Anger, despair, hopelessness, and depression effect everybody at some point in their life. For the lucky ones, it is a bad afternoon or few days and then things get better. Not everybody is lucky though. For some these thoughts come back within a short time after they go away, and for some they keep coming back until they never go away and that is how they feel most if not all of the time. People will say that person’s problem is their negativity. They will offer lectures about the glass half empty attitude, and say that if that person were not so pessimistic then good things would happen, implying it is all their fault.

So what is the answer when you hate life? What is the answer if you sincerely wish you would never wake up again? The answer is 100% dependent on what is the question being asked. Do you hate your life? Yes, probably so, who are we to say that is not true? I have felt that way before and it was 100% true- it was not dramatics for attention or proving a point.

Is suicide the answer to feeling like that? Well, if there is no other valid alternative presented what would your answer be? Take anything you hate – an old sweater with stain on it that reminds you of the night your ex dumped you- you hate it so you want to get rid of it. If you hate something getting rid of it certainly seems like a reasonable thing (once you jump past the knee jerk reaction of how sacred life is and the “you don’t really mean that” automatic responses).

That is why the question is so important. Because life is not like a sweater, a broken toy, or an old clunker car.  Those things you can hate and get rid of them, because you can replace them. In the case of hating life, it is not life that is hated, it is being forced to undergo the pain, the series of events, and even the memories of the things that have made up that life to that point in time.

If you could instead throw away the abusive alcoholic parent, the bullies in school, the brown-nosing co-worker that gets all the credit from a jerk boss at work along with the memories of being laughed at when you asked out that one person you really liked, and being alone on the last 3 holidays- then just maybe you would not hate life. That list is a small list compared to many that hate their lives.

It is Okay to Hate Life

When bad things happen it is okay to be unhappy. It is okay to not want to embrace bad things and to not want to stoically take it on the chin yet again and act proud to have learned another hard life lesson. When your life sucks it is okay to hate it even. What you need to think about more carefully though is the idea of throwing that life away when all you really needed to do is have it be different. We cannot change the past. Neither do we have to live in the past.  We can change things now, and when we change things it changes our present and our future.

Why is it so hard to change things when you hate life? Because it does not seem worth it. If you hate something you don’t want it. It is garbage in your mind and not worth the effort to fix. When you hate your life, all wrapped up in that package is a hatred of yourself since you are the result of that life. Because of that self-hatred, it is hard to see value in fixing it or changing it.

When it is Time to Compare Yourself to Others

Everybody tells you not to compare yourself and your life to others. When you start thinking about suicide it is often in part a result of comparing yourself to others and feeling like you always come up short, so what is the point? I will suggest instead you might consider if your life was different, if your life was more like others, would you still hate it? Most often the answer is no- you hate your life because it has been different than what you wanted and expected, and different than what you see others getting out of life. That is really the key point. The “what if”… What if your life was different?

Life is an ever moving thing. History does not define the future. You can change what is happening in your life.  While all people are scared or adverse to change on some level, and many that proclaim to hate their life proudly stand behind the axiom of “don’t ever change yourself” “always be yourself , don’t ever change” – If you hate your life and the way it is going  then why not change? I hate diet Pepsi, so I don’t force myself to guzzle it all day, day after day. If you hate your life, don’t keep doing it all the same way, day after day.

Make the changes needed so that the future has a chance to be different from the past. Nothing changes until something changes- if you want a different future then change the way you are doing things. Putting the energy that is currently expended on hate and avoidance into change can and will make the future different.

No matter how many examples somebody comes up with of what went wrong in the past, the only way you can know the future will turn out the same is if you continue to insist on doing it the same way and refusing to change the way they do it. “Doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results” comes to mind. It is just as true that if you do things differently each time you will not get the same result. 

Nothing changes until something changes- what can you change?

It does not matter what situation you are in:

• Lonely and not leaving the house- need to go out and start seeing people again
• No relationship or not dating – have to be in a place to meet somebody
• In an abusive home and abused- will have to leave for the abuse to stop
• Always end up with bad person- meet people in another way or choose different qualities in dating selection
• Nothing to do on weekends – plan something during week for the weekend
• Can’t stop crying, feeling sad – stop listening to sad music and fixating on sad things
• Can’t stop thinking about suicide – stop searching for methods and start making plans and goals for the future

The list could go on endlessly and it is easy to say those are over-simplifications and then rationalize and explain why none work. It is also just possible it really is that simple and we are just trying to make things far more complicated than they are.

