Why does everything I touch turn to shit?

Why is everything always like this?

Why can’t I be normal like everyone else?

Photo courtesy of Freepik

If you are asking these questions, you are not alone. Many folks feel the same way. In fact, search engines are asked ‘why am I such a fuck up’ thousands of times a month. We can’t all be as screwed up as we feel like we are, can we? If you’ve come here then you’ve probably searched online just like a hundred other people have today. This article will talk about some of the reasons why we think the way we do, and how to feel better about ourselves and offer some hope. When you’re done reading, considering going into the forum area where you can also find our live chat. Sometimes just being around other people who understand how you’re feeling is enough to keep going for another day. 

Life can be a meat grinder from day one. How we deal with life is often dictated by what happens to us as children. The things parents, teachers and other authority figures say and do get “locked” into our brains. For example, a parent says, “I wish you had never been born”, or “you’ll never amount to anything”. These hurtful words become like recordings that play in our minds over our lifetime and affect the choices we make. Of course physical and sexual abuse scar us also in horrible ways (I am a victim of childhood sexual abuse). I spent most of my life thinking I wasn’t good enough, that I was bad and ugly and useless.

It has taken many years of therapy to take down those recordings of abuse that played in my mind for so many years. That is the way out of these negative thought patterns. One technique of fighting these messages that my therapist taught is positive affirmations. The way affirmations work is pretty simple but requires patience and practice. One of my early ones was “I am beautiful and worthy.” It was hard to say, but I kept at it. This might feel silly at first but again, you have to keep at it for it to work. 

Here are some affirmations to get you started. You don’t need to pick many. Just choose one or two to get started:

• I am a strong, capable person
• I have done difficult things in the past, and I can do them again
• I have experienced challenges in the past, and I am more resilient because of this
• I am allowed to feel upset, angry, and sad sometimes—that’s part of being human
• My personal boundaries are important and I’m allowed to express my needs to others
• “No” is a complete sentence and I don’t have to explain or justify my boundaries
• I am allowed to feel good and to experience pleasure in life
• I am worthy of receiving good things and of accomplishing my goals in life
• The past is the past, and my past doesn’t predict my future
• I forgive myself for mistakes I made and I refuse to hold them against myself

I posted mine on my bathroom mirror, so I would have it in view several times a day. Another place would be the fridge. You can also use your phone to store and set reminders.

Photo courtesy of Freepik

Another area to be aware of is what is called cognitive distortions. This is a fancy word for the things that go through our minds that cause us to be unhappy in life. My therapist and other mental health professions educated me on these concepts and they were a life changer. Becoming aware of what I was thinking was the first step. I used journaling quite often to increase my awareness of my thought patterns.

Knowing the problem is the first step to fixing it. The following list, taken from an article by Harvard Medical School is a good place to start. 

Once you are aware of cognitive distortions in your thinking, you can combat them. One method is to write out a “camera check” of an event that is causing you difficulty. One one column, write what you believe is happening, then in the other column try and look logically at the situation as if you were a third person observer. I ferreted out many of these distortions in my thinking over the years and am still working on it.

• Black-and-white (or all-or-nothing) thinking: I never have anything interesting to say.
• Jumping to conclusions (or mind-reading): The doctor is going to tell me I have cancer.
• Personalization: Our team lost because of me.
• Should-ing and must-ing (using language that is self-critical that puts a lot of pressure on you): I should be losing weight.
• Mental filter (focusing on the negative, such as the one aspect of a health change which you didn’t do well): I am terrible at getting enough sleep.
• Overgeneralization: I’ll never find a partner.
• Magnification and minimization (magnifying the negative, minimizing the positive): It was just one healthy meal.
• Fortune-telling: My cholesterol is going to be sky-high.
• Comparison (comparing just one part of your performance or situation to another’s, which you don’t really know, so that it makes you appear in a negative light): All of my coworkers are happier than me.
• Catastrophizing (combination of fortune-telling and all-or-nothing thinking; blowing things out of proportion): This spot on my skin is probably skin cancer; I’ll be dead soon.
• Labeling: I’m just not a healthy person.
• Disqualifying the positive: I answered that well, but it was a lucky guess.

For more information on cognitive distortions, check out this article by Harvard Medical.

