They usually just have too many problems, not enough support and have spent too many years wrestling with it without resolution.
If they were monsters, they would probably be planning someone else's death, not their own. It seems all too common that people around them are a big part of their unresolvable problems.
People who turn to suicide are people who turn their pain inward, not outward. They just want their suffering to stop in a world that both has no answers and often isn't really trying to find them.
For some reason, your post really brought home to me that maybe what he was seeking was a way out, that he couldn't live with what the person he had become was putting his family through and that maybe he did it because to him that was better for them than sticking around.
Helping me understand that event probably wasn't your intent, but thank you for sharing this, because I think you succeeded.
There's a quote in the novel Infinite Jest that changed my perception on suicide. This passage helped me make some sense of something so terrible. It helped me see that I honestly can't even imagine what's going through the head of someone who is going against every human instinct to otherwise survive.
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
I know a few things that can be helpful, though it's still a hard row to hoe. But saying I know anything useful often just gets me called crazy by internet strangers -- just more evidence that our own personal hells are all too often compounded by other people.
I hope you can make your peace.
This is not true. "Mental health issues" may be a broad field. I guess US prisons are full of such people, some beyond repair. But I know people who got hospitalized because of health issues and they are doing quite well today.
There is help. There are medications and things can normalize.
I have a friend who developed mental issues and, as far as I know, is roaming homeless in Canada. But this must not be the rule.
They can, but the odds and process aren't the greatest. It's a pretty common experience that people spend years going through different treatment options before they find something that really works. For major depressive disorder, something like 15-20% of patients never find something that works consistently.
It was hell. But I enjoy my life now, and I learned many lessons in that time. My past is part of me and I can use even my past for good. I try to be a role model for the people that deal with depression around me (and maybe later academia). There is very good news for people with depression: Once one decides to get help, there is a lot of well-researched therapy (& medications if needed) around. Chances of recovery and depression management are high. And it is a field where great progress is made.
Thank you for you wishes! I can only encourage anyone with depression and similar problems to seek help - it does not bother the therapists and can improve life in ways not imaginable!
I also personally tend to avoid the word "usually" because being suicidal is not overwhelmingly associated with any specific situation. All kinds of people can have suicidal thoughts, and having them is not a sign that you're a good or bad person.
If you wish, I could direct you to some of my writing. Beyond that, I don't personally know. "The System" tends to not have good answers.
Empowerment, opportunity come second, I think.
I don't know much about the system. I'm not interested or in-need of explicit welfare or handouts, and everything else was a massive waste of time.
Hate and abuse, tyranny, bullying, whatever you call it I think can happen to anyone, or any group, but it usually happens to people who were weak, or who experienced it before. Once it happens more than once you become such a target for opportunists, and pariah for everyone else who is "just following their self-interest."
I honestly don't even know what the best thing to do is.
When I was 18 I was taken out of there and then just homeless. By my mid-20s I had a lot of problems with extreme bullying again and unexplainable negativity towards me, but after a short stint with homelessness again I moved to a new city, applied for some jobs and got up to a about 80-90k compensation within a year there. Then I started having problems again with stalking and apparent intent to harm me.
This probably reads as unreal, unbelievable. If I didn't know better and read someone write this on the internet, I'd think it reads like the person has paranoid delusions, mental illness.
CPS has limited resources and a lawyered up parent can beat them. I’ve heard of institutions based on abuse like you described. Someone who went through what you did would likely end up homeless, but then there’s a chance they can beat that and get a good paying job. And then it’s a well known phenomenon that people who have been victimized at some point in their life are more likely to experience it again, later.
I don’t know you past your comments, but nothing I read sounds like paranoid delusions or mental illness.
I’m not a therapist, but I suggest you talk to one. I’m guessing you have health insurance with your good job. They wouldn’t have to give you a severe diagnoses to have it covered. I don’t know you, but maybe a professional would find you to be dealing with Adjustment Disorder or Anxiety. A professional therapist could be the trusted advocate that you need.
My caution is to only go with a licensed therapist, and one that gives you a good gut feeling. Be 100% prepared to walk away if this person starts acting like the abusers in your life. And avoid unlicensed people like “life coaches”. Some of them are great, but I also think they have a higher rate of people who just enjoy having power over other people, and that’s the last thing you need.
I hope this helps.
