Suicide Too

Same subject, new post. What do you say to someone that has admitted to you that this is a serious thought for them? First, you say nothing. You listen, you listen a lot. It’ll be hard. They may say things that hurt your feelings, but they’re hurting far worse than any feelings they can touch in you. Unless you too are suicidal, in that case, you know what they’re going through and can probably actually help each other.

This part is critical to stopping the actual event. If the person you’re talking to doesn’t feel that you’re listening, or doesn’t believe you care, or doesn’t think you can even understand, he/she may just brush off the seriousness of the issue so you go away. This doesn’t mean they will kill themselves right away, but it does mean you failed at stopping, and reversing, the thought process that might lead to them doing so. You need to listen to understand. Don’t just say “I understand” even if you really do, but show you understand by asking questions, or repeating what they said, or giving them your full attention even when they sit and cry for long periods. What is most helpful for the suicidal person is being that someone that actually cares about what ever is hurting them. They often want to die because they’ve lost hope of achieving something important to them: maybe they lost their ‘One true love’, or they have lost their dream job. Sometimes a lot of smaller failures/losses add up to lost hope for happiness, and other times they feel like their life has been miserable for so long that simply failing to get out of bed or take a shower can push a person passed the point of wanting to continue living. Understand what that thing means to them and help them grieve for it if necessary. The key is to pay attention to what they say and try to understand their pain.

Second, you tell them how much you care. Be sincere here. They won’t believe it anyway, so if you can’t back up your statements with actions, then don’t say them. If all you can do is listen to them and be present with them when your schedule allows, then say that and leave it there. If you can drop everything and answer the phone anytime, day or night, and they might need that, then offer it, but be prepared for them to actually call you at work or in the middle of the night.

Third, help them find help. Most people who are talking about suicide have already looked for help, but found none that made a difference. They may need to you to help them search for services or even do the search for them yourself. Simply suggesting the same things you’ve heard may not be enough, but do it anyway. Although those services seem easy to find on the surface, the suicidal person may have already tried some of them and found them unhelpful. Again, only offer to help them with this if you have the time and ability to do so.

My Experience

When I’ve felt like taking my own life, it has been at times when I don’t see any hope at all or the hope I do see requires me to do something I don’t think I’m capable of; in other words, it seems like false hope. And that hope isn’t always about my own future. Sometimes the thing I want most is for my kids to succeed in a world that has defeated me. Sometimes my hope is based on the world at large finding better ways to help people in need.

When I see the greater world around me making decisions that seem to me to feed fear or increase the separation between those who have and those who have not, I sometimes feel like just ending my life because, at those times specifically, it’s my belief that I will need the skills of a compassionate person to teach me how to reach my goals. In a world full of fear and selfishness, I’m not likely to find someone like that, so my hope in a future where I’m not living in poverty dies – and I want to die with it.

Sometimes I see my kids struggling to survive, but only managing to wriggle themselves deeper into life’s quicksand. I don’t see anyone with the ability to help show enough compassion to support them through the tough spots. That makes me want to die and end the possibility to create more children that I would fail to give the tools they need to thrive. I feel like a failure as a father and as a human being at those times. I just want to stop giving false hope to my kids and hope they can find someone that can truly offer them the support and training they need in order to get through this miserable life.

The darkest times come when I lose hope of finding the help I need to figure out what the hell is wrong with my brain or my life patterns. Most of the time, I spend my time trying to escape my life through video games, deep, philosophical conversations, socialising with like minded people, sleeping, or just doing a lap or two around a local mall to feel connected to the world around me. What am I escaping? My beliefs that I don’t have enough employable skills, that I will never be able to support myself, that I raised my kids without teaching them anything useful, that I can never be lovable, that I will never be a writer who makes any money writing. I spend the vast majority of my time escaping these beliefs. Eventually, I lose hope of ever finding a counsellor, or psych, or other professional that can help me identify the problem and offer realistic solutions. Since I have spent over 40 years trying to find those solutions on my own without making much ground, most of my hope lies in finding professional help. When that professional help has failed me time and again from a double handful of sources, I lose hope of ever having a life with dignity or self respect. When I lose that hope, I want to die.