You are not a failure. Liffe has handed you some difficult things and your mind has done what it could to cope. You can feel better. You can have hope.

How do you take it if somebody says they want to kill themselves because of their acne? When thinking about the contributing factors to suicide a lay person’s fast list might look like- divorce or break up, financial problems, drug abuse, chronic depression, grief over death of loved one and many more such tragedies. If you know anything about actual suicide facts and statistics you should take it very seriously.

For the majority of people acne means a 5-10 year period of having to wash their face a few times a day with a very mild soap or antiseptic cleanser, the embarrassment of an oversized pimple on picture day, school dance, or long anticipated date, and perhaps a few rude comments about the alien growth that appeared overnight on their face. For most, as they finish high school or by the time they enter their twenties, acne is typically no more than a very mild inconvenience and a sense of relief at having made it through that awkward stage.

Life is not so kind to all, however. There are some people where no amount of cleanser and face clarifying lotions and potions have any effect. Endless outbreaks of painful and sometimes disfiguring pimples and pustules go on for years from the onset of puberty and sometimes continue on well into their twenties or longer.

The Pain Caused by Acne  

It would be bad enough if it were simply dealing with the pain and discomfort, but the physical issues is often said to be the lesser pain when compared with the emotional abuse heaped upon them by others – those that look for ways to tease, embarrass or inflict pain on their peers for no reason other than a perverse feeling of by making others feel worse. These bullies are simply looking to improve their place in the world or their own self of self esteem. Sadly, it proves more impossible to eradicate this sort of person than even the seemingly impossible to control acne some have the misfortune of being afflicted with.

Where the real issue comes from with acne is the emotional pain and scarring that runs much deeper than the superficial scars on their skin. While the reality may be that there are relatively few who are so shallow or just mean enough to use the acne as an excuse to tease and bully, this few makes those suffering feel like that is the way all see them. It often even makes them begin to see themselves as deformed or ugly. Some  claim disgust at seeing their own face and will not go swimming or shorts for fear of exposing back, legs, o other places afflicted with acne or the scarring it has left.

This is where a common physical illness that the majority of people experience to some degree becomes a mental health issue of the most serious kind- the kind where a person feels the self-loathing or perceives disgusts from others that makes them think that death is preferable to living. While difficult to prove, it can be reasonably surmised based on discussions of the feelings that the acne was never the issue at all. They did not decide to attempt suicide because a few pimples or even because of 1000 pimples- they became suicidal because the way they were made to feel while trying to deal with this physical condition.

There are many things that over the years have become taboo. Even the school-yard bully typically will avoid blatant teasing of a person in a wheelchair or similar issue. Acne is one of those leftover areas that are overlooked as acceptable fodder for jokes and bullying. Perhaps because most suffer from some degree at some point they can claim to empathize or understand however that occasional oversized pimple for a couple days is no comparison to years of outbreak and lifelong physical scarring. This claim of “everybody has it – so I am not picking on anybody”  would be unbelievable if it were not so frequently upheld as a reasonable defense so the cruel jokes are ignored and it is implied the individual being taunted needs to “toughen up” instead of action taken against the one inflicting the pain.

Treatments and Reducing the Pain of Acne  

The treatment of severe acne involves both the physical treatment of the affliction and the mental health component that often is the result of being subjected to ridicule and emotional pain amplified by the fact it occurs during the developmental years of puberty early adulthood when a person begins to form their self-image.

Treating the Physical Symptoms

The physical treatment comes in 2 basic forms which are discussed in great detail in many places, but should also be talked to with your health care provider. Self-care, which involves best practices for treatment and prevention of acne and maintaining healthy skin. These involve the typical over the counter washes and antiseptics and extra hygiene care for those prone to acne as well as dietary concerns recommendations. The cost of this type of treatment can vary greatly with many acne treatments for even over the counter care costing $100 or more per month. To help reduce the costs, home remedies are available for those willing to research, but you should always discuss home remedies with a doctor and careful research for their safety as well as effectiveness.

To make this care affordable, it is always a good idea to look at what treatments are available and to carefully shop for these treatments. Many retailers specialize in treatments and have special programs that can be used to reduce costs. Using discount codes and coupons can save a lot of money if you are willing to shop around. Home remedies can be highly effective money savers too if caution is used to ensure safety. There are hundreds of home treatments found with internet searches but stick to things that your doctor can tell you are safe to try.