1) I heavily suggest going into counceling. The change of behaviour and self concept needed might be too much to manage on your own.
2) It is a unfortunate, but well-researched phenomenon that perpetuators go for a certain type of personality that expresses itself by way of talking an non-verbal communication. There is also such a thing as bad, bad luck, but social dynamics also play a role. This is an area where you can likely improve aswell: Recognizing your feelings, others feeling and actions, and what is okay and not okay for you,
Gotta go now, all the best tho! Your problems seem treatable to me, but it might take time. You can do this.
I always see this pattern when talking about tyranny and its victims. When it is talked about in an abstracted sense (meaning you are distanced from the situation by time or place), it is almost always in the above context of toxic environments. But when it is addressed directly, the focus turns to the victim and trying to identify what is wrong with them, not with the group.
I know it is a long shot but I am really eager to document the extreme abusiveness and kind of life-ruining tyranny I've experienced. I want to raise awareness and stop this from happening to anyone else.
This is because it is the only effective way to change anything. The victim has to recognize their situation, develop the will to escape / change it, and then do concrete steps. Of course, not alone. You are not guilty of anything, but it is still your responsability to change your life if you want it. It is hard and shitty, but nobody will change because you feel shitty.
It is the same as with every other difficult situation. I could stagnate my whole life, complaining about nobody helped me when I first voiced suicidal thoughts at age 10. I was fucking hard and many people failed me, including me. I did not have a childhood. I see every right to complain and blame others. But who will this help? No one. I had to change something. Because my environment is the last thing that will change.
> I want to raise awareness and stop this from happening to anyone else.
I will be blunt: This is not an effective way of achieving this goal. Much more effective would be to 1) get help (helps you to tackle those problems in your environment) and 2) join an organization that does deal with bullying (they likely know how to reach more people more effectively).
Are you sure?
Maybe your ideas would do better in my situation, maybe they'd fare worse?
Whenever we hear about bad history, such as what happened in Nazi Germany, religious persecutions, or even witch trials, everyone says they'd help them. My story is different mostly in the sense that whoever is trying to kill me or inflict ill will to me hasn't succeeded yet, and that my tyranny is not part of a collective, it is against an individual.
I don't want to be combative for its own sake. What I mean is to get at is I don't really know how much time to put into this advice. Help from whom? What organization?
General info about Victims, Bullies, Victim-Bullies
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/07/bully-victim
More on point: In-depth about who is more likely to become a victim
http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/98783/E9...
Targets who displayed vulnerable body language were more likely to report past histories of victimization, and psychopaths identified these individuals as being more vulnerable to future victimization.
https://www.workplacebullying.org/gait/
What Do Sexual Predators Look For When Grooming Victims?
https://www.oxygen.com/crime-time/jeffrey-epstein-what-do-se...
Short Circuiting the Victim Selection Process
http://www.protectivestrategies.com/victim-selection.html
Marked for Mayhem
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200901/marked-ma...
No, it doesn't.
It worked for me.
Obvious disclaimer - do watch out that they do not end up exploiting your vulnerabilities - there are known cases where that unfortunately happens as predators are everywhere.
So the specific things that worked (and didn't work) for me may be different for you. Be open minded and critical, and don't be surprised if you have to try a few things.
That said, the first thing that helped was the validation that came from talking to someone that, in my mind at least, had some broad knowledge of the subject, and knew enough to listen critically, to see whether I was in immediate crisis (I was).
The two things we tried first are often the two "go to's", an anti depressant (citalopram, an SSRI) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
Different categories of anti depressants work through different mechanisms. I got lucky, my ssri began to work almost immediately; usually it takes a couple weeks to see any effect, if any, good or bad.
I didn't fare well with CBT, I think because I'm too cynical, and I could "see the magic trick" that I was trying to play on myself. Which is the wrong way to think of it, but I couldn't help it. So I stopped that. But it has helped lots of people.
I'm not saying these two things are what will help you. But you asked.
The doc also suggested vitamins D, which I still take, and B something, which I stopped because it makes my pee smell really bad.
He also prescribed an anti anxiety drug for the immediate crisis, which I filled but never used.
And we discussed immediate crisis resources like 911.
My remedies are almost not important. The main thing was that I got validation (lots of self doubt when you're depressed), and the relief and hope that comes from taking action.
… and then die of starvation, presumably.