The Question you need to look at is not “do you hate your life”, but rather “what do you hate about your life?” It does not matter if that list is 1 thing or 100 things, looking at them one at a time and figuring out what can be changed,  what is in the past and needs to stay in the past, and what you want in the  future, will allow you to change your life into something that you no longer hate. It will allow you to have a future where you do not struggle with suicidal thoughts.

All you feel is pain and anxiety. Despair and hopelessness consume you… and you just wish that the mind that has gotten you into so much trouble had an ‘off’ switch. You wish that you could ‘think’ yourself out of existence.

Yes, your situation is unique and, yes, your suffering is very great. It is very likely that no-one that is close to you truly understands or appreciates what you are going through. You hurt so much that you ache physically… and no words or condolences can suffice to soothe your agony.

Firstly, I want to express my heartfelt compassion and sympathy for what you are going through.

Now, let’s take a step back and rationalize how you got to this very dark space. Mainly, suicidal thoughts come from one of two things 1. A major traumatic incident or 2. A long course of suffering and adversity or 3. Both of the previous points.

Either way, feeling suicidal isn’t necessarily ‘irrational’ or ‘stupid’ and doesn’t automatically indicate that you have mental health issues. What it does indicate, however, is that your pain is getting to the point of outweighing your coping resources.

So let’s look at it graphically… The scales below represent your emotional state. On the left hand side you have your coping resources and on the right hand side you have your pain.

Coping resources could be anything that helps you to handle an emotional crisis and to maintain the initiative when things get rough. Now, I believe that there are two principal categories of coping resources – the band aids and the medicines.

 Band aids are things that you use to get you through times of peak crisis.

• Talking to friends and family or to a helpline
• Chatting to people online
• Breathing exercises
• Journaling or writing a letter to yourself
• Anything else that you could use to distract your mind.

Medicines are things that can help stave off and prevent the crises or serve to minimise their dramatic impact on our emotional stability. The three prominent ‘medicinal’ coping resources that I believe are available to all of us are as follows:

• Love
• Learning
• Self-acceptance

Love doesn’t necessarily need to be love from other people. The more we think about and foster love for others – even those least deserving of our love – the more we will feel its soothing balm in our lives. Love for others doesn’t need to be expressed in some grandiose way… it doesn’t need to be demonstrated with great acts of benevolence or kindness. The key is to love – in thought and in deed – little and often.

Learning something new gives our brain a workout and gives it something to feed on rather than feeding on our problems and negative self-talk. A stagnated brain is like a garden covered in weeds – something easy to get depressed by. By constantly learning, we help to keep our brain ‘in shape’ and feel more empowered to make positive changes in our lives.

Self-acceptance is a big downer for many people as a low self-esteem can lead to feelings of great loneliness and isolation. Constant yearning for connection and acceptance are things that affect many people in society. When we find the pearl of goodness latent inside every one of us and genuinely start to appreciate it and develop it, this serves as a significant catalyst for change and self-acceptance.

As we work on building up our coping resources, we can better equip ourselves for riding out the rough times and we are better able to cope with emotional crises in a balanced frame of mind.

Now the thing with pain is that it’s largely a matter of perspective. I say this more from a rational perspective than from a warm fuzzy emotional perspective. A 10 meter wave looks infinitely more fearsome if you are sitting in the trough and waiting for it to crash mercilessly over you… than if you are looking at it from the vantage point of a light-house keeper perched high in his sanctuary of calm.

You might now say ‘what’s the relevance of perspective?’ Well the thing is that if you are in a crisis and feel that your coping resources are failing you then working on finding perspective to your pain can be very effective…

 Time is a very gentle and powerful healer… and will often bring perspective and peace to even the most traumatic of incidents. Recalling earlier experiences of crisis and how you got through them can help shine perspective into your desolate cave of suffering as can listening to others recount feelingly how they survived an emotional Auschwitz.

Whatever it is that has brought you to this place my friend, I want you to know that I truly believe you have the strength to get through it… and to come out the other side with greater strength, wisdom and compassion than ever before.

