I see, or read or hear this, sometimes, whenever the subject gets brought up. Usually the form is “Suicide is the ultimate kind of selfishness.” Most recently, in real life, about a colleague who killed himself. A woman said this about him, a woman who’d who’d survived breast cancer.
And of course, I’m not saying there’s no such thing as a selfish suicide. There may be people (kids, I suspect, mainly) whose last thought is, “This will show them”.
But I mean, how do you know? How do you know his last thought wasn’t “They will be better off without me”? Or even, “I’m doing this for them.”
To me it seems presumptuous, or naïve, to claim to know someone else’s motivations, when you don’t.
Well, in my sister’s case she left a three-page suicide note where she made it abundantly clear that at least part of her motivation was to cause great and unrelenting pain to certain parties also named in the note. That strikes me as pretty goddamned selfish and mean.
So that’s how I know in that particular case - she told us so, in her own words.
ETA: Also, she was 34 so she was hardly a “kid” having an adolescent fit. And a psychologist, so she knew exactly how fucking painful it would be to her loved ones. She still did it.
People use “Selfish” , I think, not because the reasons are selfish but the consequences are. That, because the person isn’t able/willing to get help or put up with unhappiness etc, they end up abandoning parents, spouses and kids. They might not intend their suicide to be selfish, but the damage they cause is hurtful.
Now I don’t necessarily agree with the sentiment, but I think that’s how the term is often used.
The selfishness part is more about how suicide affects others…friends, family members, whoever finds the body and/or has to clean up the mess, etc.
A good friend of mine killed himself a couple of years ago. His grandmother found the body. She’s in a home now. His mother had been clean for 20 years. She’s crawled back into a bottle, and may never find her way out again. His friends, including me, are left to wonder…what if…could we have done something to save him? Did we miss a plea for help? Why the fuck did he do it?
Suicide is a act of desperation. In some cases it could be to hurt others, but only as this person has felt hurt, so not selfish but an attempt to ‘keep up with the Jones’. To hurt as he/she has been hurt, old testament stuff - if you are into the Bible.
The other aspect is one who has not received what a human needs to receive, not enough love. If never offered or for some reason they blocked the love that was offered, without love being received there is no reason to stay here. So not selfish but depleted, life energy expended.
I think this is one of those things people say that seems wise. The other thing you hear people say is “It’s the cowards way out”. That sounds good - cause it is counterintuitive.
People who aren’t suicidal don’t usually understand the total despair and hopelessness that comes along with it.
Should that person have to go through the rest of their life feeling the way they do so others don’t have to question whether there was something they could have done?
Some people get better - the depression passes - but others don’t. There really isn’t another way out for many. It’s not fair for them, to have to be in pain every day, dredding life, not having the energy to do anything. Many that don’t commit suicide - it is cause they don’t have the energy to do some of the final planning stuff.
Unless those left behind are themselves driven to suicide, it seems likely that they are suffering less than the person who did kill themselves. Arguing that they must endure this level of suffering for the sake of these others seems a little mean spirited to me.
As long as I have loved one’s, I’m stuck here. I could never do that to my family. I know how I would do it, and I can’t say I don’t think about it from time to time… but if you have people that love you, it just doesn’t seem like an option.
It may not seem like an option for you. But for others, like the folks who eventually commit suicide, it obviously is.
I don’t think love conquers all pain, suffering, or emotional turmoil. There are some hurts and burdens that can be shared with loved ones, and then there are some that can only be carried by the sufferer.
I think all of us have a limit for torment and suffering. The threshold is different for all of us, but we all have a load that we can carry and a load that we can’t. Having loved ones raises the pain threshold for most people, but they don’t raise it to an infinite degree. I know for me personally, I can imagine quite a few scenarios where all the kisses and hugs from my family wouldn’t change my mind about whether it would be better to die. That I can imagine this doesn’t mean I don’t love anyone or that I’m selfish. It just means I have a vivid imagination and a realistic sense of what I can handle.
Fortunately, most of us never get tested enough to see where our limit is.
I think the point is how the people left behind do feel and why they say it. It’s naive to think the abandoned children and other family members don’t feel pain or hurt too.
Is it “selfish”, I don’t know. But the people left behind do feel tremendous pain, too.
I’ve always felt that, regardless of its validity, the rhetoric is kind of cruel.