The other physical treatments are real medical treatments from a dermatologist with prescription medications. These medications include specific very strong treatments of acne for various skin types. There are hormone treatments, such as birth control pills to control the hormones that often trigger acne as well a specific range of high potency acne medications available by prescription only. These are effective at treating acne effectively  in many cases but also carry risks of substantial side effects.

Some common acne medications (such as Accutane/isotretinoin among others) may even cause increased risk of mental health issues such as increased feelings of suicidal behavior. This is perhaps another reason that acne is listed as a cause of suicide. Studies have shown however that suicide as a result of acne is a reality regardless of treatment. Use of these medications must be carefully supervised by your doctor or dermatologist. Make you are well informed of all potential benefits as well as risks before choosing this type of treatment.

What types of treatment are there for acne scars? Acne scars may be treated with laser treatments but they are expensive and sometimes painful for the person receiving treatment. Dermabrasion and dermarolling are also possible helpful treatments for scars from past acne. Botox, another pricey route to controlling the deeper scars of acne is very effective as a treatment and takes several courses of treatment. A treatment approach that looks worse before it gets better is receiving a chemical peel. This approach essentially a multi layer system of taking off layers of skin over a period of 4 visits which, hopefully, improve the appearance of the skin at the end. Speaking with a dermatologist is likely the best route to determining what the best option is for each person.

Treating the Emotional Pain of Acne

The last few paragraphs may have led some readers to believe that feeling suicidal because of acne can be easily fixed by simple medical or home treatment. The real issue with acne and the deep emotional pain caused from having suffered the teasing and personal image issues caused from dealing with acne is in part due to the fact so many believe it can be easily treated and “is not really a big deal”. The fact that for some acne is an inconvenience that may be joked about after the fact as “just part of growing up” does not in any way help those that have more severe or long term physical issues. This stems from people who don’t understand the lasting impact on those acne has affected throughout their lives.

It is hard to deal with emotional scarring if the physical scars are still there every time a person looks in the mirror. Even if one treats the physical scars, the emotional scars still must be dealt with. The biggest psychological issue is the self-perception of being ugly or disgusting based on the way they were treated by others in adolescence while developing their own self-esteem and identity.

Negative comments resound far louder in most people than the positive and, of course, no comment makes a no impression. This means that even though the vast majority of people are not disgusted or bothered at all by another person’s acne and that during a poll, (these people cite they only feel sympathy) the individual is far more affected by the very small minority that make the rude and painful comments. If 100 people do not mention the acne at all because they are not “turned off” or “bothered” by seeing a persons skin, and 1 person says “pepperoni face” or some other insult, the individual feels like the other 99 also thought that. Further, they see themselves and find it “ugly” so decide for themselves they are ugly. This is because we all are far more critical of ourselves than anyone else. How often are we judging others about their physical attributes in this way? Not terribly often yet we believe others are doing it to us.

The treatment for long term emotional pain and mental health issues of self-hate and dysphoria is best addressed through counseling with a professional therapist. If that is not possible because of cost or due to other reasons then there are self-help and self-awareness books and online programs that may help. The self-treatment however is very difficult when the actual issue is that a person dislikes or has a low opinion of themselves. If you had a low opinion of a doctor or therapist, you would not likely listen to what they have to say. If that applies to yourself than trying to convince yourself is equally difficult.

Trying to keep perspective and understanding that jokes on sitcoms are not reflective of world opinion, and the incidents of people that actually were rude about you appearance compared to the hundreds and thousands more people you met that were not is hard, but can be done. Ignoring the negative is easy advice to give and near impossible to follow. What would the advice be if the roles were reversed?

It may however be possible to realize with careful self-analysis that the emotional pain you are feeling about the acne whether it is present or in the past – the pain is being caused by yourself and how you feel about things far more than what others may have said or thought. We cannot make people say something different or think something different but we can influence our own thoughts to try to decide that you are not going to be cruel to yourself just because somebody else has been. Do not let the shallowness and cruelty of a small few become your own shallowness or cruelty towards yourself. Try to get some support or help through friends, family, or peer support instead of isolating. The acne does not kill people, it is their own thoughts and those are cruel thoughts they are having about themselves if they want to kill over the acne, even if it is themselves.

