Guilting Someone Into Not Suiciding! What Are Your Thoughts?

[BloomInWinter]

Helping a suicidal person become aware of possible unintended consequences isn't 'guilt-tripping' unless the sender or receiver chooses to judge it as such.

It is a strategy of communication with a person who is battling a cognitive distortion that is causing them to believe they have so little worth there will be no effect...or only a good one...by their suicide.

Turning their attention to the outside of that to the reality of consequences is a challenge to that cognitive distortion.

Whatever a person feels about that challenge is a reflection of what they feel about themselves and the person delivering the message.

It is a tactic. Some are skilled with it, others are not. Some have credibility to deliver it to us, some do not.

This is a tactic that we can learn to use to challenge our own cognitive distortion that 'Nobody cares or will even notice.'

Practice, practice, practice.

 

[Hashi]

I haven't read all the posts here, but in response to glancing through them, I wanted to say that I don't think it's ever acceptable to use guilt to try to make someone do or not do something. Offering understanding and support while telling someone how much they mean to you is one thing. Guilt is another.

Maybe it's selfish to commit suicide. I'm not sure I agree, because of the depth of emotional and psychological pain that's possible. I can understand that deep grief and even trauma can be caused by suicide, but I don't think that has to mean judging the person as selfish for having done it. Much of the grief and trauma might be for the pain of the person's life that led them to do that, but that could be much more difficult to face or acknowledge even to ourselves. However, some people feel justified in trying to force people to continue in that pain. Why should we preserve life at any cost?

I think it's selfish to use guilt to stop someone. But, as I said before, not wanting them to and trying to help them is something different.

 

[myself]

Is it right to commit suicide because you've had enough of the world? IMO, NO. That is selfish... because all you do is hurt everyone you leave behind due to your selfish needs for an easy out.

So what is the real question! Well, the real question is why does the person want to die versus what is the pain they are feeling and their circumstances?

Should this approach be taken to a 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 year old, who is in pain mentally? Not in my opinion. Because the person can relieve mental pain. Physical pain is different...

Anthony, I think your awesome, but when I read that statement, I couldn’t help but feel it infers or assumes that suicidal people’s pain is less real or less devastating then physical pain. PTSD does have psychosomatic manifestations in many cases there are “real” physical aspects to the pain. The torture of unrelenting physiological pain is just as valid a reason to end it, as physical pain, in IMHO. Who is anyone to say that one person’s pain or type of pain is any less real and devastating than another’s; one should not assume, especially since a great deal of physical pain is psychological.

I understand that you feel your suicide attempt was selfish, and I respect that; you know yourself and seem to be a very honest and caring person but not everyone has lived your life. It would be a fallacy to assume everyone who has been suicidal is surrounded by caring functional people who have the suicidal person’s best interest at heart. I was surrounded by some very twisted and sadistic abusers when I was suicidal, and I believe that being allowed to die would have been the most humane situation at that point. My death would have negatively impacted those around me, and I did not want to put my sisters thru morning, but on the other hand my family enabled and was aware of the abuse I went thru and selfishly did nothing to stop it. I think that in my situation, it was sadistic to stop the suicide as I did not have a supportive and functional family and was isolated by that family and prevented from having much human contact outside the home.

I was suicidal, and feel that being prevented from killing myself as a child was a selfish and sadistic act on the part of my abusers because it allowed them to continue physical and psychological torturing me. If I were allowed to end the pain, the pain would be over and not still haunt me today. Just food for thought I guess. I don’t know, something about this thread seems to be really setting me off. I guess it’s because I’ve seen so many sides of suicide, I’ve been suicidal, I’ve watched suicide, I was the one who found my father after his suicide attempt, and I’ve been in a situation where my mother used threats of committing suicide to manipulate me and blow things out of proportion. I’ve seen people do it to manipulate, people do it to ask for help, people do it to end unending physical pain, and to end unending mental anguish. Every situation is different. Suicide can be so many different things to so many different people.

I have talked and listened to the extremely manic, the fully calm and rational, the impulsive, and the well thought out peoples who are/were suicidal, and learned that it is a deeply personal choice. I have talked a few friends out of suicide before, but not by quilting them (I completely agree with what you said about guilting); people have enough guilt already, I just listened to them and let them know that I’m there for them and they are not alone, sometimes that is all one needs (not always, but sometimes a little listening and empathy can go a long way). Now this next statement is not true for every situation, but a friend was once telling me about why she decided to not kill herself and she said, “I figured out that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem”. I think it a pithy statement; it’s stuck with me ever since.
I'm getting on a lot of tangents, but I think it's because the topic is bringing up a lot of memories and emotions in me. I hope my espousing does not come off as a put down or too critical, I think most of what's coming out is me processing what I'm feeling about my own life and the people who were around me back then.

 

[Tinyflame]

Not to minimize it by any means, but they say 'love' equals bricks that make a protective wall.

I think one never knows, but one can expect one's heart and soul can't feel much more broken at times like those.

 

[BloomInWinter]

I've never, to my knowledge, felt angry at human beings suffering so badly they tried to end it. ...and it's really hard for me to 'go into' some of the memories from the ER/ambulance days without getting overwhelmed.

All of them were hurting so bad, and their families.

What has stuck with me most is how isolated they felt in the midst of great suffering, and how poorly some families communicate.

I wish all people could be kinder to each other. :<

 

[anthony]

Coming to think about it, I just accepted a negative connotation of the word 'selfish', that I really don't agree with. It's not bad per se to be selfish. Everything we do, we only ever do for selfish reasons, even donating blood or a kidney to a stranger. It's motivated by fundamentally selfish psychological mechanisms that make it feel good and self-esteem raising to help others.

