how do "normal" people suffer without thinking of suicide?

[daleke]

"normal" is in quotation marks because i am aware people can slip in and out of periods of poor mental health.

but a good proportion of people live under constant stress - most people will face financial pressures, need to deal with toxic people in their lives, juggle multiple responsibilities, sometimes undergo a big crisis like losing a job, medical emergencies, natural disasters, and other personal tragedies. yet my impression is that suicidal ideation isn't that common, even in these moments.

i hypothesized a while back that most humans don't particularly want to live, they just have an innate fear of death so suicide never feels like a real option to them even under immense duress. makes more sense to me than people just liking their lives.

this question is of particular interest to me because i feel like i'm the opposite. my life is going very well and i regularly am blown away (in a good way) by how extraordinarily lucky and blessed i am, yet even now i often think of killing myself. i just don't get much pleasure from living, or it's an ingrained mental habit, maybe? i'm really not mentally ill, i just... think and feel this way, and have never stopped.

what changes? why are some people more resilient and accepting of life, and others default so easily to suicide, even under the same circumstances. it can't be all genetics. there has to be some modifiable factor.

maybe a bad place to be asking this since you're all suicidal, but i was wondering if we had any thoughts.

 

[ma0]

I know quite a few people who are "normal" as you put it, and from my experience it's either that they talk to people about it or they just... don't have issues in their lives somehow? I genuinly don't know how people can just be happy and never have a single low point of mental health, but I've seen people pull it off first hand.

 

[PlannedforPeru]

they just have an innate fear of death so suicide never feels like a real option to them even under immense duress.

My friend expressed this almost exactly, their fear of death is so extreme they'd rather sort the problems in their life or find ways to cope rather than seeing that as a viable option. This is just one representation though, I think there's a ton of reasons as to why someone would be so averse to suicide.

 

[vitbar]

I think a lot of people don't even consider it, not even rationalising against it or feeling any fear. When they do it's usually in the form of existential doubt rather than outright suicidal thoughts (why should I carry on? what is the point? etc). It also passes after a time and things feel lighter again.

My depression comes in waves with gaps where I am not suicidal. During those gaps I feel generally okay or even good. Life is enjoyable and self-destruction couldn't be further from my mind. When I am depressed it seems impossible I ever felt my life was worthwhile. Most people do feel their life is worthwhile as hard as that can be to believe.

 

[ShatteredSerenity]

I think normal people also think of suicide sometimes, it's just more manageable when you have good mental health and decent living conditions. People have support networks to help deal with challenges. When you have support and resources dealing with problems isn't so bad, you just work through it and occasionaly vent for emotional relief, always keeping your eye on the light at the end of the tunnel. Having confidence in being able to attain your goals and build a comfortable future diminishes or eliminates the urge to commit suicide.

When suicide pops up in a normal person during a difficult time, it's generally just a fleeting impulse. That's what I think the suicide hotlines and safety plans are geared towards. They just hope to get the person to hang on long enough for the impulse to fade, then they will remember all the things they're living for. More serious suicidal thinking emerges when the problems are too deep, and/or mental illness is a factor. The person may struggle to find things worth living for, and they may feel hopeless about having a comfortable future.

Areas facing issues like poverty, displacement, or war will have higher suicide rates because it impacts everyone, not just people with mental health issues. People can be incredibly resilient in the face of adversity, but some will inevitable crumble. High rates of suicide in the miliatry demonstrate this.

 

[Cavalcade]

I agree that the idea is simply unfathomable to some- and that might explain some of the reflexive judgement and disgust cast on people who survive CTB attempts.

Something I've noticed in mental healthcare, is that patients who similarly did not have a distinct 'before' their trauma, really, really suffered. A lot of the surface level trauma work involves visualization of a safe space- what the hell does someone who has never felt safe, or as if they had a 'home' they could return to, do? If the concept of safety is so foreign that their shot to hell nervous system can't handle it- and they fall to pieces? Many other survivors I knew from group therapy and peer support would catastrophically fall to pieces when they finally got out and away from their abusive contexts- because all of the weight of their loss and pain came crashing down once they stopped living on autopilot, in pure survival. Same with reparenting your inner child- if even as a child, you were never treated kindly, or kept safe, and were degraded and made to feel less than dirt- how can you practice being kind to yourself, when the concept of you as a child repulses you, has you recoiling from the wretched little sinful beast you were beat into believing you were?