What are YOU doing TODAY to make Tomorrow Better?

If NOTHING, then do not be disappointed when tomorrow is not better…..

I put it on my signature line though not so much as a reminder to people I reply to – but mostly as a reminder to myself- my own mantra of sorts- about how to keep going when things get bad. It is misunderstood mostly because it is applied incorrectly. I get a lot of questions asking how it can be applied in their situation because there are not answers in their situation and things can’t change.  All it is really saying is that every day is a chance to make something better for tomorrow.

I do not believe things get better spontaneously in most instances. The longer we wait to start working on a problem the longer it typically takes to find a solution. Problems have a way of getting worse over time and inaction, not better. That said, most people take my question far too seriously and try to apply it to the big problems in life first. Wife left them – what can they do to make that not an issue for them? Failed out of the University and can’t find a job, already applied for 200 jobs, what can they do to get a paycheck next Friday? What can they do today that solves those issues tomorrow?

The brain has a way of spinning things into a dark place of “how can you do something today to make those issues better” and if I can’t or you can’t answer that, then maybe it is okay to give up because we can’t change it anyway so… It often boils down to looking for a reason to stop trying and spending so much effort, to get the okay to stop trying just because the effort of continuing is so much and we are just plain tired.

My Ideas About Life 

I emphasize “my” ideas because I can’t speak for everybody else and I can’t even be sure I am 100% right on everything I think. I just go with what has worked for me over the last few years.

Life is many things. There are the big things like work, family, relationships, health, financial situation etc. that effect everybody in some way or another. The commonality of all of them is they are big things and for the most part all include a great many things well beyond our personal control. We can’t control the economy, or the thoughts and actions of other people, and for the most part we are stuck with whatever health we are in as many of the big issues are the results of decisions made years before (or genetics) that we cannot change now.

This means in a couple sentences we have taken all the “big important” things in life off the table as out of our direct control because the most we can do is influence them- we cannot control the results. They have too many factors where we are at the mercy of fate/ other people/ luck/god- choose for yourself- but it is not all us, and not just our choices and decisions. Even the parts that are “us” often have components from the decisions of many years before that we can no longer change, so at this point in time with “What can we do today to make tomorrow better” it may be pretty hard to pick something that will have a direct and certain (much less immediate) effect.

I have a lot of health issues. I cannot cure them/fix them and they affect so many facets of life – virtually everything I do. I also have money issues like many people, real employment is not an option due to health, I lost a 6 figure income job due to physical health just as my kids were starting in university, I sometimes have family problems, basically no friends except a few online since I stopped working near 10 years ago, all I have is immediate family that even talk to me, chronic intense pain, and I could go on with the list. Many reading this have similar issues, and many more as well. This is the same list that had me searching for suicide methods 8 or 9 years ago when I found this site, and in all that time the big issues have not changed substantially. But things are much better now than they used to be, why?

People often try to compare their issues with somebody else’s, and both come away thinking something different about who is worse off. The reality is it doesn’t matter because we have to live our own lives, and the problems other people are dealing with do not make our lives better or worse. The problems other people have do not change our life. Just because they may have something “worse”, our life is not improved in any way, and we do not feel better because they have cancer and we do not. We also have to remember in the same way, the successes of other people do not make our lives worse.

Somebody else being happily married, having 2 luxury cars, a boat, and high paying job has no effect on our lives. The first place where many people make themselves miserable is while being very quick to agree that somebody else having bigger problems does nothing make their own problems better, they refuse to see that somebody else’s successes do not make their life worse. The only thing that can really affect our own life is the way we feel and react to our own life. 

What is your life really? Is it politics and the economy and the laws and regulations and statistics of wealth and ownership and debt and all the other things we see on the news? Or is our life what we do when we get up, what we do in the day, in the afternoon, in the evening, and at night? Is it what the average dinner out costs in a large metropolitan area or is it what we have to eat right now for breakfast? I believe our life is really far more about our satisfaction or contentment about ourselves in any given moment or period of time. If there are a lot of good moments throughout the day, it is overall a good day. If there are not a lot (or none) it is a bad day.

