Couldn’t he have just moved to a different apartment? It sounds like he’s a fairly successful actor. It couldn’t have been hard for him to have found a dog friendly apartment and to have temporarily rehomed the dog while looking…
Actually, what’s really new, in fact, is that certain things which have always happened before are now hyper-publicized and re-hyper-publicized online by everyone and his brother–to the point where you can identify the general neuroses of the society by which kind of stories it chooses to re-broadcast in order to feed our recreational outrage.
These things are just as bad as they have always been. We just get to choose with greater selectivity the flavor of our water-cooler indignations.
I think many people who put down depressed/suicidal people do because they have never felt that way themselves and can’t understand the mindset of depression. Since they’ve never felt it, it must be attention-seeking, get over it already behavior.
And some people are just cruel. I’ve noticed it on here when a poster starts some thread to vent about a real-life situation they don’t want to vent about in real life and some posters seem drawn to it like flies to a fresh carcass.
I don’t know why what I said is so disagreeable. It does take an amazing person to be compassionate and understanding when confronted with self-pity. It is hard to relate to someone who hates themselves for no readily identifiable reason. Just like it is hard to relate to someone who believes the light fixtures are talking to them or that the house will catch on fire if they don’t check the stove twenty times before going to bed. If mental illness was easy for everyone to handle, folks wouldn’t have to go to specially trained people for help.
This doesn’t excuse jerks. It just explains why there are so many of them.
And I never said or implied I was awesome. I don’t even know how to respond to gratuitous shit like that.
Obviously some of it is bullying, but much of it is also about general ideas about mental health. Ie that its about mental weakness, ‘all in your head’, being done for attention etc.
And many people think this because they extrapolate their own strategies for coping with bad feelings to mental health, and think because they work for them personally, they will work for people with much more serious conditions, or work for everyone. Much of it is about reassuring oneself that it couldnt happen to them. If they felt that bad, they’d find a way to get better, they’re just not really trying etc etc.
And of course some suicide attempts are still manipulative behaviour, even if mental health is involved as well. Working with them involves helping them realise its self-defeating in the long run, even if it gets lots of support or a person to stay in the short term. Many professionals struggle to remain empathic with some of the people doing repeated self-harm or suicide attempts.
Otara
(bolding mine)
I would assume any suicidal person would be in excruciating pain. I might not understand why you hate yourself but I understand excruciating pain.
From what I’ve been able to tell, truly suicidal people don’t talk about it to just anyone. They keep it to themselves, and when it’s time for the act, they just do it. Making a scene about it is generally just fishing for sympathy. I dislike rewarding fishing.
Further, I hold the opinion that suicide is the ‘easy’ way out. No, it isn’t easy to kill yourself, but it becomes an option when fixing the shit that led you to suicide is even harder to deal with. Suicide is giving up. It lets you escape your life while causing lasting emotional pain to people who care about you. I don’t find that acceptable, laudable, or deserving of sympathy.
The one time suicide is acceptable in my eyes is when you’re dealing with a terminal illness. Once you know your life is measured in months or weeks, and you’re in pain, then there’s no sense waiting for the illness to take you. Dragging it out at that point is harder on you and your loved ones, both emotionally and financially. Tie up your loose ends, make your peace with your loved ones, and say goodbye.
I was a much bigger jerk about those beliefs when I was younger. Now I tend more toward apathy. People will do what they will; my beliefs only matter to myself and people who care about my opinion.
Some people tend to be incredibly hard on themselves, so they are naturally incredibly hard on others as well. You can really get a sense of the draconian standards people impose on their emotions, thoughts and behaviors by noticing how they judge others.
At least, it helps me to look at it that way. It helps me feel more compassionate and less pissed.
More generally, chronic severe depression is a difficult thing for some to understand. They may have gone through a rough six weeks once and managed to get back on track with exercise or something, and think it’s just that way for everyone.