The things that have stopped me from killing myself fall into two categories:

First there are those I love or feel love from. Those include many of the members of the dance club I’m a part of, many of the members of the writers’ group I joined over a year ago now, my kids, a few friends not from the dance club or writers’ group, and, more distantly, my family of origin. When I want to take my own life, I think of these people. I believe some of them truly do love me, even if they have no ability to help me. Others I love deeply and don’t want to hurt them.

Second, are the people who see the signs and respond. They are some of the people from the first group, the ones who are lucky enough to have made contact with me when I’m feeling suicidal. Not everyone I talked to during these times has responded. I don’t know if that is because they didn’t see the signs, or because they didn’t think they could help, or maybe it was because they saw the signs but didn’t care enough to help. But the people that did see the signs and responded kindly, have literally saved my life on a few occasions. Most of them just connected with me and listened. They heard my hurt. They understood my pain. They cared about my problems. Mostly, they just talked and listened when I needed them most to do so.

Suicide, for me, isn’t a disconnection from people. It isn’t because I don’t think anybody cares. I know they do. For me, I sometimes want to kill myself so I stop taking up resources without giving anything useful back to the world. I want to stop wasting time, money, and space on myself when I don’t believe I will ever have anything to contribute. But, I stay connected, I talk to people that care about me, and I stay alive.

If This Is You

If you’ve been thinking about suicide yourself, please ignore the negativity attached to the words or actions associated with it and seek the help of those around you.  At very least, talk to them. Tell them you are hurting. Tell them why, if you can. Reach out to those services I talked about earlier. There is probably a suicide prevention phone number in your area. If you phone any psychologist, psychiatrist, mental health agency, or 911 and tell them you are considering suicide, they’re obligated to help.

Think about the people you are leaving behind. They may not seem like they care, but they do, I promise. They might not have the time, money, or emotional ability to give you what you need, but they do care. You will hurt them. You might be OK with hurting some of them – that might be one of your motivations – but consider the others that you don’t want to hurt. There are always innocent people effected by someone killing themselves.

Most of all you should talk to anybody that will listen. Start with those closest to you. Talk to your family and close friends, but don’t stop there. I’ve built some very close friendships telling casual acquaintances about my desire to end my own life. I’ve found people that can help in meaningful ways by talking to someone I don’t know very well or just met.

If This Is Someone You Know

It’s worth repeating here what I said at the start. If someone has admitted to you that they are considering killing themselves, you need to stop what you’re doing and listen. If they’re reaching out to you, they haven’t quite given up yet. But that doesn’t mean they’re only seeking attention either. People talk about suicide for a variety of reasons; one of the most common reasons someone might tell you they want to die is because they are hoping you can give them a reason not to.

Many people use this as a manipulation tool to get what they want from you. If you assume that everyone that talks about suicide is only manipulating you, though, you will miss your chance to save a life. The key to the difference is listening. Someone who is truly suicidal will cherish the connection that comes from talking to someone. If they’re simply talking about dying to get something they want, talking won’t be enough.  You should be able to see the difference easily, most people can.

If talking to them seems to calm them a little (it probably won’t make the thought go away all together), then they’re serious about wanting your input. Most of the time, listening to them share their pain and failures is enough to reduce the urgency and buy some more time. Build the connection with them. Be the one they can trust with their deepest hurts. Don’t judge them or give them advice. If you want to help more than just by listening, it requires that you take some action on their behalf. Discuss it with them first to make sure it is something they are open and willing to accept. It is not helpful to just sit back and offer advice, no matter how insightful or brilliant. If all you can give them is time, then listen. If you can give them more, offer to do something with them or for them. Honestly, the more someone does something with me or for me, the more connected I feel, and the less hopeless I feel. Connection prevents suicide.

