Suicide isn't Romantic, Part 2: "Not Killing Yourself" Doesn't Look Like You Think It Does

You don't have to have an epiphany. You just have to stay alive.

[Content warning: suicide, duh. Some explicit descriptions related to that. You can always ask me before reading if you're worried about a specific trigger or want more info before deciding whether to read! ]

Last week I wrote about how I think the way we portray suicide can be dangerous and misleading. This week I'd like to talk about the way we portray, for lack of a better word, "not killing yourself".

I can think of very few pop culture characters who've been talked out of suicide attempts. But when they are, it tends to come with an It's a Wonderful Life-style epiphany, where the character suddenly finds joy and realizes that life is worth living. It tends to come with a "rock bottom" point where everything changes. It tends to come with characters who turn their whole lives around at once because that's what makes for a compelling story.

Real life, at least for me, isn't like that. Not all at once. Not killing yourself is really two separate things: in the moments of temptation, you need to survive, and then over a longer period of time you work to make there be fewer moments of temptation. The latter is hard work that requires professional help (either a psychiatrist or therapist, preferably both.)

So today I want to talk about the things that have helped me most with the former. This is pretty specific to things that have helped me (and I should clarify that the most serious parts of my suicidal ideation were over a year ago, which is why I feel comfortable writing this openly about them.) If you are suicidal, they are a starting point but you should a) talk to a professional who will know more tools than I do, and b) pick the tools that work for you. The goal is not to find the objectively best tools: the goal is for you to survive by any means necessary. If you are caring for somebody who is suicidal, please listen to them and what they have to say. If it contradicts anything I've implied here, you should take their word for it because my experience with depression is not the same as their experience with depression!

[If you experience suicidal thoughts and feel like my list has left out something significant, please feel free to write something that's been helpful for you! Am happy to include it either with attribution or anonymously, whichever you're more comfortable with]

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I think the best depiction of "not killing yourself" I've seen is Hannah Dains' Don't Kill Yourself Today. What it gets, that so many portrayals of survival miss, is that you don't have to fix everything to survive. You don't have to convince your brain that life is worth living. You don't have to realize how loved you are. You don't have to heal from the pain that keeps you up at night.

All of that is important. But it's going to take a long time and a lot of hard work and you don't have to do it all right now.

Today, right at this moment, you have to survive for another minute. For another hour. For another day. Because there will be a time that you don't feel like this, and no matter how you feel right now I want you to be alive to see it.

1) Get Somewhere Safe

At least for me, the biggest obstacle to killing myself when I'm in a suicidal mood has been the amount of effort it would take. If you're willing to kill yourself for five seconds and you're at the top of a building, that's dangerous. If you're willing to kill yourself for five seconds while tucked into bed, it's certainly unpleasant but there's a good chance that you're safe.

This is really uncomfortable for me to type because it makes things feel more ... real? But if you're in a vaguely suicidal or "I'm fine"-but-secretly-you-know-it-could-get-worse mood, it's a thing. Stay away from knives. Stay away from pills. Stay away from ropes. Stay away from high places. Don't walk next to the curb. Stay around other people. Don't own a gun. Don't google more information. Don't write a note "just in case". Don't do anything that will make it easier for you.

It's going to go away. There were times you didn't feel like this, and there will be times in the future when you won't. You don't need to convince yourself that life is worth living: you just need to stay alive until it is.

2) Find Reasons to Live

Once again, the Hannah Dains video captures this really, really well.

I used to try to find good reasons to live. And this is hard because when you're in a suicidal state your emotions and values are SUPER MESSED UP in a way that's hard to describe and the actually-good, reasonable reasons to stay alive might just sound kind of ... hollow? [But not always! If you're caring for a suicidal person, "I really care about you" and so on are good places to start because hearing that from another person can hit differently than just thinking about it to yourself.]

But you don't have to live for a good reason. You just need to decide to live for literally any reason you can convince your brain is good.

Here are some real reasons I've held onto my entire life with:

• My brother's getting married and I want to stay alive to see it.

• My brother's getting married and him having to deal with a family tragedy would ruin his wedding and that wouldn't be fair.

• It would be rude if my students show up to class tomorrow and I'm not there.

• I'm currently mentoring undergrads and don't want to bail on them.