About the Author: Cody has studied psychology and self-help strategies for over a decade and is very passionate about helping others to fulfill their potential and live happier lives. 

Somewhere in the midst of that despair comes forth an idea. What if I kill myself in such a way that it looks like an accident? After all, people die all the time – it is sad but we get over it and it does not have the same stigma of “suicide” and maybe it will hurt a little bit less to those I leave behind (that claim to care but I am not really sure they do). Maybe they do not realize it but they would be better off without me anyway. Maybe it is life insurance to end the financial troubles, maybe it is because our moods and depression or anger and outburst make those around us hurt already. It might be in our mind if we were gone then the wife or husband could meet a better person be more able to provide for the kids, or the parents would not have to support you and worry anymore.

These and thoughts like these have probably gone through your head many times if you found your way here and are reading this. They all have occurred to me many times in the last few years since I got sick. The reason they are in your head might be different – financial problems, loneliness, divorce, break up, abuse, alcoholism, addiction, mental illness, hundreds of possibilities (or even just horrible soul killing depression without any specific cause you can point to as a reason) but it does make them any less real or easier to deal with.

The reason is really not that important- if you were able to think of a way to fix it you would have and since you can’t now you are trying to figure out how to make the pain stop, and just maybe not to have to let the world ever know what happened. There is a very good chance you have spent a lifetime of holding it in and keeping the real truth a secret- so making suicide look like an accident would just be the same as that fake smile you put on to go to work or school every day. Just the next (and final) lie you say to try to protect others from your pain and yourself from facing the truth.

The hard part of all this is remembering- it never really did do any good to put on that fake smile. It may work for some or in some situations, but it did not for you because here you are still looking for a way to make the pain stop and still looking for a way to make it look like it was never there. Just like the fake smile did not make the pain stop for you – it just made it harder for others to see, making suicide look like an accident does not stop the pain on others, just makes it harder for people to understand why they hurt so much. Whether declared an accident or suicide does not change the last days / weeks / months with these people. They still feel or know that something was wrong and still have no way to ever fix that- simply to live forever with it unresolved.

While you are considering the “accident” to try to stop the pain, you are not stopping the pain at all- you are simply negotiating your spouse’s, children’s, or friend’s pain. It is not stopping the pain, it is you deciding how much pain they should feel or that you are okay with causing them. How many times in your life when thinking of others, truly thinking of others- do you start bargaining and negotiating how much pain it is okay to lay on another person? And still think what you are doing is a righteous or good thing?

The real truth is all suicides are accidents. Nobody purposely made decisions intended to cause so much pain they would rather die than wake up. Nobody let things build to a point that it was all intolerable, or asked for so many issues to be visited upon them they could not deal with it anymore on purpose. The fact you feel like this at all is the culmination of a series of accidents. While feeling so alone and in pain you would rather die is not your fault, the things causing that amount of pain are making you unable to see that killing yourself (accident or not) is not going to end that pain. If successful at best it takes your and pain adds to it and then passes it on to many others, letting that pain multiply and grow like some vicious weed choking the life out of all the once strong beautiful plants around it.

I have been very sure in my life that nothing else could ever stop that pain, nothing else would ever make things even a little okay again. I have seen thousands of others on the forum feeling the same way. We were all wrong. When things have gotten better and then there is another downturn we all said “see -it never gets better and even if it does it gets worse again” but the reality is that just a few days either way before or after that feeling that feeling had changed. Unfortunately, it is that hopeless feeling that we choose to cling to and nurture that is causing the pain, not the life around that feeling.

Suicides that look like accidents? It is fool’s gold at best. A way to put on the fake smile that never fooled you nor anybody else in your life and then trying to continue that lie into death. It does not make it better. I will tell you what I know about accidents and suicide. I know several people that have started a suicide attempt and called for help-, but the help was too late. The permanent damage or death was already done. In fact in near every suicide case I am personally familiar with they tried to reach out and get help in the end- they tried to not die- but that is when the accident happened. That is when it was too late to fix and then came the accident, so commonly called tragedy like every accident, and they died finally wanting nothing but to live.