I completely concur with freak... raising the underlying psychological motivation of the word selfish and its true reflection on humanity. A person is in denial if they think they aren't selfish, because to be an individual, by nature you must be selfish to some degree. Our motivations have a selfish desire at some angle. We want something, whether it be to feel good, bad, punish ourselves, punish someone else, to be human is to also be selfish in some essence.

If I could like that post a hundred times, I would.

 

[Meadowsweet]

The argument that every act has selfish intent is quite well known. But in terms of the original argument, whether it is wrong to tell someone who is suicidal that they are selfish, I kind of feel that the argument itself is selfish.

How can you tell somebody how they ought to feel or act in the face of losing someone they love.

 

[freakofnurture]

@Anthony: Thank you :)

... (selfishness) and its true reflection on humanity.

I would like to emphasise the point that, as a social species, our selfishness does very often revolve around the wellbeing of others. We are dependent on our good relationships and the good will of others. Of course, we can also get by pretty well as predators, but most people have a healthy instinct to bond emotionally. And that's where we start to invest into relationships, just because we need them to be of mutual benefit to work out long term.

So, being selfish doesn't at all mean that you only think about yourself and never about the wellbeing of the people around you.

But getting back to the question of suicide:

if my doctor hadn't (guilted) me, using my son (...), I possibly wouldn't be reading this today.

Possibly, yes. There is no way of testing this, so I am merely stating my personal opinion here: I think, if you didn't kill yourself with the guilt, you wouldn't have killed yourself without it. When suicide is on your mind for so long, the whole psychological entity is no longer a fragile balance that can be tipped one way or the other by a single statement or other outside event. Some aspects of brain chemistry have quite the inertia.

That aside, I feel like the whole topic of suicide goes beyond practicality and morality. It's about the fundamental human ability to comprehend the finiteness of life and to own your own life in that same fundamental way.

Who determines the 'value' and 'quality' of a life? Who has the right to decide if someone has to keep on suffering? I think it's only the owner of that life; the person living it. And I think, just like it is okay to hurt your abusive family by cutting ties in an attempt to protect yourself from their toxic influence, it is okay to hurt your family by ending your own pain (after much deliberation blahblah etc.).

There just are some things you don't have the right to force another person to do.

EDIT:

How can you tell somebody how they ought to feel or act in the face of losing someone they love.

You have every right to tell somebody how you think they should or shouldn't act. Especially if they ask, and especially when it's about a fundamental right of another person.

You don't have a right to have someone in your life (as was said here before, I don't remember by whom, though). But you have the right to end your own life if - after much deliberation yadda yadda - you wish to do so.

 

[BloomInWinter]

I see suicidality as a tool of a terrible torturer & oppressor named trauma.

...and I think this of trauma trying to destroy another human being in front of me.

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” - Elie Wiesel

I may not make any difference, but I will not be silent as trauma destroys another. Not if I can help it.

 

[freakofnurture]

True empathy is very rarely shown most of the time, but it's almost never shown to people in that fragile state, and it's really what is needed I think.

I think it's the alienness of that state of mind. Most people have no frame of reference, even for the desire to hurt oneself. Many are afraid of dying (as opposed to death), and the idea that someone feels so overwhelmingly bad that they rather go through the process than keep on living... It just doesn't make any sense to them.

It might also be a problem of powerlessness. They are scared or angry about the fact that a person can choose to leave them, totally, just like that, 'without thinking about how that makes me feel'. They don't want to face the fact that they have no real power over that other person's life; they can only influence minor choices.

Helping a suicidal person become aware of possible unintended consequences isn't 'guilt-tripping' unless the sender or receiver chooses to judge it as such.

I agree completely. And - referring to your example earlier on - if I saw someone standing on the tracks, I'd try to push them off, just like you.

You always have to assume that a suicide attempt is a poor, hasty choice, unless the person manages to demonstrate that it is not. This is where the responsibility of the bystander clashes with the rights of the suicider in spe, but since a suicide is something that can't be taken back and reconsidered... Responsibility wins. The wannabe suicider can always try again later.

EDIT: The "What if you wake up with brain damage and your abusive family is given custody of your helpless, voiceless living corpse?"-argument is always a good one to throw out :D

 

[Philippa]

Great discussion guys. I'd love to stay and read all the new posts, but I have to go now. I will read them all though when I get back from enrolling in my course. I'm doing a year in Transpersonal Art Therapy, starting at the beginning of April! Soooooo excited!

 

[Meadowsweet]

You have every right to tell somebody how you think they should or shouldn't act. Especially if they ask, and especially when it's about a fundamental right of another person.

You don't have a right to have someone in your life (as was said here before, I don't remember by whom, though). But you have the right to end your own life if - after much deliberation yadda yadda - you wish to do so.

When I made the comment of 'how can you tell somebody how they ought to feel or act in the face of losing someone they love', I wasn't really thinking about the right to live, to die etc. It was more of a response looking for the emotional understanding or compassion that for me seems to be missing in words like 'guilting someone'.

I agree with euthanasia, when a person has given it much deliberation. But that deliberation in a person with a healthy mind would consider the well being of their dependents. Me being a mother is my role in life. My children depend on me financially, physically and emotionally. And they have a right to that care.

So exercising my right to kill myself without considering the effect it will have on my children is one of two things, either a) I am selfish or b) I am not of sound mind to make the decision of what is best for anyone.

And I think thats the difference between carefully considered euthanasia with the right to die with dignity, and suicide.