I’ve long held that everyone who goes through suicidality — thoughts of suicide marked by ideation, planning, or intent — is a trauma survivor. The pervasive perception that suicidality is partly our fault keeps us from sharing our experiences or identifying as trauma survivors.
Surviving suicidality is a profoundly painful experience. At best, we’re left questioning our right to exist. At worst, we reach the brink of death. Even though people who attempt suicide often don’t try again, having a previous attempt is still a major risk factor for later suicide.
Despite several close calls and postponements with death, I now live a life of warmth and silliness. I feel whole, but the experience left an indelible mark on my psyche: I know that suicide is an option. How can any of us live with that once we’ve realized it?
Suicidal ideation is much more complex than public health education maintains. In an effort to educate us en masse, it sacrifices nuances. One of the most important pieces lost is that it’s part of a continuum of thoughts and behaviors. People aren’t simply suicidal or not. There’s a vast gulf between somebody with depression who makes a joke about wanting to die and someone who is researching methods and settling their affairs. To complicate things further, people can switch between active (research, planning) and passive (thinking about dying).
Living in that state is distressing beyond words. Psychotherapist Jacob Wilen calls it “an all-encompassing mental state that tends to blur the details,” but doesn’t discount the value of persisting despite the despair. Even in those depths, he says, “the details can be the compass that guides you out of the dark suicidal fog.”
I don’t think we talk enough about how downright traumatic suicidality is. It’s a cocktail of despair, anxiety, and pain tailored to our lives and contexts. Nobody can personalize our suffering like our own minds. It’s an internal battle that looks meager from outside: The outward signs can be as simple as a pile of dirty dishes and disconnecting from friends. But inside, it’s literal life or death.
We talk about how bad it is but rarely discuss the details. Suicide is a taboo topic. Clinical Psychologist Dr. Kiki Fehling says that, “talking about suicidality scares people. It’s easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist, or that it’s only a symptom of mental illness. But, you don’t need to have a diagnosable psychiatric condition to have suicidal thoughts.”
Any focus on personal agency is also a double-edged sword. Our desire to survive and prosper can help us escape, but it’s also a convenient way to internalize the problem to the sufferer. Dr. Fehling notes that, “it can be easier to ignore suicidality or to treat it as an individual problem, rather than to address the systemic problems that can lead to it.”
Just as the suffering of suicidality is personalized to everybody who lives with it, so is the relief. There are people in my life who count exercise as genuinely beneficial for mental distress, but nothing would fizzle me faster. Conversely, I don’t think my recovery approach of bed rotting until the wave passes and reflecting back on the event is for everyone. In fact, I suspect it would make most people feel worse.
What I’ve found to be near-universally helpful is talking to people about it. Mental distress is isolating. It’s our illnesses’ way of solidifying its own miserable cycle of reproduction. Finding and talking to trustworthy people about our experiences (in measured doses) can break that cycle. Even if it doesn’t halt the feelings, it brings someone onto our team so that we’re not alone.
Dr Fehling says that, “the stigma of suicidality, creates an environment where a survivor of suicidality feels unable or unwilling to get the help and support they need, which can exacerbate or extend their difficulties.” Therapists, friends, support groups, and even plush toys can be an antidote to the isolation.
For people whose well-being nosedives when we’re not actively upholding it, it’s pivotal to treat mental health as a basic need. It’s not just something we look to after struggling through our daily chores. It deserves a place alongside eating and sleeping. Seeking communities and friends to talk to about prickly suicidal thoughts is a survival necessity after suicidality.
Still, I’ve never found a satisfactory answer to the question of how I can live on knowing that suicide is an option. Dark impulses to resume planning still catch me in low moments ten years later. I doubt they’ll ever go away, but I won’t give those thoughts an isolated and weak target. I’ll keep talking to myself and others, no matter how difficult the topic.
In the absence of a satisfactory answer to my lifelong problem, the best thing I can do is to tell people they’re not alone. Nobody who survives knowing that they could slip into suicidality again should feel alone. It’s an under-discussed topic — even in mental health circles — and mental distress thrives in taboo and isolation.
During the lulls and ebbs in suicidal events, there’s space to strengthen ourselves.
- Quiet, almost-stable moments are ideal for reaching out to trusted friends and professionals to break the isolation.
- We can try to apologize and forgive ourselves for self-harming acts (emotional and physical) to reduce the burden we’re already carrying.
- See our suicidal ideation in phases and severities, rather than treating it as a yes/no division. This gives us an idea of how much danger we’re in and makes it more manageable.
- Residual thoughts about death and ‘disappearing from Earth’ aren’t always signs of distress — they can also show our recovery progress.
If you’re reading this in the midst of suicidality, it might seem pretty shit to hear that life afterward is still an ongoing conflict. But I think that viewpoint is colored by the abject horror of being suicidal. Things feel bad when we’re in distress. It’s impossible to overstate how much worse things feel when we’re thinking of death. However, it’s not hopeless.
My girlfriend and I have both lived our worst moments. I’ve watched myself draft and address suicide notes. She’s sat on her bed to count pills before. But those were our lowest points and nobody looks good at their lowest point. Most of the time, we’re downright boring. We do laundry, game together, work, and meet friends.
Living after suicidality isn’t just an endless war against the forbidden knowledge of your own death. It’s also about happiness in unexpected places, like meeting new dogs. It’s about everyday stress, too. It’s oddly…normal. But only if we fight back.