There will be comments left on here complaining about the “you did not tell me about how to make it look like an accident” with expletives. There are on other posts too, though for some reason the person chose to read to the end knowing that it was not going to be in there. Asking how to make suicide look like an accident is no different than asking about methods to die- the real truth anybody could think of many ways without a pause. You are not searching for a way to make suicide look like an accident or searching for a way to die – those are both way too easy and anyone could list a dozen ways. You are searching for a way to make the pain stop.

The pain can stop and life can be better. It is not easy and it is not going to change overnight. The answer is different for every person because every life is different so you can’t get your answer in 1000 words when you haven’t found the answer in months or years or searching for it on your own – I am not smarter than you. It will not happen without you letting some things change as well. You can’t keep everything the exact same and suddenly feel differently about it. But life can change and the pain can stop and there can be contentment and happiness. You just need to spend as much time and diligence on trying to figure out the method you need to change your life as you are on searching for methods and ways to die.

The method to change your life is actually something that you might be able to find some help with and that you do not already know 10 ways in your mind. That is what you are searching for and trying to find how to live and how to stop the pain. If you think I am lying then tell me that there were not just at least 2 or 3 ways to make it look like an accident when you commit suicide in your mind as you read this or searched this topic, but here you are reading and searching like there were none. There are nearly 55,000 members on SF that do and have felt the same, and they are getting better. Not all, not every day, but the majority get here looking for how to die, and yet days, weeks, even years later they are still here. And life is better, because if it was not they would not be here either. Talk to people that care now.

Are there any painless suicide methods?

Most people find SF when the pain is so bad that they can’t take it any more. That is how I found SF. If you are here, reading this, the chances are you are so tired of hurting, so exhausted by the relentless black hole of pain inside you that you are looking for a way, ANY way, to make it stop. Painless suicide methods seem like the holy grail right now. I get it – believe me – I understand.

Are There Any Painless Suicide Methods?

The simple answer is no. I understand that your instinct now is to click off this page and keep looking, but STOP. Wait. Just stay a few minutes. The problem with suicide methods is that up to 97% of the time, they fail. And that is just the completely committed “I want to die right now this second” group. Suicide is painful and messy and horrifying – and I completely understand if you are sitting here thinking “yes, well so is my life” – I have been there.

One of the most common things our members say when they first join SF is ‘I am too much of a coward to go through with it”. Not killing yourself isn’t cowardly. Not killing yourself isn’t weak or spineless. It is okay to scream for help at the top of your lungs right now – you deserve help and nobody can do this alone.

We have thousands and thousands of members and each and every one of them knows what it feels like to want to fall asleep and never wake up. To stop the pain – for it to be easy and peaceful and painless. Suicide isn’t any of those things. It is painful and lonely and scary. The thoughts and feelings you are dealing with are not shameful or weak or wrong – but really wanting to die and really wanting to make the pain stop are not the same thing. 

What About Pain Free Death?

It is easy to believe – especially right now – that it wouldn’t matter if you died. Nobody would care. I don’t know you and I don’t know what is going on in your life (I would like to) but I have been suicidal and believed those things, and I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of people who also believe those things. Pain lies. Depression lies. Most of all, despair lies. The idea that your death would not matter and it wouldn’t hurt anyone – that your suicide would be pain free for all concerned – it isn’t true. Maybe you want to believe it is true because you don’t want to hurt any of the people you love. Maybe you hurt so badly you can’t see past the pain to the truth. But you are wrong. There are no ‘pain free’ ways to die. There are especially no pain free ways to kill yourself. Not just the physical messy agony of suicide itself, which is never like it is in the movies, but also the emotional pain you are passing to the people who are about you and even the people who ‘only’ know you.

The pain can go away. I know you don’t believe me; I didn’t believe it either. I was sure – 100% definite – that life would never get better, that the pain would never go away, that I would never feel okay again, let alone happy. I felt alone and isolated and like there was nobody to talk to who could possibly understand. I was wrong. About all of it. There are people who understand and who will support you and while right now you don’t think support can help and you don’t see how talking can make a difference, there is something about NOT feeling alone and isolated that eases the pain just enough to be able to breathe for a minute. To be able to think. To give yourself a chance.