For people who have a 'before,' a baseline of happiness, safety, support- it's much easier to believe they will come out the other side: they have the experience to back it up, that life is not always so bad, that life is not always so painful: that this too, shall pass.

For those without it, for whom their abuse began in infancy, like myself- it is terribly, terribly bleak. If the vast majority of your experiences, even pre-memory formation, have been traumatic, and hideously painful: is it any wonder people tire of suffering, seek to end it by any means they can? It makes me have immense sympathy for fellow trauma survivors who have been lifelong victims- who were set up to fail from the beginning. We're working with shitty, maladaptive, paltry skills- starting a mile behind everyone else at the start of a race, and scrabbling to endure through blinding pain and a lifetime of suffering you'll have no choice but to endure, bear, and try to pull yourself through: because it's do, or die- you have no choice but to live in pain, if you choose to live. Doesn't death seem seductive, in that context? A cessation to your literal lifelong suffering? The repercussions of everything that's been done to you? Endless, unceasing pain?

I think that that level of debilitating horror is difficult for those to envision if they have no experience of it. There is no foundation for a belief that 'things will get better,' because some people are subject to inhumane suffering in this life.

 

[FinalVoid25]

99 % of people are extremely afraid of death, even those that deny ever thinking about it.

 

[sunsetting]

Suppression or religion. But no one's immune to it, if life stays shitty long enough and it's irreversible, the suicidal thoughts will seep in be it in an emotional or logical way.

 

[fkyou]

Their don't.. their suffering is a headache..two different "sufferings"

 

[Blue Dream]

"normal" is in quotation marks because i am aware people can slip in and out of periods of poor mental health.

but a good proportion of people live under constant stress - most people will face financial pressures, need to deal with toxic people in their lives, juggle multiple responsibilities, sometimes undergo a big crisis like losing a job, medical emergencies, natural disasters, and other personal tragedies. yet my impression is that suicidal ideation isn't that common, even in these moments.

i hypothesized a while back that most humans don't particularly want to live, they just have an innate fear of death so suicide never feels like a real option to them even under immense duress. makes more sense to me than people just liking their lives.

this question is of particular interest to me because i feel like i'm the opposite. my life is going very well and i regularly am blown away (in a good way) by how extraordinarily lucky and blessed i am, yet even now i often think of killing myself. i just don't get much pleasure from living, or it's an ingrained mental habit, maybe? i'm really not mentally ill, i just... think and feel this way, and have never stopped.

what changes? why are some people more resilient and accepting of life, and others default so easily to suicide, even under the same circumstances. it can't be all genetics. there has to be some modifiable factor.

maybe a bad place to be asking this since you're all suicidal, but i was wondering if we had any thoughts.

Expectations. If you expect life to be a certain way encountering the opposite will tax you more than someone who is open to anything. Expectations narrow your vision of how things "should be" and unwillingness to compromise on this narrow vision leads to suffering when reality doesn't align with it.

Also, just because someone doesn't show their suffering or isn't introspective enough to understand what it is doesn't mean it's not there.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

don't have issues in their lives somehow? I genuinly don't know how people can just be happy and never have a single low point of mental health, but I've seen people pull it off first hand.

The thing is, you can't observe whether or not someone is going through a low point mentally in most cases. People usually tend to hide when they are going through a low point. Most people have issues in life, they just aren't discussing them with those around them. I've had plenty of points where my mental health was low, including one several months back that had lasted for over 5 years and got progressively worse up until around late March (and things only got better because I started using shrooms and they caused my mindset to do a 180), but nobody in my life knew about it until I told them because I didn't go around talking about it. I kept it to myself, like what most people do.

 

[Life'sA6itch]

Easy. They hide it. Or, they lie.

 

[Odwin]

They don't think?

 

[miyabi]

I think normal people also think of suicide sometimes, it's just more manageable when you have good mental health and decent living conditions. People have support networks to help deal with challenges. When you have support and resources dealing with problems isn't so bad, you just work through it and occasionaly vent for emotional relief, always keeping your eye on the light at the end of the tunnel. Having confidence in being able to attain your goals and build a comfortable future diminishes or eliminates the urge to commit suicide.

When suicide pops up in a normal person during a difficult time, it's generally just a fleeting impulse. That's what I think the suicide hotlines and safety plans are geared towards. They just hope to get the person to hang on long enough for the impulse to fade, then they will remember all the things they're living for. More serious suicidal thinking emerges when the problems are too deep, and/or mental illness is a factor. The person may struggle to find things worth living for, and they may feel hopeless about having a comfortable future.

