btw - don't worry. I want to die but that's nothing new. I'm planning to kill myself but not for a long time. I'm in a crisis but I'm toughing it out.
Anyway, this is one of the better links I've found on suicide. It's fairly strange to be reading this stuff and going through what they're talking about in a small way. This is part of what's a valuable process for me. I admit there's part of me that wants to read parts of this and agree but dismiss other bits which I feel don't apply to my current situation.
Here's the sip. After it are some comments.
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No single explanation can account for all self-destructive behavior. Edwin Shneidman, a clinical psychologist who is a leading authority on suicide, described ten characteristics that are commonly associated with completed suicide. Schneidman's list includes features that occur most frequently and may help us understand many cases of suicide.
1. The common purpose of suicide is to seek a solution.
Suicide is not a pointless or random act. To people who think about ending their own lives, suicide represents an answer to an otherwise insoluble problem or a way out of some unbearable dilemma. It is a choice that is somehow preferable to another set of dreaded circumstances, emotional distress, or disability, which the person fears more than death.
Attraction to suicide as a potential solution may be increased by a family history of similar behavior. If someone else whom the person admired or cared for has committed suicide, then the person is more likely to do so.
2. The common goal of suicide is cessation of consciousness.
People who commit suicide seek the end of the conscious experience, which to them has become an endless stream of distressing thoughts with which they are preoccupied. Suicide offers oblivion.
3. The common stimulus (or information input) in suicide is intolerable psychological pain.
Excruciating negative emotions - including shame, guilt, anger, fear, and sadness - frequently serve as the foundation for self-destructive behavior. These emotions may arise from any number of sources.
4. The common stressor in suicide is frustrated psychological needs.
People with high standards and expectations are especially vulnerable to ideas of suicide when progress toward these goals is suddenly frustrated. People who attribute failure or disappointment to their own shortcomings may come to view themselves as worthless, incompetent or unlovable. Family turmoil is an especially important source of frustration to adolescents. Occupational and interpersonal difficulties frequently precipitate suicide among adults. For example, rates of suicide increase during periods of high unemployment (Yang et al.,1992).
5. The common emotion in suicide is hopelessness-helplessness.
A pervasive sense of hopelessness, defined in terms of pessimistic expectations about the future, is even more important than other forms of negative emotion, such as anger and depression, in predicting suicidal behavior (Weishaar & Beck, 1992). The suicidal person is convinced that absolutely nothing can be done to improve his or her situation; no one else can help.
6. The common internal attitude in suicide is ambivalence.
Most people who contemplate suicide, including those who eventually kill themselves, have ambivalent feelings about this decision. They are sincere in their desire to die, but they simultaneously wish that they could find another way out of their dilemma.
7. The common cognitive state in suicide is constriction.
Suicidal thoughts and plans are frequently associated with a rigid and narrow pattern of cognitive activity that is comparable to tunnel vision. The suicidal person is temporarily unable or unwilling to engage in effective problem-solving behaviors and may see his or her options in extreme, all or nothing terms. As Shneidman points out, slogans such as "death before dishonor" may have a certain emotional appeal, but they do not provide a sensible basis for making decisions about how to lead your life.
8. The common action in suicide is escape.
Suicide provides a definitive way to escape from intolerable circumstances, which include painful self-awareness (Baumeister, 1990).
9. The common interpersonal act in suicide is communication of intention.
One of the most harmful myths about suicide is the notion that people who really want to kill themselves don't talk about it. Most people who commit suicide have told other people about their plans. Many have made previous suicidal gestures. Schneidman estimates that in at least 80 percent of completed suicides, the people provide verbal or behavioral clues that indicate clearly their lethal intentions.
10. The common consistency in suicide is with life-long coping patterns. During crisis that precipitate suicidal thoughts, people generally employ the same response patterns that they have used throughout their lives. For example, people who have refused to ask for help in the past are likely to persist in that pattern, increasing their sense of isolation.
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1 - This is good. It doesn't go into all the cognitive bullshit common amongst psychologists who like to look at things from the outside. Schneidman's understanding came from an extensive study of suicide notes. For example when I tried to take my life after getting into debt problems it was for fear of the change in lifestyle and status. Death was preferable. There's no history of suicide in my family as far as I am aware. My close family are all doctors.
2 - This wasn't true of the debt suicide nor of the suicide attempts during psychosis. It is true of my desire to die now. Cessation of consciousness is a hope.
Point 8 has relevance in this area.
I hope you understand that there are still many different reasons and circumstances behind suicide. It's not one thing which can be simplified. It's attempted to here and there's some good insights but there's much more to the picture of a suicidal mind.
3 - I wonder if this is what is psychache. Schneidman's term,. not mine. It is the pain the preceeds suicide. Again, there are other reasons and other forces. In one significant suicide attempt it was the controlling force of god which brought me to kill myself in a snap decision.
5 - again, the debt suicide was about that. A parasuoicidal attempt when I was younger and had my first relationship breakup was similar too. However other ones were different. Certainly my current situation, i.e. the long term plan to kill myself, is very different to this in my opinion.
6 - hmm. That's fair but not much of a point.
8 - yeah. But that's sort of obvious. And it's just a way of looking at it. It could be seen as liberation from the misery of life, the end of the cycle, the easy way to nirvana. Depending on how you want to look at it.
Some people just don't want to live anymore. It's not an illness. It's sad but it's a choice a person can make. I'm trying not to nmake it in a way but it's what I want. I'm willing to wait and work to find a solution but that's a large part of me that hopes I don't.
9 - now that I didn't know. Obviously I've done it this time but not in other attempts. Not consciously anyway or with intent. Recently I have told a few people of my plan to kill myself in 4 years.
10 - This one is fascinating given my current circumstances. They've brought me to an edge. I'm drinking myself to death to cope. I want to give up. But I'm not. I'll survive this financial crisis somehow. It's not the whole world. It's just a large part of my hope for the last few months has been dashed pretty fucking quickly. I'm dealing with a lot of stuff and there's more. Debts, taxes and other stuff are all bearing down on me. It's all easier to cope with know there's nothing left they can take from me. I doubt prison would be much worse than my current life. It is only the loss of my liberty. Thankfully I've committed no serious crime apart from telling NICE that I'm an unmedicated severely ill person who's not in contact with NHS services. That's not a crime but it runs the risk of them forcing drugs on me using any number of tools at their disposal.
I suppose there is a sense of ambivalence about my present situation. I'm continuing to bury my head in the sand by drinking myself through the current situation. My life could very quickly deteriorate to the point where previously it would have made sense to terminate my life now.
But I've been through that already. This is just a major set back. The feeling of wanting to kill myself is something I've gotten used to. There are times it is intense and my behaviour pattern can be beyond my control but I've managed to survive those very difficult periods, even if it cost me a job I loved.
Self-managing all this is really, really hard. Fuck. So hard. But I manage it.
There's limited value in talking. I just have to get through this period in my life and get my plan back on track. I'm sure I'll talk about it at some point but in the mean time I have this blog. This has become a pretty effective way for me to outpour stuff. The problem is there are a few people who know it's mine. This has made it harder to blog openly as I have in previous posts.
My patterns have changed and I've developed strategies which help. They may be unusual ways but for me they work enough t hold me together in this high risk crisis.
I just wish it didn't have to be so difficult but...well...that's life.
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