You Need to Talk to Someone

There is no replacement for professional medical treatment. If you are suicidal then you need real medical help – but you also need to talk to people you can be honest with, people you can say out loud “I hurt so much I want to die” to. It is hard, almost impossible, to say those things to people who know and care about you in real life. They get scared and hurt and suddenly you are not only dealing with your own pain, you are dealing with theirs as well. For people who already have more pain than they can bear, that is not an option.

Talking doesn’t magically make the pain go away. I am not going to sit here and lie to you that it might. I understand that it is hard to see the point – the POINT is that you want to make the pain stop and if talking won’t do that then it can feel like a waste of the precious little energy you have left. What talking does – in a peer to peer setting – is make you feel less alone. Knowing that people understand and care, that even strangers who are in pain themselves care about you enough to listen and support you, can make you feel less isolated, remind you that you do not have to deal with this alone. 

Talk to us. Write down how you feel. Engage with people who understand – as much as anyone can understand – how you feel. The pain won’t go away overnight but it CAN go away and you deserve to have support while you deal with it. So instead of clicking off here and going back to Google in search of ways to die, stick around here. Join our community and find ways to make the pain go away that don’t involve killing yourself – ways to make the pain go away that give you your life back. 

Do you feel like you really just hate yourself? Check this out. 

Having a hard time thinking about getting from today until tomorrow? Try this one. 

Social media is very much a 21st century phenomenon:

Facebook has nearly 3 billion Facebook users across the world

Twitter has almost 350 million

Instagram has a billion users

Snapchat has more than 200 million

and the newest frontrunner, Tiktok, already has a billion users

It doesn’t seem that the rise of social media is going to stop any time soon. Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit and even LinkedIn are all social media and surely we’re all using at least one of these platforms. But could social media be killing us?

‘Facebook Depresses Me and I Feel Like a Failure’

Social media has been hailed by many as an incredible invention, allowing friends and family to more easily keep in touch, even over vast distances, and it is impossible to argue that the platforms don’t allow that. But when ‘writing a status’ or posting a meme replaces real conversation, the result is rarely improved relationships. Where, in the past, we might have felt the need to call or at least email someone to connect with them – to maintain a relationship – we are now able to hit ‘like’ and feel we have done our part to engage.

Not only that, but in a world where ‘image is everything’, it seems more and more that Facebook and Instagram are used by many as a ‘showcase’ of perfectly posed and edited selfies and carefully curated life moments designed to make their existence seem as exciting and amazing as possible. Even those who don’t design their feeds to present a particular ‘image’ naturally share the ‘good parts’ of their lives – events with friends and family, births and marriages, travel and trips. It is far too easy to compare our reality with someone else’s highlight reel and end up feeling inadequate, boring and alone.

When it seems like everyone else is having fun, has dozens of friends and has their life “together” it is hardly surprising that we look at our own life and feel it is lacking – or that we are lacking.

A common theme on our forums and in our chat room is that people feel like a failure compared to their friends and family – that ‘everyone else’ is happy and normal and doing all kinds of exciting things that they are not. This can lead to depression, anxiety and even suicidal thoughts.

Are Social Media Friends Really Friends?

The American Association of Pediatrics issued a report in 2011 with one of the first mentions of the phenomenon ‘Facebook Depression”. Our young people have grown up in a world where it is commonplace to have hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ and popularity is no longer measured by who wants to sit with you at lunch.

With friendship being measured by numbers and approval coming in the form of likes or retweets, it is easy to see how social media can become damaging and even dangerous, especially for people suffering from depression.

When you feel like you can’t turn to any of your hundreds of friends for support, help or advice it can feel like the whole world literally does not care about you. The line between ‘someone you know’ and real friends has become so blurred for teenagers and even young adults in their 20s due to social media, that having a core of three or four friends in ‘real life’ who will listen, support and give practical help is considered by many a social failure.

Add to this the fact that reaching out to people on social media for help or advice can often lead to virtual strangers, masquerading on your feed as ‘friends’ ignoring you or, worse, going out of their way to pull you down or call you out for ‘drama’, and the world can feel like a very lonely, isolating place.

Social media depression is a vicious cycle – people whose depression is related to or worsened by social media reach out for support via those channels and are all too often met with a lack of understanding and even cruelty. For people who are vulnerable and already having suicidal thoughts, social media could, quite literally, kill them.