Some of the things you can do for them or with them is find professional help. Someone who is talking about wanting to die needs more than just a friend, they need to be assessed by a professional. Even is they’re only trying to get attention, they need help. Both, people who really do want to die, and those who use it to manipulate others will be helped by seeking professional help.

What It Means

Suicide is always a serious subject. The more we can connect with people in our lives, the more secure and stable our emotional and mental states will be. The more people we connect with, the higher the chances that we can help when someone talks about killing themselves. Our ability to listen and respond compassionately can save a life. Unconditionally loving someone that talks about suicide will give us the right mindset to be open to what they really need.

When we get to a place in our lives that robs us of all hope in our future, or takes away the one thing we have waited our whole life to get, those are the times we need most to reach out to anyone that will listen the way we need them to listen. If you have the courage to take your own life and leave hurt and pain in your wake, use that courage to share your story. Someone out there will hear it and want to help. Just keep sharing it until you find somebody that you connect with. Share it with that person. Sharing makes it better, believe me.

 

If you or someone you know is considering suicide please call: 911. Also, if this or any article I have written touches you and makes you want to talk, drop me a line and join the conversation.

Personal Energy

Personal energy is a commodity just like electricity or gasoline. It needs to be managed in much the same way. Sometimes it can be bought or sold. You may give or receive it as a gift. Personal energy is harder to measure. It takes an awareness of oneself that most people don’t have. Those who have that understanding of themselves will tell you that their energy levels become more manageable as they become more self aware.

I have discovered four kinds of personal energy within myself. This doesn’t mean there aren’t others or that my list is universal for all people. It’s my experience. They are: mental energy, emotional energy, physical energy, and social energy. Mental energy is my ability to focus or concentrate on something. I expend emotional energy to process my feelings and reactions to things. Physical energy is self explanatory, it’s the energy I use to make my body do things. Social is about community. It’s what connects me to others. I expend social energy to build, strengthen, and let go of connections to people.

My Experience

For most of my life, I believed I was broken because I couldn’t understand why sometimes I could do an activity for hours and other days I had virtually no interest in participating in it. Other times I would be invited to some kind of function, but the idea of going made me feel exhausted, yet I would often spend hours doing something else instead. When these things happened, it caused me to examine my motivations or believe there was something wrong with me. It almost always caused me and those around me to view me as selfish.

What I didn’t know is that my life contains various kinds of energy. Each one influences the others, but regenerating one does not increase the rest. Each needs to be nurtured and managed individually. I’ve tried for many years to heal my physical body. And at one point, I realized I needed to work on my mental health too. I didn’t learn how to improve both at the same time until very recently. When I did learn that us guys need to give as much attention to our mental health as our physical, I started to see that I had other kinds of energy that didn’t come under those two categories.

I first learned about social energy in a book about ADD. In it he talks about a person’s need for human interaction and relationships and how that leads many people to search for those things in some type of faith based life style. He says that social energy isn’t a mythical energy that originates from some mysterious deity or all powerful force, but it comes from within ourselves and from positive relationships. It’s the energy we use to decide when and how to interact with other people. We spend it on enriching the lives of those around us. Managing it is about learning to limit our interactions that consume our social energy, spending more time with others that feed and regenerate our energy, and being by ourselves to let it slowly regenerate on its own.

Emotional energy is one that I had a tough time believing in. Even once I was convinced of its authenticity, it took me too long to understand its relevance to my masculinity. I consume it by feeling both positive and negative emotions. I’ve discovered that my depression was a result of an empty tank of this kind energy. Emotional energy is the strangest of all the energy pools because it’s built by feeling emotions, but only by specific ones. Confidence in oneself is the easiest way to increase it. Forgiveness is another way to recover it. The only way I know of to increase your capacity for emotional energy is by loving others unconditionally. Loving others is one of the biggest uses of this energy, but loving someone unconditionally actually increases the size of the pool I can draw from.