What I Have Learned About Depression

I can directly change the way I feel tomorrow morning when I walk into the kitchen to make coffee by doing the dishes and picking up tonight before I go to bed. If my kitchen is nice and clean and smells good, if I can start the coffee and hear the birds out my windows at the bird feeder then my life can be actually okay for that few minutes in the morning- peaceful and relaxing- better because I did the dishes and picked up last night, and fed the birds yesterday.

If when I get up I have to make room in the sink to try to wash out a cup for my coffee while the smell of half sour milk from around the drain is all I notice, then I have to fill the coffee pot with water before I can make coffee, and clear off a place on table before I can even set my coffee cup down my morning is many things- but it is not nice or relaxing. It becomes just another indicator of the worthlessness of my life.

Pretty specific example I know, because that is what depression and trying to learn to adjust was for me. I felt like there was no point in the little things because the big problems were always there, and there was nothing I could do about them. I did not bother shaving, getting dressed, or doing more than the most basic chores around the house- none of it mattered anyway. I was still sick, could not work, was losing so much financially after I got sick, etc. etc. Who has time to care about the little things when all these big real problems need fixing?

Then at some point I cleaned up the kitchen and got things sorted out because I had a health worker stopping by in the morning and I somehow managed to decide I still had some small pride and did not want them to think I was a slob on top of everything else. The next morning I got up and it was nice. The person called and cancelled appointment so never showed up, but the morning coffee was nice. For the first time in over a year there was an hour or two of day that was almost okay. I did not feel better health wise, and none of the financial issues or any problems were dealt with, but I found something I could improve and had done it. So I started trying to do that as often as I could.

I started looking for things I could do to make things a little easier or better. Where I stored my medications, moving bird feeders to where I could see them, just lots and lots of little things. There are so many big problems that I could not change, but by spending more effort on a lot of little things I started adding a few good hours to my day to help offset the many bad ones. As I had more good hours and things felt okay sometimes, then I also found I could do more real work towards the “big things.”

After a while I could concentrate enough to take an online class to learn about digital media and graphics and I got some small freelance jobs that make a little extra money helping out with the financial issues for example. It also gave me more things to do during the day so I was not just staring at walls with my thoughts spinning out of control.

“What we can do today to make tomorrow better” is not always going to be find a job, or even send out 10 job applications- though either one of those might be something. It is anything we can do that will make any moment of tomorrow just a tiny bit better than it was today. The very small little things work to make tomorrow better also. When it feels like virtually everything in our lives is worthless or a problem, there are a ton of things to fix. But after a year, 300 little things being made better all add up, and suddenly tomorrow is a LOT better. 

Life, happiness, peace, and contentment do not depend on just the big things that we don’t have, it is also being able to “smell the roses” and find pleasure and joy or relax in the moment. When all the little things get better or start getting better, then there is energy to really try on the big things. Depression can be so overwhelming that it makes success at the big things nearly impossible, but with the ability to enjoy some small things sometimes we can push back the depression, and make a meaningful effort on the big things again.

I know it all sounds like “just deal with it and be happy anyway.” A more colorful and sarcastic expression “when life gives you a shit sandwich are you supposed to be grateful you are not starving?” No, that is not what I am saying. It is more like I feel like having prime rib, but I am not going to decide to go hungry if all they have is roast chicken. I sincerely believe life is less about what you have and more about what you think about it and if you are able to resist reacting in a manner out of proportion to the issues.  

Forgone Conclusions and Self Fulfilling Prophesies

It is very easy to make small problems bigger and big problems insurmountable. People do it all the time, myself included. It comes from the natural aversion to things that are difficult and/or that may result in failure. By making problems bigger in our minds we give ourselves permission to simply not try at all or to avoid the risk of failing. If somebody has failed at a number of things then it is even more alluring to both avoid the effort of trying and avoid failing. The simple truth is it provides two positives in the short term for what is only a hoped for benefit in the long term. Given that seemingly logical equation, when we are suffering from depression it makes the choice seem obvious.