Areas facing issues like poverty, displacement, or war will have higher suicide rates because it impacts everyone, not just people with mental health issues. People can be incredibly resilient in the face of adversity, but some will inevitable crumble. High rates of suicide in the miliatry demonstrate this.

Support networks and the lack thereof seems to be a massive risk factor for suicide from what I've seen.

Your point on hotlines made it click for me. I've never bothered with one of them because I knew it wouldn't fix the underlying issues with me. It always felt kind of pointless. They seem to help a lot of people though, and it makes sense based on what you said. We aren't the target demographic.

 

[Sutter]

Bag.

Fair answers already given. 3rd post in this section, perhaps I should take more care with my muddy ways.

So on to it. Can only speak from my perspective as best I know it. At first was hurt my Dad beat me. Strikes for any reason. Somewhere along that road, just didn't hurt anymore, that's what I would like to think is about the time stubborn set in. Truth is was probably born with it somehow. As a kid, small fears at times but when I had them a few would just stepped off on, stubborn and not always taking fears warning. Lot of..struggles that way but at the time started finding a freedom stomping on some fears. Thought about things I wanted, didn't get them and saw a few wants change over time. Stared myself down as to why the want and then the not want. Found didn't need or even always want what I thought I did, something's were a given. Air, water, something to chew on.

That early process made the worlds wants so much duller than mine. The hills, climbed a small hill, found no monsters under my bed. Climbing small hills then bigger ones, finding other reasons to keep looking around. Negative aspects, no one cares when you cry, they are not going to help you, life is not moral it just is. Live it or don't it doesn't care. I was affected but always had a machine?..a part of me that was an animal with reason that would take over while I stared at something rough for me to handle. People fear death but don't live for it, on the normal side. Some hide it or take it to a small spot in a deep wood, they feel it, deny it, lie to it, anything to bury it in the dirt. Seems to me all have a smattering of the same feelings, won't always know though. Had some ugly events some could barely even look at me because it was beyond what they knew. Some looked on in curiosity.

The get is that for me there was always something I wasn't going to die for. A lot of times it was a piss off, another fight? More pain? Been there let's see where this goes. Insanity to some but we all have different shadows. Smacked around all my emotions, any thing I thought, I ran through the wringer. I don't just give other people a hard time, do it to myself to. Other people didn't "see" all this. Some saw stubbornness, some a jerk, a hero, a fighter, a victim, whatever they wanted to see. I experience the world, everything is filtered through my feelings, eyes, touch. I have chosen to let a loss settle deep in my soul because it's the truth, the lie, the illusion, the world I experience. At this point I think Love is worth it, was worth it, made all the shit balls a little shinier for me. Starting to see it wasn't something I found but something I grew in myself and was great for some others.

Wasn't hope, a burning desire, or a man in the sky. Was more like a child standing alone throwing the world's junk around to see if anything was good to me. And an innate desire to just not let a thing go or sometimes throw it myself.

So how? Anger, love, piss on that, do what I want, kindness, all those were how, wasn't one thing. As it was before it is now, just my own soul and have picked through most of the pile I can see and considering the holy terror I would bring to any afterlife, even a black hole of nothingness might pee a little at the thought of having me along for the ride.

It's whatever they have in their bag, they get by on. For me it is some new boxers and a shower might have pee'd a little myself. Gross I know but a new hill to put in the rear view and the farther you get the smell will lessen.

Shower it is padding off.

 

[PlaceCalledHome]

"normal" is in quotation marks because i am aware people can slip in and out of periods of poor mental health.

but a good proportion of people live under constant stress - most people will face financial pressures, need to deal with toxic people in their lives, juggle multiple responsibilities, sometimes undergo a big crisis like losing a job, medical emergencies, natural disasters, and other personal tragedies. yet my impression is that suicidal ideation isn't that common, even in these moments.

i hypothesized a while back that most humans don't particularly want to live, they just have an innate fear of death so suicide never feels like a real option to them even under immense duress. makes more sense to me than people just liking their lives.

this question is of particular interest to me because i feel like i'm the opposite. my life is going very well and i regularly am blown away (in a good way) by how extraordinarily lucky and blessed i am, yet even now i often think of killing myself. i just don't get much pleasure from living, or it's an ingrained mental habit, maybe? i'm really not mentally ill, i just... think and feel this way, and have never stopped.

what changes? why are some people more resilient and accepting of life, and others default so easily to suicide, even under the same circumstances. it can't be all genetics. there has to be some modifiable factor.

maybe a bad place to be asking this since you're all suicidal, but i was wondering if we had any thoughts.