Social Media Depression – Some Tips

• Limit the time you spend on social media and how many times a day you check it. Be strict with yourself and limit yourself to twice a day at the most and only for a maximum of 15 minutes at a time.
• Seek out support with close friends you see in real life or with communities geared toward listening and supporting instead of reaching out on social media to people who barely know you and might hurt you.
• Grab a sheet of paper and define for yourself what you consider a ‘friend’ to be. Be realistic about the differences between your friends and your social media acquaintances. It can be helpful to start thinking of and referring to them  as acquaintances to get this in perspective.
• Fill your time with ‘real world’ activities – working, volunteering and joining clubs and groups can get you away from the computer or phone and thinking about the things you are doing rather than the things other people are doing. Remember that ‘comparison is the thief of joy’.
• Talk to your doctor. This is especially important if you are having thoughts of hurting yourself. Depression is a real illness and it is nothing to feel ashamed of. There is help available and you deserve to feel better.

Remember that you are not alone. The horrible feelings you have are not unusual and they probably happen to even the people you think seem so happy and successful from their social media feed. If you need extra support or someone to talk to, join our community to use our chat rooms and forums.

In this particular instance there were lots of really good hints and tips, but one was way above the average post reply and stood out as worth sharing on a bigger platform. This is the reply from SF Member Citizen Insane, a member of the community for nearly 5 years. In that time he has had a lot of personal experience, as well as talking to literally hundreds of others in similar situations and getting tips to help himself. Hopefully his sharing will help others too.

“What do you do when suicidal ideations are too much?”?

Suicidal ideations are especially tough when the people in your environment do not seem to care and when there’s no hope for relief in sight. Relief from pain, emotionally and in some cases physically.

 It could feel like the world is completely blind to that fact and then the mental filter, the person who suffers has, will keep trying to confirm it that he/she indeed is alone and feels alone in this battle.

Finding a way to express these feelings is quite important, I think.

If I were to be suicidal, am I even asking myself the right questions?

Q1: Why do you wish to end it?

A: “Because I do not feel that I can recover from that which has happened to me in this life. There’s no cure for this illness and/or disorder I have. This is no life for me to live this way, every day I’m suffering and to what end?”

What the (sort of imaginary) person is describing is mostly about his despair and loss of hope. And thereby not talking about his/her actual desires. Not the desire and wish to end it.

Desires that could be: “I wish to be happy, I wish to live a life worth living and fighting for”. Somewhere in our minds, we got to actually believe that this is what a life should be about.

Happiness is never a permanent feeling, though you can be content with yourself over a longer period of time. The body is for sure not made to make a person “happy” and the brain is looking for a lot more than just that as well. Nowhere in evolution was there a single entity who was happy all the time.

Often I ask myself: “Even if I got those happy feelings in my head right now, would I really be doing anything differently in my life?” I already tell my family that I care for them and have love for them, even if my emotions are mostly numb. I am able to be entertained with my hobbies, like reading, music and playing the guitar, despite my concentration not always being optimal.

I would advise that you find something that you can still enjoy doing or an activity that makes you not feel the discomfort you usually have. I can’t answer which activity that may be, you are the person who knows yourself the best and what you like.

As opposed to the body having a limit to physical ailments, sickness and injuries, a person his/her mind is more flexible.

So what does a life look like in the end, when the person has endured all of the mental & emotional pains his/her brain has inflicted onto them?

Perhaps the question should be: What happens when the person finds his desires not fulfilled, should that person adjust his/her expectations of life in general?

-Citizen Insane

There were of course other answers and advice – all useful as well and all having the benefit of real experience behind them-

A few more from other members-

My number 1 recommendation for “being in a bad place” is to do something. Get up, go out, do something and “get away” from the trapped hopeless horrible – as in physically get away from it by going somewhere else. Sounds a bit nuts maybe, but being busy and changing your surroundings I really believe helps. Even if I go get a coffee in a coffee shop and doodle for a while. I also find planning incredibly helpful. Lists and colour codes and mind maps and “what my life is going to look like in 5 years, 10 years” etc. Give myself something positive to focus on that does not consider the option of dying.