The reality is that while it saves some effort and the risk of failure, it also make success impossible. The answer to that in the depressed mind is even if it did work out then it would not last anyway. Then with the now insurmountable problems firmly established in our minds plus the “fact” that it will not stay good even if it did work, we are not going to work on big problems or issues but simply use them as excuses, and since we cannot fix the now big problems there is no point in doing the small things either as nothing will ever make life “good”. In deciding that we do in fact ensure that everything in our life is bad. It also makes us know on some level by not having tried that we have failed yet again, compounding the original fears.

There are in fact some situations that cannot be changed, or that are hopeless to continue to put effort into. If somebody has died they are gone, some medical or physical health situations are beyond hope, there are even some mental health issues that have no complete cure as of yet, and a break-up or divorce may well be final. We need to face the reality that all of these things, while having no full solution, are also relatively common place and do not prevent millions of other people from having a decent quality of life. It is a matter of not allowing our reaction to a situation or even combination of situations to dictate every aspect of our life.

There are always places where you can make life better. They do not have to be big things. Maybe the answers do not even exist to all the big things. But the hours in your day are filled with a lot of small things, and finding ways to make those small things meaningful gives life value. You cannot appreciate the smaller things if all the time all your focus is on the big problems or on the things you do not have. But there are ways to make the small things better which in turn makes the hours in the morning, during the day, and through your evenings better. When some things start to get better it becomes easier to either accept the things you cannot change, or to find energy and ability to change those that you can (even if they require a lot of effort).

If every day you put in the effort to make even one small thing better for the next day, then over time things do improve. When a year has passed and 350+ things in your life are better it is hard to feel like there is nothing good in your life. In fact, you start to feel like life may have problems, but it is worth it. Just by using today to make something better for tomorrow.

If you’d like to start doing something today, come join our community here.

All the advice, everywhere, about abusive relationships tell you to get out – to leave – to stop the monster that is hurting you. But what do you do when the person making your life unbearable, the person that is making you desperately want to die to make it stop, is you? What do you do when ‘I hate myself’ isn’t just a throw away comment, but is, instead, a pain so deep that you would do anything to make it end?

I’d Be Better Off Dead

Sometimes it feels like it is impossible for anything to get better – you’ve screwed things up so badly that there is no coming back. Nothing you do is right, nothing you do is good enough. It feels like there is no escape, because the person you need to run away from is the one person you can never leave behind. I understand that feeling well; I have been there myself, standing in the ruins of a life I have obliterated so completely that I cannot even find the pieces, let alone start to put them back together. How do you start to repair things, to build a life that feels worth living when the moment things seem to get better, the moment something good happens, you self destruct and blow it all to pieces again?

Here on SF, I see it every day. Kind, warm, caring people who give up their time and energy to reach out and help other people in pain, because they know what it feels like to hate yourself – what it feels like to loathe yourself with such venom that you want to die. The world is full of good people who hate themselves so much, feel so disgusted by their mistakes, by their own thoughts and actions, that they believe they would be better off dead. I have spoken to literally hundreds of them. If you are reading this, there is a good chance that you came here because you are one of them.

Forgiving Yourself

Maybe you are here because you feel like you don’t deserve forgiveness. You do. I don’t know what you have done, what choices you have made. I don’t know anything about you, but I know that if you were not a good person you would not feel so bad – you would not care so much that you want to die. If you deserved the hate you direct at yourself, you would not be able to feel it. You deserve to be forgiven. You deserve love and support and people who care about you. You deserve to be heard.

I am not trying to tell you that you are perfect just the way you are. Nobody is perfect. But imperfection is what makes us able to empathise, to love, to do the amazing things that humans do as they strive to be better. I am not telling you that you do not need to change; everyone changes, over time, and if there are things about yourself that you truly hate then you can work on changing those things. I know how easy it is to think that you need to change everything – that there is nothing good worth keeping or saving. You’re wrong. You may need help to see the good things; that happens when you have spent so long in such a dark place – it is hard to see the light. It is okay to need help. It is okay to ask for it. You may not feel you deserve it but you, like the other hundreds and hundreds of people who come to SF hating themselves, are wrong.

It’s Easier to Believe the Bad Things

Sometimes self hate doesn’t even come from things we did, or the mistakes we made. Sometimes self hate is built by other people – people who lie to us about who we are. Bullies come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they are people who pretend to be friends, sometimes they are parents. When they are people who are supposed to love us, it is easy to believe that they are mean or violent because we deserve it.