I think this is a common myth about depression. People like to slam on those with borderline personality disorder for their supposedly manipulative suicide attempts, but the reality is that for every suicide attempt, the odds of being successful the next time around increase dramatically. The idea that truly suicidal people do not cry out for help is false. Maybe part of the reason people mock those who are suicidal is this stupid, destructive myth.
a) a significant number of people who claim to be ‘suicidal’, especially online, are doing it as an attention-getting technique and are not truly suicidal. Some people find that it works wonders and try it repeatedly. That kind of drama-whoring is obviously going to get mocked eventually. Unfortunately that mocking can get extended to people who truly are suicidal, which is wrong.
b) sometimes when you’re depressed everything seems like criticism/mockery. If you bitch about your problems to other people and they say “get some help” or “you should really think about the damage you’re doing to your family/kids/pets by leaving this untreated” or “have you thought about therapy/medication/time off”, they might just mean those things as honest suggestions. However, a depressed person might read a tone of cruel mockery into everything that’s said. It’s kind of part of the deal of depression that the depressed person is inclined to think that everybody hates them and therefore takes their comments in that vein.
Both of these things are magnified online because most people are less likely to coddle other posters online and only tell them what they want to hear.
The driving reason for my one suicide attempt was the guilt over eating two cans of salmon a day.
The mentally ill don’t always act rationally
People demonize the weak because they don’t want to be them, be associated with them, empathize with them, experience in any way the hopeless circles they travel in.
My guess is that middle and high school children are so remarkably cruel because they are at a stage of life with a typically high level of uncertainty and fear. Real empathy is something only the brave can stand to experience.
When people say, “oh, he only does that for attention”, I can only think, “then why don’t you give just him some, since he doesn’t know how to ask directly?”
I’m not brave. But I know what it looks like, and it doesn’t look like contempt for the weak.
I’ve long felt that it’s simply because they can get away with it. That overt bullying suddenly vanishes when they get old enough that it’s responded to with things like jail and restraining orders and firings instead of people saying “kids will be kids” and “tough it out”. They don’t “grow up”; they just get reined in.
One in four people in the United States experiences depression. That adds up to a lot of actually suicidal people posting online. How do you know who’s ‘not truly suicidal?’ And why does it matter?
Not everyone who is depressed is suicidal.
I never said that I knew who was genuinely suicidal and who wasn’t. Nor did I say mocking them was okay either way. But I think that if you’re out looking for drama and attention, people will catch on to that eventually and grow tired of it. I don’t think it’s particularly reasonable to expect people to rush in with tea and sympathy every time someone claims to be depressed, even if their story smells like bullshit. That’s not to say that I think rushing in and mocking them is necessary, but it’s kind of to be expected online.
I hope you’re not offended that this made me laugh. It could serve as a good reality check when we’re depressed in the future. Remember the tuna.
thank you.
My experience is that it’s very different when a person you know is expressing depression/suicidal thoughts or if it’s a message board poster.
It can be really tedious to deal with someone with mental illness. I’ve had flair ups of an anxiety disorder–and even I get sick and tired of dealing with myself in one of those states! I look back at my diary and think “holy crap were you annoying.” There is nothing more annoying than whining, and a lot of it comes across as the whiniest of whining. I know someone suffering from mental illness can’t help it–I’ve been there so I know–but it’s still incredibly annoying behavior.
For someone I know, I put up with it and feel sympathetic towards them because I know them and recognize the pain they’re in. Even so, sometimes it can be really hard work. For some anonymous internet poster, it’s hard to see the person and not just the annoyance.
I don’t think there’s one single answer. Some people are so threatened by weakness (and the reminder that they could wind up in the same position) they mock it so it goes away, some people have never experienced it so they don’t understand, or assume it must be phony, attention seeking behavior, some people thrive on drama and can be annoying to be around (and sort of sway peoples opinion against sympathy for the truly mentally ill). The simplest answer is that some people are just jerks.
I think that’s a large part of it. An equally large part, in my opinion, is that adults aren’t forced to interact with people with whom they have nothing in common but age and hometown.
Which is one of the reasons I’ve tended toward apathy. I’m not in a position to decide if they’re full of it or not. Given that it comes up most often in online discussion too (I don’t know anyone RL fighting depression or suicidal tendences), even if I did believe them I’m not in a position to assist. So they don’t get active mockery, just a lack of response.