My bf has depression and his life is objectively shit in many ways (very poor, criminal record, struggles to find employment, family are estranged, few friends, extremely traumatic upbringing). Yet my suicidality bewilders him and he can't relate at all. He says there's too many "fun" things he wants to do before his time ends. He also seems to get a lot of contentment out of his hobbies (sports, gaming, watching movies) whereas I struggle to access any positive feelings or regulate my moods at all.

My bf has depression and his life is objectively shit in many ways (very poor, criminal record, struggles to find employment, family are estranged, few friends, extremely traumatic upbringing). Yet my suicidality bewilders him and he can't relate at all. He says there's too many "fun" things he wants to do before his time ends. He also seems to get a lot of contentment out of his hobbies (sports, gaming, watching movies) whereas I struggle to access any positive feelings or regulate my moods at all.

Another factor i think is that he grew up in a poorer family so his expectations for his own life were fairly low. I grew up around more middle class people who own homes and go on holiday every year, so I constantly feel like a loser and not enough.

 

[Schizo_turk]

"normal" is in quotation marks because i am aware people can slip in and out of periods of poor mental health.

but a good proportion of people live under constant stress - most people will face financial pressures, need to deal with toxic people in their lives, juggle multiple responsibilities, sometimes undergo a big crisis like losing a job, medical emergencies, natural disasters, and other personal tragedies. yet my impression is that suicidal ideation isn't that common, even in these moments.

i hypothesized a while back that most humans don't particularly want to live, they just have an innate fear of death so suicide never feels like a real option to them even under immense duress. makes more sense to me than people just liking their lives.

this question is of particular interest to me because i feel like i'm the opposite. my life is going very well and i regularly am blown away (in a good way) by how extraordinarily lucky and blessed i am, yet even now i often think of killing myself. i just don't get much pleasure from living, or it's an ingrained mental habit, maybe? i'm really not mentally ill, i just... think and feel this way, and have never stopped.

what changes? why are some people more resilient and accepting of life, and others default so easily to suicide, even under the same circumstances. it can't be all genetics. there has to be some modifiable factor.

maybe a bad place to be asking this since you're all suicidal, but i was wondering if we had any thoughts.

religion plays a role, since a large portion of the earth's population is religious, they forbid suicide AND give people hope in a never ending place where they will be eternally happy, but i have seen a lot of believers who considered it or even attempted/commited it

 

[daleke]

Negative aspects, no one cares when you cry, they are not going to help you, life is not moral it just is. Live it or don't it doesn't care. I was affected but always had a machine?..a part of me that was an animal with reason that would take over while I stared at something rough for me to handle.

this is a late reply, but i just wanted to say that your writing is really beautiful! thank you for sharing, and for taking the time to comment.

it's perhaps silly for me to say this because i'm pretty sheltered and i haven't been in the kinds of situations that might have someone seriously consider if they should just let the world destroy them... but i feel like the way you write about the pure machinistic survival instinct grants ordinary people more dignity than i normally feel we get. maybe people just keep persisting for no good reason at all.

this was a very pleasant surprise logging onto this forum for the first time in a few weeks.

 

[Sutter]

this is a late reply, but i just wanted to say that your writing is really beautiful! thank you for sharing, and for taking the time to comment.

it's perhaps silly for me to say this because i'm pretty sheltered and i haven't been in the kinds of situations that might have someone seriously consider if they should just let the world destroy them... but i feel like the way you write about the pure machinistic survival instinct grants ordinary people more dignity than i normally feel we get. maybe people just keep persisting for no good reason at all.

this was a very pleasant surprise logging onto this forum for the first time in a few weeks.

Ordnary, kind, compassionate, all deserve more dignity, its the best of us all. Im broken in some ways, survived before I knew death, not anything I am proud of but how I got by. Thank you for your kindness.

Recently there was another post running close to your same phrase "no good reason at all". Rolled in my mind because there usually are reasons, fires that burn, may take a bit to sift but its in there at least a spec.

Evening Daleke