Hi, John!
I just received your card and I’ve read it now maybe 4 times and I’m still puzzled. What made you write it? What a question to ask. Essentially: Knowing your life has no meaning…how do you function? Well, basically you continue because you don’t really know why you’re in so much inescapable pain and it’s damn hard to kill yourself and you can’t stop thinking about relief. What you don’t realize is the Lord has given us an undeniable, inexorable, undefinable, biological predisposition to live at any cost. It is the constant battle between these two that causes more anguish than anyone can imagine…day after interminable day…night after exhausting night.
But things are a bit more complicated than that, for sure.
Well, I believe you happened to know that I was suicidal when we were going to college together. Many nights you did not know that your company kept me alive. At that time, I had developed an award-winning ability to “act as if”. Even so some years after that I had honed my skills so adeptly that often I got chills down my spine for the knowledge that my deep and abiding deception was duping some of my dearest friends.
I realized my own suicidality only when I was 13 at my first attempt – which, by the way, was never discovered by anyone. It wasn’t until through my clear and crystal understanding in sobriety that my psyche finally deemed me ready to remember the childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by our babysitter’s boyfriend. It was that memory that allowed me to start my research into the naissance of my own suicidality.
I dove into the neurology of thought and the psychology of trauma. Since then I’ve been able to unravel the psychobiology of suicide which I outlined in my book, “Just because you’re suicidal doesn’t mean you’re crazy: The psychobiology of suicide”. I self-published it in 2012 and it’s now in its second printing. I’m going to send you a book. You’ll be able to read it at your leisure and hopefully, it will answer the question you posed in your card.
Now I work with individuals from 12 years old to 70 plus. All of them are in some stage of suicidality and all of their suicidal ideation began as untenable childhood or adolescent trauma. It all began with the thought of “not wanting to be here” as a way to save their lives and get them through otherwise unbearable trauma. When I explain to them it was not their fault that this situation began an unconscious default thought pattern meant to save their lives, they begin to understand that their suicidality began as a coping mechanism.
Like many coping mechanisms, their thoughts of not wanting to be here were emotionally reinforced forging stronger and stronger neural pathways each time life presented them with stress or difficulty. And it certainly wasn’t their fault that their brilliant brains successfully careened down well-worn wired default neural pathways to the familiar result. It remains only inevitable to sit in deep reverie of a refuge free of pain, free of frustration, free of the angst and anguish of life’s seemingly dire complications.
Coming to realize that our brains have implemented an ideal and efficient way to save our lives and that the unconscious mechanism over time has turned on us is NOT our fault. However, after learning and understanding this process it is our fault if we continue to do nothing to take back charge of our lives. The dreadful realization that too many people don’t know this and are relegated to ending their lives before they do is beyond disgusting and painful to me.
I need to make one very clear distinction. I am referring to one kind of suicidality – chronic suicidality – in my experience the most prevalent type. There are other forms of suicidality. Situational suicidality is temporary caused by unfortunate circumstances happening in one’s life that cause great consternation, feelings of loss and grief. Antepartum and Post-Partum Depression are examples of situational suicidality. This type can be treated with a short term of anti-depressant and some concerted counseling. Another more treatment-resistant form of suicidality stems from a psychotic break or the onset of schizophrenia hallmarked by delusions and/or hallucinations.
By far the most hidden and stigmatizing type of suicidality is the chronic form. It can last for decades with individuals holding on to tenuous life by clinging to family, or religion or job obligation. Unfortunately, without full recovery, an individual beset with chronic suicidality will sooner or later be confronted with weakening inhibition and overwhelming pain or loss. This occurring to such a degree that the individual cannot hold on to the mainstay that has since been their anchor to life.
Another mechanism that builds over time is the selective attention to the dreadful and odious state of living in this world. Because we love to be right and often we would rather be right than happy, we look to all those abhorrent, loathsome, detestable and repellant aspects of this life that prove without a doubt that life on this earth is abominable at best…and not worth living one moment longer. Each moment of endurance pushes closer to the inexorable edge of life itself. And that penchant for looking at life not worth living makes it possible to overlook the meaning of relationship. Somewhere along with the abominations in life, we include ourselves. It’s possible then for us to prove to ourselves and others that the world is permanently impaired and thus poisoned by our presence in it. Without specific and pointed intervention for resolution of ambivalence, no external enticement can change that sure juggernaut.
It is this knowledge that drives my desire to educate the world that there is recovery. And that successful recovery relies on vigilance and education and dedicated social support. Like the Twelve Step movement, it will obviously take years before the world sees that chronic suicidality must be treated in a different way than other types of suicidality. In the same way, that stigma has been somewhat removed from alcoholism as we learned that it is a neurological adaptation not a matter of willpower, I look to the same course of events for chronic suicidality. Likely it will not happen in my lifetime. But I see that as no reason to stop my efforts towards the world’s enlightenment.
Bless you, my friend. If you read in the dedication and intro of my book, you can recognize yourself as one of those “angels unaware”.
If you have any more questions, I’d be happy to discuss them. I hope that this “over the top” explanation helps you understand in a new and different way the vagaries of suicidality.
I continue to teach treatment of chronic suicidality and to counsel those who suffer in an effort one day to see a glimmer of change that lifts the curtain of ignorance and stigma encouraging lives full of self-inflicted joy.
Blessings, my dear friend!
Author: Randi Jensen, presenter
