I have a theory and it ties into my wonderment as to why so many people hang themselves.
As anyone who has experienced nausea and fought the desire to throw up knows…once you cave in (mostly to just get it over with) you had best be damn near a toilet once you make the conscious desire to stop fighting nausea.
I don’t want to get into personal details, but I wonder if anyone else has made this analogy re: suicide? That at some point it stops actually being a decision and is something you do?
And please…let’s keep the discussion impersonal. I’m fine.
I just was wondering if anyone had made that analogy before and if they have an opinion on how that ties into people who hang themselves, when…in a vaccum…that seems a weird way to “choose” to go out.
At the height of my depression (about four years ago, thereabouts), I was constantly thinking about suicide.
I would “see” nooses hanging from every crossbeam and tree bough. At work, my mind would flash on images of me tearing back the skin on my wrists and slicing them. I’d be driving across a bridge and wonder how it would feel to go careening off the side. I’d be sitting in long meetings and think to myself, “I know what I’m going to do when I get home! I’m going to get a belt and wrap it around my neck and then tie the other end to something.” And then I’d spend the next hour ruminating over what that “something” would be.
The strange thing is that these thoughts were always accompanied by a sense of pleasure and relief. I’d tell my therapist that they were “bad” thoughts since intellectually I knew they were. I knew they weren’t normal and that their intensity was a bad sign. But man, did I enjoy them.
I don’t know what held me back. My guess is that it has something to do with the fact that my life wasn’t as crappy as I felt, and I was sane enough to realize this. But if my life had truly been crappy, I think I probably would have at least made an attempt. The worse I ever did was bang my head against the wall a bunch of times.
Maybe I am misunderstanding (very likely I am), but I don’t really see what you are getting at. Anything that you do without being compelled to do it starts off with making a decision and then going ahead and doing it. I don’t see anything special about suicide in that regard in terms of what you are saying.
I’m trying to decide if the OP is asking about the decision process leading to suicide, or the decision process to choose hanging as the means to suicide.
Nausea is NOT a conscious process. Like holding your breath, trying to hold back an impending episode of vomiting only lasts so long. Then the autonomic systems take over and you *will *inhale or vomit as the case may be. That’s pretty much completely inapplicable, except as the very loosest of metaphors, to a conscious decision process.
To be sure, any decision process to do something novel starts out with “no” being the default assumption. The more you ruminate, the more “yes” becomes plausible. Eventually “yes” becomes a completed decision, and “no” becomes impossible. At that point the only remaining issue is choosing a specific date, time, place, and method.
This applies to buying a car, getting a new hairstyle, changing residences, starting or ending a relationship, and for those so inclined, killing themselves.
I fail to see what the OP is thinking is somehow different about deciding to kill yourself versus deciding to buy a car or break up with an SO.
When it comes to, say, daily exercise – getting up half an hour early and doing a sustained work-out – every single day – then, pretty quickly, it stops being “a decision” and is just “something you do.” Not even a habit, but just a pattern of life.
I can’t see how this would work for suicide, since, by and large, people only do it once.
I can see how someone might commit suicide impulsively. There’s a gun in the house, and, one day, almost without thinking, he picks it up and uses it on himself. Not planning ahead, not intending it, just, “Aw, fuck it,” and popping himself. For someone suffering from very severe depression, this kind of sudden impulse might be harder to resist than it is for people with better mental health.
This is closer to what im getting at…I didn’t want to share details but…I found that when the stage goes from “I hate myself. I hate myself. God feel free to kill me” to “You know. All I would have to do is go head on into that semi coming…”
I felt an inexorable suction as if the more serious you think about it…the faster the pull to the event.
One of the most important things to understand about mental illness is that the mind is broken. The decision-making apparatus is fouled up. The decisions made are horribly likely to be faulty, and the mind can’t even criticize them properly.
Suicide can “seem like the right thing to do at the time.”
It ain’t, but that’s the point: the mind that makes that choice isn’t making good choices.
If you are suffering from severe depression (anyone reading this!) seek help, or allow others to seek help for you. The good news is that there are lots and lots of very effective treatments.
About 40 years ago, My SO took a shotgun to himself in his grandfathers basement. This is after he told me that he would never put me through what he went through, when his mother and father committed suicide. His mother in a running car in her father’s garage. She took her newborn with her. She was there because her husband( SO’s father) tdrank a 6pack of beer and took bunch of phenobarbital pills at their house. His father had killed himself too.!
I think that it was always an option for my SO. As bad as it was for me after the fact I never thought of it as an option.
His grandfather was a tough old guy, went to the police department got the shotgun and returned it to the store for a refund!
I’m not even sure whether the OP is looking for a discussion of suicide in general, or hanging as a particular method of suicide.
Speaking anecdotally, I’ve struggled with persistent suicidal ideation since my teens - irrespective of any depression; I want to do it on the best days too - but never in the form of hanging. It just seems like one of the most horrible ways to leave yourself for someone to find, and one of the more miserable ways to do yourself in, unless you are clever or lucky enough to snap your neck execution-style.
I think he’s talking about the process that sometimes happens where making a decision leads to a sudden change in your physical state. Like you are calmly contemplating going to the toilet but as soon as you make the decision to go suddenly you have all the physical signs of urgency.
One of the more horrible things about suicide is that, in many cases, once the person has made the decision to do it…he starts to feel better. There is a sense of comfort, of freedom. A “way out” has been opened up.
This was told to me by a shrink, who said that a sudden improvement in mood could sometimes be a warning sign.
One of the key things helping keep me alive is…there aren’t any “good” ways to do the deed! Nooses? Ouch! Falling from a great height? No! Drowning? Hell no! And there are just too many horror stories about how people have botched the job using a gun, blowing their face off but still alive. Ick to the power Phaugh! If there’s anything “worse than death,” that sounds like it!
If there were some magic “secret agent” poison pill… Well, I’m just glad there isn’t.
Yup. And head on into an oncoming semi? Nevermind probably killing someone else…the seatbelt and airbag will probably save you, but leave you crippled.
Great height? I’d probably be the 1 in a million who survives as a quadripalegic.
Re: The comments about “Don’t do it, think of the pain of those you leave behind”…in my experience when the pain is at its worst…it’s impossible to think how others will feel. That’s my experience at least.
IME it’s impossible to see how the negative feelings others might feel initially would overcome their relief at being rid of the burden. But yeah–hard to see why anyone would care when your focus is almost entirely on what YOU feel. Hang in there, dude. Well, you know what I mean.
Sometimes I wonder how often suicides or accidents are someone losing control of their imp of the perverse. I sometimes have such morbid thoughts relating to different possibilities that make no sense (e.g. I could totally cross the lane and hit this guy head on), but it usually causes a fear or disgust response. I don’t know how common it is, but it’s an old term I see pop up here and there so it can’t be too obscure. Not something you want to share with others irl.