• That security lady would see if I jumped and that would be so awkward.

• I don't think I ever told anyone my Wealthfront password and my savings would just go to some rich investment firm instead of something worthwhile.

• I want to finish the play I'm writing.

• I had an uncomfortable conversation with someone and I don't want them to think this is related to that.

• I don't want to make my roommates pay extra rent money.

• I'm the one with our group's volleyball and I'd need to give it to someone else first.

I'm not saying these are the best reasons to live, or that your reasons will look like them. But if you can get any reason to stick in your brain, no matter how silly, let that be a reason to stay alive another night.

3) Think About What Happens If You Fail

Twoish years ago I was cleaning my bathroom sink with Draino and I had a really strong urge to drink it and (in my mind) cease to exist.

Do you know what happens if you drink Draino? It dissolves your esophagus and stomach lining, but it's not actually as likely as I'd expected to kill you. Instead, you're stuck with painful internal scarring and a potentially years-long hospital stay along with a heavily-restricted diet for the rest of your life.

Why do I bring this up? Because even in my most suicidal moments, this thought absolutely terrified me. Death seemed enticing to me. But life without the few things I looked forwards to? Unimaginable.

And this image of what life could be if my attempt failed was so viscerally frightening that I didn't even come close to drinking it.

So this has been an important tool for building up the willpower to stay safe. When I'm tempted to fall from a large height, I imagine being paralyzed and unable to play volleyball or climb the stairs to my apartment. [etc. The writing part of me thinks this paragraph needs more examples, but the rest of me doesn't want to give more examples of suicide methods because "it taking time to think of a good method" is also something that was helpful in buying time when I started out with these sorts of thoughts.]

The other unexpected (but probable) event is that you change your mind midway through the attempt. I personally find it difficult to bring this to mind in a compelling way when I'm in bad mental states, but this poem Alison Tafel wrote for Bojack Horseman (video here) made it real for me in a way that let me add it to my arsenal of techniques:

The weak breeze whispers nothing
The water screams sublime
His feet shift, teeter-totter
Deep breath, stand back, it’s time

Toes untouch the overpass
Soon he’s water bound
Eyes locked shut but peek to see
The view from halfway down

A little wind, a summer sun
A river rich and regal
A flood of fond endorphins
Brings a calm that knows no equal

You’re flying now, you see things
Much more clear than from the ground
It’s all okay, it would be
Were you not now halfway down

Thrash to break from gravity
What now could slow the drop
All I’d give for toes to touch
The safety back at top

But this is it, the deed is done
Silence drowns the sound
Before I leaped I should’ve seen
The view from halfway down

I really should’ve thought about
The view from halfway down

I wish I could’ve known about
The view from halfway down

[Aside: I think "It's all okay / it would be / were you not now halfway down" is on my top ten list of TV quotes. I'm pretty sure most of my top ten quotes come from Bojack.]

4) Get to the "Outside View"

My favorite DBT skill is Thought Defusion, a group of related techniques centered around the idea of separating yourself from intrusive thoughts.

A lot of my suicidal thoughts are more reflexive than anything else. Some sort of trigger (or no trigger at all) will happen, and my brain naturally goes "kill yourself" or "I want to die" or most cryptically "kill yourself, Uncle Colin" (try to figure THAT one out, armchair psychologists. I DARE you.)

And a lot of the danger in these thoughts is that when your brain says something, you naturally assume you believe it because normally that's how brains work! I think something is true because I believe that it's true -- it's nearly a tautology!

But it's not always true. And learning to reframe it in my head (maybe "My brain is saying it wants to die" rather than "I want to die", or "a suicidal feeling is happening to me" rather than "I feel suicidal") has made it so much clearer what's going on. It's not that [whatever trigger] happened and the solution is suicide: it's "my brain is saying stupid stuff" and the solution is to not take its advice seriously.

Some people have found success by imagining the thoughts in weird ways (written out in big fonts, changing the colors and size and make silly things happen to it), which robs them of some of their power. I think this depends on the individual and you should find something that works for you. Anything that lets you separate yourself from the automatic thought is a tool for stopping the thought from taking over (or ending) your life.

Blog posts should have concluding paragraphs but I don't really have anything else to say. Don't kill yourself.