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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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All the lukewarm attempts to help, rooted in shallow understanding, reinforced my suicidal ideation. What's the value of false love from a paid hotline worker one will never speak to again? It's negative.
Be ready to love the shit out of someone yourself. Share their sorrow. Don't try to fix it. Just try to understand. It'll fucking suck. The other person knows it sucks for you. Tell them it sucks and that you're choosing it.
If you have read the content on https://afsp.org/im-having-thoughts-of-suicide/ I'd be interested to hear your take. After my brother committed suicide I found their content for suicide loss survivors to be very helpful, but as a suicide loss survivor I can't judge the content they have for folks who are considering suicide.
I'm not the person you replied to but I've been passively suicidal for about a decade. I read this article. It seemed a bit prescriptive and patronizing to me. I get the impression that the article is targeted towards people who are acutely suicidal. As someone who's been chronically suicidal, I've noticed that there aren't many resources that are similar to this for people in my situation. These suicide hotlines seem to be targeted at people who are experiencing acute distress over someone who's been struggling with mental health for extended periods of time. I'm not going to say these resources are worthless, but they're worthless to me and I would assume at least a few people who have similar problems. I've never felt compelled to reach out or search for resources like this. They've always felt insincere, similar to corporate PR speak or celebrity "apologies". Like these hotlines are there so that people who aren't suicidal can go "well, we gave them a phone number. We don't need to feel bad that people are suffering cause we did what we could." I'm sure these hotlines have helped people and they should stick around. I'm just jaded and cynical.
I asked my wife about suicide hotlines too, she has periods of suicidal ideation and has attempted suicide when she was younger. She said it's a coin flip for her. They either made her feel more distressed and therefore more suicidal, or they made her slightly less suicidal (enough to not act on it). She said in the moments they helped, they served as a reminder to not provide a permanent solution with a temporary problem. She also hates that phrase but couldn't find a better way to word it haha.
I'm not sure if what we said will help or hurt in your processing, but those are our honest perspectives
Thank you for that response, I think you did a great job helping me understand you and your wife's perspective. I had a long period of lowness, and though I was not suicidal, some of the things you described sound close to how I thought and felt.
The part about the suicide hotlines reminded me of is a talk my coworker did on mental health, and she said that if you don't get along with your therapist within the first two sessions, it's ok to find another therapist. I imagine that's what these hotlines are like. When you call in you're basically grabbing a random person from a crowd, and the chances of that person resonating strongly with your story on the first try is probably low. I could see folks just hanging up if it wasn't helping, but it seems like they may have better luck if they call back again and talk to somebody different.
At the end of the day though, if somebody has a chronic condition, alleviating it significantly is not an easy task. It seems like these hotlines have to struggle with that tension between wanting to help, but knowing that significant long term improvement isn't easy to achieve, especially when you're just talking to the person who is looking for help.
I think this is how my brother mostly felt. One thing that he was into that seemed to help was stoic philosophy. I wasn't into it when he was alive, but happened to get into it shortly after he died and it immediately resonated with me. I wished we had gotten to talk about it more when he was alive. It certainly helped me deal with the aftermath of losing him.
Thanks again for the response. Good luck finding your peace.