Mental energy is one of the fastest growing areas of interest on my Facebook feed right now. A lot of people are learning for the first time that it is separate from physical energy and needs to be managed separately too. This is the brain power that contributes to many of us not being able to sleep at night even when we feel physically exhausted. If I haven’t done much that was mentally challenging that day, I might have a surplus when I try to sleep at night and brain wants to use some of it before it will let me go to sleep. At other times, I have used up my pool of mental energy when there is still a lot of day left. On those days, I like to go out and do something purely social and/or physical; dancing, wondering the mall, or walking my dog are all activities that use less of my mental energy.

Physical energy is one of the easiest for us guys to understand and manage. Not all of us know how to do those things though. Eating healthy and proper exercise are obvious to most of us. But regular checkups aren’t so easy to keep up with. Good rest is also important here. But so are limiting our exposure to addictive substances and practices. Most of us can agree that too much alcohol or street drugs will have harmful effects on our bodies. Did you know that food addictions or consistent use of pornography can too? There are a lot of things to keep in mind if we want to manage our physical energy.

The fun parts for me have been identifying situations that might need more than one kind of energy. Witty jokes require just the right mixture of mental and social energy. Sports use social and physical, sometime with some mental energy thrown into the mix. Sex uses the emotional and physical varieties. Family needs emotional and social. And the hardest for most of us, trying to stop being single uses both social and emotional energy topped off with a good helping of mental energy. I have decided to reserve that last activity for when I have learned to manage all my energy levels adequately.

A good, wholesome, restful sleep will regenerate all my energy pools. I have had 3 different naps while writing this article because I used up a lot of them last weekend. It’s taken me a few days to recover enough of it to finish this project. Now that I’m learning to understand my abilities and limitations surrounding my energy pools, I find my moods far easier to regulate.

If this is you

Maybe you are having difficulty trying to understand why you want to do things sometimes and other times just don’t feel like participating in those same experiences. Learning what kinds of energy you use and in what ways you use them will probably help you manage these things better and give you a greater sense of control in your life. You might have the same types of energy that I have, or you may have other ways to divvy up your pools of energy. The important part, though, is knowing that there are different pools of energy for doing different things in your life. Learn what yours are, and learn to manage them. When you do, you will find yourself better able to do the things you want and avoid the things that suck your energy dry.

If This is Someone You Know

You know that guy that you just can’t figure out what he likes and doesn’t like? There’s a good chance the same thing confuses and frustrates him too. Try understanding that he has different pools of energy to do different things. They might not be the same pools of energy that you see in your life. He might really like hanging out with you at the pool hall, but if he’s had very socially heavy day, he may not feel like it this time. Or maybe he has a pool of energy dedicated to drinking booze. If his boss or a client has just spent the whole day treating him to various fine restaurants and pubs, he may have used up his booze reserves. Whatever the situation, you don’t know what is in his head or how much of which types of energy he has left, so please be kind with your judgments. Hell, he might not even know he has pools of energy. To a lot of guys, the word energy means oil & gas or electricity. Just because he might not understand his own pools, does not mean that he doesn’t have them. In fact, it probably means he’s kind of crappy at managing them in the first place. Give him the space to say yes or no and let him know that either answer is OK. It’ll help him feel like his feelings or at least his decisions matter to you.

What is means

Personal energy comes in all shapes and sizes. It has all kinds of uses. Some of us know what ours are, but most of us don’t. Most guys I know understand the idea of personal energy, but would look at you as though you wore a pink elephant on your nose if you told them he could use one type energy instead of another one. Mine are physical, mental, social, and emotional. Some of you might find my types of energy make sense to you. If they help you understand yourself better and manage the things you want to do and limit the things you can’t do then your world will be a better place for it. The most useful this information has been for me is when I have to explain to someone why I can’t do something I have enjoyed in the past and might still enjoy. I tell them that I want to do those things but I have to manage that type of energy. When I figure out how to do that, I’ll probably return to those activities with gusto. I’m learning new ways of understanding my energy levels every day.

If this or any article on my blog hit a cord with you, drop me a line and join the conversation.