and a series of documents on her dining room table tidying up legal matters, canceled a bunch of stuff like phone and utilities, and a note apologizing for any inconvenient she was unable to circumvent… yeah, basically made a very tidy exit. However, she was NOT the typical depression suicide and was in a very ordered state of mind.
Well, OK, yes, that was considerate on a certain level. However, it’s unlikely you could be certain of killing yourself AND be certain that no such person would discover you.
I’m not opposed to the notion that there are “justifiable” suicides, it’s just that I think they’re extremely rare and my default position is “stupid and painful decision until proven otherwise”.
In the case of Robin Williams, who seems to be the most recent inspiration for such discussions, I simply don’t know enough about the situation to judge. My default is, as always, “bad call” but given his decades-long history of personal problems and the recent revelation that he was suffering from the early stages of Parkinson’s it is certainly possible that he had tried everything possible and was now facing the prospect of losing the ability to perform which clearly was a beneficial thing for him. I just don’t know that. Neither does anyone else in this thread.
Nope.
I think there really are horrific versions of mental illness that can lead to fatal outcomes such as suicide. I think there are some people who can’t be helped with our current knowledge. However, I also know that access to good treatment is difficult to impossible for many, and that stigma and misinformation prevent people from attempting some options. I get very angry when I hear about someone who wants help but is unable to access it.
Agreed Ken001.
Right, and death due to old age is going to happen some day, whatever we do. Why does bringing your departure date forwards make it worse?
Intent is important when classifying actions. “Selfish” implies willfully putting your needs ahead of others.
This is now the fourth time I’m saying this: I think that public suicides, especially those where you maximize distress for others, rather than minimize it, are probably selfish.
Since where we disagree is the other kind of suicides, like your considerate old lady example, can we focus on those?
Gee, I dunno - maybe because it’s unnecessary? Because you might be leaving a bigger mess than if you died of old age/natural causes? Because dying in a hospital bed of old age or disease in a place set up to be easily disinfected and cleaned of biological mess is a hell of a lot easier than replacing the drywall after someone blows their brains out? Because it can be traumatic for a family member or friend to find your bloated body and its attendant mess rather than, again, in hospital with people who are trained and equipped to deal with illness/injury/bodily fluids/death?
Well, since we all seem to agree that different suicides are different doesn’t that imply that some may, in fact, be selfish where others may be so delusional that the concept doesn’t apply.
OK, so we agree on that.
What needs to be focused on? The considerate old lady was an outlier, she’s not typical. As I have said both in this thread and others I’m willing to consider exceptions to my general view of suicide as selfish and wrong but my criteria for reaching that conclusion are pretty narrow. They basically come down to “throwing self on grenade to save comrades” scenarios or “severe, unremitting pain due to terminal illness that can not be relieved by modern medicine.” Just because the old lady I mentioned was considerate doesn’t mean I think she was right or that I agree with her decision. Granted I wasn’t there for it all, but nothing in the story related to me strikes me as a reason to kill yourself. Clearly, she felt differently. I just don’t agree with her actions. Points to her for minimizing her impact on others, bravo, but I still think what she did was stupid and wasteful.
That’s why I put the “in most cases” caveat. Why would that perfectly valid observation cause you to fire a therapist?
Because it’s undoubtedly not “in most cases.” If anything, it’s the other way around and it has to be one of the most obnoxious “observations” on the planet. Plus, for bonus points, I’d say that it would highlight such a stunning depth of willful ignorance and insensitivity that anything other than firing would be astonishing.
Do you disagree that many suicides are the result of believing a temporary situation is permanent?
Examples I can think of:
Getting fired (can get another job)
Getting dumped/divorced (another person is out there for you)
Losing family member (the rest of your family still needs you)
Obviously, I do disagree, if that wasn’t evident already. I think when people make the ultimate of decisions (because it doesn’t get any bigger than that), it’s because of much bigger problems. Sure, something like the things you’ve mentioned above can serve as a catalyst, but usually, there’s other issues underlying why the chose to commit suicide. Like some form of mental illness, untenable situations, or a debilitating physical condition. I believe it’s very rare, actually, for most folks ever to decide to end their life because of extraneous circumstances alone.
And to address your above examples, for some people…
There’s not always another job.
There’s not always another person.
To whom?
Might be. Then again it might be the other way round: that your death will be far “cleaner” if you take a cyanide pill than if you, say, let your terminal illness run its course.
Fine. You seem to be agreeing that some suicides are selfish and some are not.
The only thing we now disagree on, is that the not-selfish ones you are now implying can only be based on irrational motives (apart from the “soldier on a grenade scenarios” you mentioned).
So FTR I disagree on that. But it’s a bit of a sideline here, as the OP is quite specific.
I agree she went to great lengths to take care of her affairs, but I dispute that she’s an outlier in the sense of wanting to minimize pain to others.
I’ve lost someone to suicide, and had others threaten/attempt it. I was also diagnosed with severe major depression and struggle with suicidal thoughts and urges of my own.
I do think suicide is selfish, but I don’t blame anyone for it or feel mad at them. The main reason I’m still alive today is that I can’t bear causing that kind of pain to my close family and friends, but then I feel guilty for even thinking about it, which just makes me feel worse. Depression also makes it hard to remember that people do care and I’m not just a burden they tolerate and would be better off without. Sometimes you just want the pain to end and you can’t think clearly when desperation takes over.
Also, if your ultimate problem is self-hatred, then your “youness” is a permanent problem. When I was going through the ringer, it didn’t matter to me that I had a good job and that people loved me. The only thing that mattered is that for as far as the eye could see, I was always going to be “me”. I could pretend to be someone else and fool everyone, but I was always going to be me. And the thought filled me with hopelessness.
When people aren’t full of self-hatred, they are able to see life’s temporary problems for what they are. They can give themselves the pep talk about how they can get another job or find another significant other. It is quite difficult to do this when you can’t even look in the mirror, though.
That said…my therapist is fond of saying “suicide is a permenant solution to a temporary problem”. I’m sure she doesn’t say this to someone who has an intractable problem (like a terminal illness), but she did say it to me when I was depressed. And in retrospect, I appreciate its simple clarity. Self-hatred is a temporary problem. It is hard to remember this when I am depressed. But I can’t deny its truth, at least as it relates to me right now.
I appreciate that perspective, monstro, but all I know is that there’s been more than a non-negligible amount of people (even in my own life) who have gone to their natural deaths waiting for their “temporary” problem to go away. Often, the problem isn’t just self-hatred.
Thanks monstro! Did better job than I would’ve. I made a feeble suicide attempt after a dispute with my father about he still wanting to control my $$ after I fulfilled my financial obligations to him, and when it didn’t happen, basically trying to declare me incompetent.
I think the main point of disagreement is the proportion of selfish to non-selfish. Or, another way, justified vs. non-justified.