Some people respond well to a little bit of cruelty (or perhaps “tough love”), but others don’t. I’ve noticed a lot of depressed people have gotten over their depression really well by, more or less, abusing themselves. Which is somewhat ironic, I suppose. A lot of depressed people seem to respond to “all of these depressed thoughts are so fucking selfish. You’re a terrible, narcissistic person. God, grow the fuck up! It’s always me me me! You’re so depressed you don’t think about others.”
And if it works for them, hey, great. And I think a lot of the “suicide is selfish” and “suicide is cowardly” is the same type of rhetoric. It’s kind of meant to bully the person into staying alive and getting over it. (I’m using “bully” loosely, the intention is good. I’m just referring to the method)
However, there’s also a chance it may backfire. I know the “abuse” method never worked on me. If somebody, even myself, told myself that I was being a bad person, or selfish, or mean, or neglectful by feeling the way I do I’d just become more depressed because now on top of whatever was wrong before I’m also a bad person for feeling the way I do.
I’m not sure if suicide is selfish, even if it hurts others. Even if it is selfish, I’m not sure that necessarily condemns it, sometimes the selfish option is the best option. However, I do think people need to be careful when saying it to a legitimately suicidal person. It may work, but it also may just make them decide that if they’re so damned selfish they don’t deserve to live anyway.
I agree with this post. I’ve had a friend who committed suicide due to depression somewhat related to his HIV. I understand and wasn’t hurt. But I really can’t see the selfishness of people who insist that people stay when they are in great and constant pain. I wouldn’t want to inflict life on anyone.
That’s exacrly what a suicidal friend told me when I mentioned her 6 or so yo daughter.
(He didn’t commit suicide, though.)
I would add that it’s very selfish to demand that someone keeps living (and suffering) so that you won’t be dismayed by his suicide.
It’s also very selfish to kill yourself over a transient as opposed to permanent problem.
I mean, I get that my sister suffered nearly two decades of biochemical depression and had tried counseling and drugs (before the age of SSRI’s, which may or may not have helped her, we’ll never know) but she managed to have good times, it wasn’t unrelenting pain.
The truth is that the family had a bad year, all of us did. She wasn’t as able to cope with major life stressors and it killed her. However, she didn’t have to leave such a nasty note behind, she chose to do that. And the truth is that a lot of what precipitated her death were, in fact, temporary problems that happened to other people, not her. I don’t agree with “it’s a coward’s way out”, but I don’t have the kneejerk response of “oh, her pain was greater than yours, you should feel bad for her.” There’s no way to know how one person’s pain feels to that person. What is agony to one person is trivial to another. You can’t go around “rating” pain like measuring the temperature. You could just as easily say her pain wasn’t that bad but she lacked the ability to cope with pain as a normal person would. The end result is the same.
People can be suicidal and also dicks. They’re not mutually exclusive, your sister seemed to prove that. But just because one is using suicide as a means to be a jerk doesn’t mean that suicide itself is jerkish. It was the intent and the note that was jerkish, selfish, and mean; the suicide was just a means to inflict the pain.
I understand what people are saying about the suffering. I’m someone who basically believes everyone has the right to do what they want to their own body. I can only speak to why it’s not an option for myself, and I hope that others have the same type of support in their lives, that I do with my family.
If we are talking about people that are clinically depressed, you just never know if you’ll always be that way. There are often so many ways you can reach out to someone about how desperate you are for help. I guess it depends on the person and their situation. In most cases I know of, it *is *a selfish act.
There have been a number of past threads on this, alas I’m technically at work and can’t search them out.
Agree with everything above: sometimes it’s selfish, sometimes not.
In my own case I tried to erase as much of my “footprint” as I could, and put distance between myself and family, before making my attempt. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to feel bad. If I could have just removed myself from past, present and future I would have done so.
Of course you could claim it is still selfish because I’m doing something which I think is better for me. But then of course the word loses all meaning as suddenly many of my actions become “selfish”, like pouring myself a coffee.
It’s different in every case, obviously. But if I had gone through with it, it would have been selfish. I didn’t think people would be better off without me, I just didn’t want to continue living. Purely self-centered thinking. One of the things that stopped me was the thought of someone having to tell my niece what had happened to her favorite uncle. So that non-selfish thought helped me.