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I like to listen to sad or angry music, or a touching film. Sometimes I feel the only way to get past it (depression/suicidal thoughts) is to go straight through it. That’s not always true though. Sometimes I try and force myself to do things I don’t want to, like: listen to upbeat music, leave the house (anywhere, even a trip to the shops if I don’t need anything), dance, sing, treat myself to nice food, and watch a new film or show. Sometimes it works, other times not, but a lot of times I have managed to free myself of those thoughts is by just getting back into the swing of things and making that change to feel better. Maybe some of these will help you too, I hope so.

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These are some things I do…read, write, talk to people, listen to music, play music, clean, spend time with my nephew, find something that makes me laugh, watch tv and movies I like. Just try to block the thoughts as best I can.

If you have your own questions that you would like to ask real people that have felt the same way – and want real answers to them stop into the community. Not all the answers will work for everybody, but there will be real answers from real people, and not just telling you to “get over it”.

If I put this as a poll I am sure there would be all the obvious guesses and some creative things as well, but the methods and things that are killing more than 2000 people per day around the world have very little to do with what they endured the final few minutes of their life and everything to do with what they endured during the weeks or even years before those final few minutes. The things they felt in the time leading up the final minutes are what killed them and more importantly, nearly all of these things could be addressed in other ways if only somebody had taken the time to really listen and try to help.

The list I am going to share is the list of things that are killing nearly a million people a year. From the site, I have come to understand what many suicidal people I have personally spoke with were dealing with. These are the things that are killing the people, and unlike the searches for painless methods and easy methods, these are all marked by incredibly intense and unendurable pain, a pain so bad that somebody would literally rather die than face another hour of it. In no particular order –

1. Break ups – Whether it is a divorce after year sand the loss of a family or the first love of a young teen that lasted a few months. The thing to remember about this is it is not a break up and go on to the next for all people. For some it is the first or only person in the world they ever loved or felt loved by and without that person they cannot see a possibility of love in their life again. Life without the possibility of love is hard thing to face. The real issue here is if there was enough love around them when they felt this way, most would realize that it is not going to be a life without love, but simply a life without that love- still painful, but maybe bearable. It is the lack of love they feel from all sources that make them believe it will be a life of no love at all, and it is what they feel that fuels their pain, not what others think.
2. Failure– Real or perceived is really of no matter. Maybe they were fired from a job, or did not make a sports team, got bad grades in school, or just didn’t finish a project on time. The difference in spending a lifetime of savings and years into a failed business, or getting cut from the Varsity team is measured by the person feeling it, not what happened. Whatever the failure or series of failures, in the end they do not see themselves as anything but a failure and their shame will not allow them to entertain the possibility that others see them differently.
3. Money – Life is hard and everybody is ultimately controlled to some extent by money. The adages od money can’t buy happiness are true, but it is also true that it is hard to be happy if you are facing homelessness, or feel ashamed when people ask you what you do. There are some that would rather die than face the idea of accepting help freely offered, and the real truth is there is not enough help anyway for those that really need it. When every thought of your day is on how you will pay for something or how to support yourself and your family some people start seeing themselves as just another bill and part of the problem.
4. Rejection and feeling excluded – Everybody faces rejection at some point in their life. Some people cannot ever remember feeling anything else. It may be because they never have, or it may be because the overwhelming sense of rejection from an incident blinds them to past successes, but in the end they die because their feeling of rejection is greater than the total of positive input form others in their lives to help them feel something different. They know they will never fit in because everything they feel tells them that. It may be they feel excluded from all the others and rejected by friends that were too busy to call, or that every girl they ever spoke to said no to a date, but they would rather die than let another rejection add more to the overwhelming pain they already feel.
5. Being left behind – Some people look around and see everybody they went to school with already has a job, marriage, house etc. Maybe it is even a simple as their friends already have girlfriends or boyfriends, or perhaps they are approaching middle age and realizing the dream of family and children is becoming impossible, or elderly and need to accept those possibilities are gone. In the end, they see everybody else as so far ahead of them and they cannot see a way to ever catch up.
6. Loneliness – some people truly have no family and no friends. Some people are surrounded by others all day but feel like they have to hide their real selves so much that nobody really knows them. If nobody knows them then they feel just as alone as somebody that has nobody in their lives at all. Humans are social animals, and isolation and seclusion have been used as punishment and even torture for centuries. It is hardly surprising that if somebody equates their life to something used as torture that ending that existence seems a better choice.
7. Feeling irrelevant – All anybody really wants to do is make a difference. When the feeling that it no longer matters what you do or think has any value to anybody becomes pervasive enough it is hard to hold on to a will to live. If a person believes were they gone nobody would be impacted, it is hard to find a way to face even the simplest of struggles in daily life because they feel there is no reason to anymore.
8. Physical health – Some social scientists have theorized when a person’s body begins to fail them it is a clear evolutionary sign that it is time to die and that invokes a response in the brain to do that. If that is true or not is open to debate, but when disease, frailty of age, or simply bad luck results in the loss of physical ability, plus the fact this is sometimes combined with very real physical pain, it is seen by many as a sure sign that it is time to give in and die. The loss of health regardless of cause is a reminder of ultimate mortality and then it is becomes more of a question of when and how. Fear and pain added to the natural urge to control one’s own fate make this result in premature death for millions.
9. Being a burden – This is when a person feels the cost of others for their own existence is greater their contribution. It may be completely inaccurate or it may be a fact that using a slide rule would have a financial advantage if they were not there, but being a burden and contributing are based on far more than dollars and cents. The intangibles are there, but if a person cannot see them or does not feel them all that is left is the feeling that the people they love would be better off if they were not there and the taking of their life as the last thing they have to offer to make life better for those around them.
10. Mental Illness –In nearly all of the above situations some form of mental illness may play a part. Depression and anxiety can certainly result from many of these situations and feelings. The illness then takes on a life of its own and needs to be treated and dealt with. There is however the very real fact that sometimes it is just the mental illness that made a person feel a certain way, or caused them to be in these situations. Since many estimate a full third or even more of people with mental illness never receive any treatment at all it is unsurprising that even the more treatable mental illnesses have a higher mortality rate then some forms of cancer.

