Itās so crazy that suicide prevention is just people going awwww donāt!! Awwww come on noooooooooo stopppppp
One of the best ones I saw was a thing noting that every single one of the few survivors of suicide jumps off of the Golden Gate Bridge realized, on the way down, that the problems they were killing themselves over actually were fixable or could be worked through...except for the now - extremely unfixable - problem of gravity.
Went to the Holocaust Museum in DC once. There was a video interview of an Auschwitz survivor who said he and some other prisoners stayed up all night with a man who wanted to kill himself. The man didnāt kill himself and survived to liberation.
In the video the survivor said āNever seek a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And theyāre all temporary problems.ā
Hearing that from a guy who survived the Holocaust rewired my brain a little bit.
I think something a lot of people don't understand is that depression is not suicidality, and suicidality is not depression. People can, and are, depressed without being suicidal, and sometimes suicidality peaks as people are emerging from depression. Suicidality is a wave, and the trick is to allow that wave to crest and subside WITHOUT acting on it. Whatever it takes to ride it out. For some people that's distraction, like watching television. For others it's calling a friend -- not to talk about the suicidality, but just to talk. For others it could be as simple as going to sit in a coffee shop or library, because the presence of other people is a huge diminisher of suicide risk. That's what suicide safety planning is about. It's like having any other type of emergency plan, like a plan for fire or evacuation. It's making a plan when you are in the frame of mind to do so, so that you can just DO the plan without having to think about it when the occasion arises. When you're in the midst of suicidal ideation, or even intent, you're not in a problem-solving mood. So knowing past!you, with the help of a therapist hopefully, came up with the plan and all you have to do is follow up until the wave crests and subsides, is what allows you to see another day.
ETA: Here's a link to a safety plan. https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/988-safety-plan.pdf
No permanent solutions to temporary problems
No permanent solutions to temporary problems
I must keep reminding myself of this, I must keep reminding myself of this
One of the main things that's carried me is a quote from Animorph's The Andelite Chronicles:
"And then it came to me, in a moment of clarity: I had no choice. When Arbron had been in utter despair and had wanted to die, I stopped him. Because without life there is no despair, but without life there can also never be hope."
In the 1950s, my grampa chose not to die by suicide because he was reading Lord of the Rings and had only gotten through The Two Towers (ROTK wasn't out yet), and he "wanted to see how it all turned out." He ended up getting caught up in other things, and never did read it.
He learned the ending in the early 2000s, with me, long after he'd stopped reading fantasy, because I heard this story and got to tell him it'd actually just come out...on DVD.
Fifty years after it saved his life, he found out how it all turned out.
Now, isn't that worth staying alive for?
Fifty years after
it saved his life, he found out
how it all turned out.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