It is hard enough when the negative words in our heads are our own. When they belong to people we love, it is that much harder to ignore them. To be told that you are not enough – not smart enough, not pretty enough, not g00d enough. If you get told often enough that you are a failure or that you are stupid or broken or ugly, especially by someone you love, it is easy for those lies to become your reality. Please, don’t let them. I know it is not easy and I know it hurts. I know that the only thing you want right now is to be someone worth loving, to be someone who deserves to live. I know you don’t believe it is possible and that is okay – let us believe it for you until you are ready to hear the truth from people who see you without the blackened tint of self loathing. Talk to us.

Depression is a Liar

Depression lies. It is a dark insidious thing that creeps into our brains and whispers to us that our more negative feelings about ourselves are true. Many people have no idea that the sucking black hole inside them that makes them feel like people would be better off without them is an illness. Depression makes people pull away from their friends because they believe they are bad for them, that they will hurt them. It tells people that ‘nobody likes you anyway’. It distorts and it warps and it leaves you believing there is nothing good left. Depression can make you believe that you are a worthless failure that will never amount to anything; it can make you believe you are too ugly to leave the house and that the world would be better off if you were dead.

If you feel any of these things, however much you believe that you feel them because they are true, you need the help of a doctor and you need the support of people who understand those feelings. I understand you do not believe you deserve that help. I understand you hate yourself because you believe you deserve that hatred. Let us show you that isn’t true. Join our community and talk to people who have beaten those feelings, people who can help you change the things you want to change and accept the things that you simple do not need to. Let us hold a candle in that darkness and show you the good things you cannot see for yourself.

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.

Humans in general have two conflicting prevalent desires or attitudes. People are never satisfied- whatever level one achieves, they want more or better. This is not a flaw, it inspires progress, improvement, and the reaching of ever higher levels and capabilities. The other general attitudes is the dislike of change, the desire for things to remain constant and the same. This also is not a flaw despite being so contrary to the first as it inspires stability and considered thought as opposed to impulsive or impetuous decisions.

Taken together though, these two contrary desires often result in great dissatisfaction with life and the way people live. We want things to be different and better and for there to be progress, but many times our fear of change and longing for stability and comfort with the known prevents us from taking the often times obvious steps needed to result in a better situation and happiness.

While the ‘nothing ever changes until something changes’ truism applies equally to great geo-political issues and world policy issues such as climate change and world hunger, looking at it on the smaller more personal level of how we live day to day and the effect it has on our happiness and contentment in daily life will allow us to consider some new ideas that can have a near immediate effect on happiness and quality of life.

We are Creatures of Habit and Routine

People tend to be creatures of habit and routine. We do things over and over again day after day and develop the habits and routines that allow us to function in the fast paced world we now live in. If you were to list every single task done each day from get up brush teeth go work – all the tasks at work or school –  getting to wherever going – drive, turn left here , stop at sign- eat lunch etc. etc. you would have  a list of hundreds of tiny tasks you do each day. The only way to manage this many tasks is by force of habit or routine. The majority of them are done without conscious thought because they have become so routine. This is a necessary coping mechanism to deal with the complexity of modern living and lifestyles.

We tend to fear or at the least be uncomfortable with even minor changes to our routine because life experience tells us that changes to our routine cause difficulty and stress. It often boils down to the simple concept of fear of the unknown. We are not necessarily happy with the way something is going, but we know what the result will be. When we change things we have a hoped for result but also the possibility of failure or making things worse. If things are already hard, the risk of making things worse can cause a person to settle for bad result instead of even risk a worse.

The Downward Spiral to Depression

The smallest things can have the most dramatic results, particularly when dealing with depression. Depression often becomes a seemingly endless cycle. Getting out of bed or leaving the house may physically hurt when the depression gets bad enough. The needed routines to cope with the complex modern life style become too much. Everything just feels like too much.

Instead of following the established pattern and going to work or school, the choice is made to stay home, to stay in bed. Instead of getting dressed you might stay in pajamas, and since all the patterns changed, the shower, shaving, and whole range of other things stop to. Once the big routine breaks down, it is all gone and it becomes too hard to try to remember to do all the little things out of order so instead none are done.