If you or somebody you know has ever felt like these situation apply, or maybe feel some of these things now, get help. Even just consider talking to others that do and have felt the same way. It will not solve the problem, and it will not make the problem disappear overnight, but it will be easier to understand. A chance to talk without worrying about what the people listening are thinking because they have felt the same things is a valuable experience.

Knowing others have felt the same way and finding out that there are ways to make the pain stop without dying has value. In the end, people die because it is the only way they can find to stop the pain. If someone is looking for a way to stop the pain and have not found it by themselves, they should talk to a professional. If they cannot or don’t feel ready for that, then try talking to people that understand, are willing to listen, and that will not judge in our community forum and chatrooms.

Start creating your plan at a moment when you’re still capable of feeling some hope, and have some belief that life is worth living. If you can’t imagine feeling that way, then get someone who cares about you and knows you well to help. Start by writing down a collection of warning signs that you are starting to become severely depressed and suicidal. These warning signs will help you and others recognize when you are likely to need extra support. Examples of warning signs might be, “Withdrawing from friends and family,” or “loss of interest in hobbies.”

Next, write down a list of coping strategies that you can use to make yourself feel a bit better. Some people take a hot shower, or cuddle with a pet, or take a walk. The goal isn’t to make you feel all the way better immediately. There may be nothing that can do that. The point is to give you some things to try before you give up completely. Sometimes even feeling a tiny bit better can be enough to take your mind off suicide.

The next step is to write down the names and phone numbers of family and friends who might be able to help you when you are suicidal. You might want to call and talk to these people first and ask them if you can put them on your emergency list. If you know ahead of time that it’s okay to call someone at two in the morning when you’re at the end of your strength, then you won’t feel reluctant to call when you’re in crisis.

Finally, write a list of professional people you can call in case of emergency, along with their phone numbers. Include your doctor, counselor if you have one, and the number for the local hospital. Again, it’s a good idea to find out ahead of time what will happen if you call after hours. You don’t want to be stuck talking to an answering machine if you’re in crisis!

Share your suicide safety plan with supportive people who are close to you, so they know how to take care of you if you become suicidal. Keep it with you in your purse or wallet. If you’re worried about someone finding it and judging you, just don’t label it “Suicide Safety Plan.” Call it something like “Important Phone Numbers.”

If suicidal thoughts and feelings strike, keep going step by step through your plan until you feel safe.