After even just a few days of this, however, and that is the new routine. The aversion to change that routine starts. We do not want to shower or go out of the house, or do the chores because our new routine involves none of those things and even though life sucks, we are managing. We often say that is the way we “cope” with extreme depression. Except that is not coping with depression at all. That is allowing the depression to become the habit we live and pattern we live by.

We do not want to change it because even though it hurts and we say we cannot take the constant depression and pain anymore, we do not want to risk the possibility of more pain by going out of the house. We want to avoid the potential pain of going back to school or work.  While we are ready to die to end feeling so bad, we are not ready to take a shower and start changing the depression routine we have gone into.

Part of that routine often becomes the fixation on how feeling so awful, and the fixation with sadness and death and heartache. Listening to sad songs, searching for suicide methods online, looking through social media to prove our lives are worse than others. It all comes back to rationalizing and justifying how we feel, and therefore why we should not change. We tell anybody that will listen we will do anything to stop the pain all the while we do nothing but embrace it. We ask how to fix it and overlook the most simple.

We feel the sadness, isolation, and despair because that is how we felt when we stopped getting up, stopped socializing, stopped engaging with life. We are continuing on or increasingly doing all of those things (isolating, staying in bed or room, and avoiding normal hygiene) and yet say we are waiting for our mood to change, for the depression to lessen. We are listening to the sad music, focusing on the negative, searching out suicide methods type things more, so the depression deepens, not lessens. Nothing changes until something changes. The only way to make the cycle stop is to change something. Get out of bed and get dressed. Pick up the room. Turn off the sad music and put on something else. Resume the typical chores associated with normal living. Get out of the house and live even if you do not feel like doing it.

What Triggered the Depression?

The not wanting to do anything else is a function of both mood and habit/routine. It gets comfortable to isolate and changing is both hard and seems like it has risks. After all, it was “out there in the world” that this started, right? Not usually. If you actually look at it, “out there” started as a bad day or two or something bad happening. That made us upset or sad.  The sad and upset changed our good routines into the isolation, and the playing sad songs “to cope”. That isolation and intentional immersion into our own place then grew by itself, as a product of the repeated actions we took in reaction to something hard or sad. The depression was not triggered by the relative dying, or not getting the job, or boyfriend breaking up with us. The depression was actually triggered by our reaction to that event– the isolating and playing sad songs, and withdrawal from life that initiated the new routine as opposed to by the event itself.

Just like a change from the other routine may have gotten us here, a change from this current routine is needed to get you out of this dark place. Some call it “fake it til you make it”, but it is not about pretending to be happy and suddenly you will fool yourself into being happy. People are not that simplistic and dumb.

Changes to make Happiness at Least Possible

It is about putting yourself into situations and changing the way you are doing things so happiness is possible. It is damn hard to feel happy listening to sad music and watching sad shows on TV and reliving every sad or bad memory you have ever had hour after hour, day after day. None of those things are apt to make you suddenly start smiling and feeling good. If doing those things suddenly made you happy and feel good then you would have a serious mental issue.

The changing to a situation where happiness is at least possible must be a conscious and intentional process. It will not happen spontaneously in somebody deep into depression, yet that is what the person in depression feels like needs to happen. They want to feel different before doing different and that process is as simple as the “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Yet that is what the typical depressed individual is doing. You have to change the action first to result in a change of mood second.

When somebody says you have to “snap out of it”, “just pull yourself together and put it behind you”, or other such maddening advice pause before jumping to anger. On first pass you may think “If I could do that then I would” and let it anger you and push you back further into the isolation believing they clearly do not understand. Try to hear it differently. They are not saying you can stop the depression on a whim. They are saying you must stop putting yourself in a place where it is impossible to feel anything else.

They see you not leaving your room and being sad for not friends and lonely, listening to sad music, watching heartbreaking shows on TV and can’t stop feeling sad. They see you looking through Facebook and talking about how great others are doing while you are stuck alone in your room not going to work and see the other issue you are missing. Nobody could feel happy in that situation, so snap out of it means to change something about that situation you are in so that happiness is at least possible.

Ready for a change? Click here to join us for a chat today.

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. 

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”.