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.

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.

Like so many other situations of people feeling suicidal, the feeling of “there is no hope and  nobody cares” is one thing, but the reality is quite different. In the case of abused children and teens in most countries around the world the reality is very different. While they have been abused and misled by terror and pain, as well as being conflicted by societal beliefs that “families should stick together” and that it is wrong to “say anything that could get a family member in trouble” the reality is society is well aware of the need to protect those that cannot protect themselves and set up many avenues of help.

The solution to getting out of an abusive environment is simply to not be silent. Not only do you need to tell somebody, but you need to tell somebody that can actually help. Another teen or child is unlikely able to help much at all. Telling an anonymous stranger on the internet in a chat group or forum will not solve the problem of abuse. Talking about it on social media will not make the problem go away.

If you have told a parent or other adult about someone abusing you and they do not immediately act then you cannot depend on them to ever act. It is not for them to “work out” or “try to talk to the person”. If they do anything but make clear you are safe by taking you to a safe place and involving the authorities then you have not told the right person. If they appear angry with you do not trust that they are going to help you and do not stay in a dangerous situation while they “try to figure it out”.

Who to Tell

In the US there are many people you can go to. The easiest are teachers, guidance counselors, and/or school principals where you likely can talk without worrying about the parent or family member over hearing since you are there daily. Do not let them brush it aside and tell the absolute truth. If you exaggerate in any way you run the risk of an investigation showing parts being a lie so then the assumption is all may be a lie.

Do not lie about it, and do not hide parts. You do not need to tell the precise details or relive the abuse in anyway with the school faculty, but you have to say physically abused with hands/ belt/ whatever actually happens, or sexually abused by touching or forcing sex/ sexual contact. Tell them what happened and that you want them to get you help and they will. Do not try to use innuendo or hints and expect them to guess. Like pulling off a band aid- just do it and get it said directly to make it easier. If any reason you feel like they are not getting you help or not believing, immediately ask to see the guidance counselor or principal- get another member of the staff involved and repeat what happens or has happened and that you want them to get you help.

In addition to teachers, school staff, you can go into any hospital or medical facility and tell the nurses or doctors there. Most often on a regular doctor visit they ask a question about do you feel safe in your home. If you do not say no and tell them why and that you want help. You can call 911 in the US and tell them and they will send help immediately and stay on the phone with you until help gets there. You can call 211 and get immediate help as well from social service agencies as well as police if needed. Since you are using a computer to read this you can go to www.211.org to get help. Be cautious with using your computer – if you need help then get help. Simply looking for help and not getting it while using a computer that could show you are looking for help could endanger you in a sexually or physically abusive situation. Actually get the help so that you do not risk the abuser seeing you are thinking about it but you have not yet got it.

There are also specific child help lines in US –

https://www.childhelp.org/hotline/     1-800-422-4453

Every state has its own helplines as well. Search for “Child helpline <state> “

Other countries al have their own mandated reporters to help, in most of Western Europe they are similar to the US ones, but dialing the emergency services number will work as will talking to the school and asking them to help you get help and contact the correct place to get safe.

UK – https://www.childline.org.uk/     Call 0800 1111

In other countries simply search for “child helpline (country)” to find the resources you use.

If you are a child and are being abused, you have the power to stop it. Simply tell the people that can help you and ask for that help.

Talking can allow valuable input from others on how to deal with situations. It allows the person talking to get the benefit of both experience and knowledge of others in processing  problems and issues when the listener gives feedback. Even just affirmation that it is a legitimate problem or feeling has value. The sharing of problems very often gives a feeling of having lessened the burden some because once it is shared there is a perception that you are not alone with the issue anymore.

So why is it so hard to talk about problems and feelings? Social pressures and stigmas can make some feel weak or needy if they talk about things. The urge to be self-reliant is very strong in many people and even kindled by cultural expectations. Even if one can overcome the cultural or learned social expectations, there are still ramifications about some issues.

Talking about money problems could lead others to believe the person is not responsible or even untrustworthy. Talking about feelings may make others feel they are over sensitive or “too uptight”. Whether people like to admit it or not, even while they tell people to talk about their problems, when the person does finally open up there are far too often real unintended real world ramifications to the way others see them or feel about them. It only takes a couple episodes of negative responses for a person to decide the risk of talking outweighs the potential benefit.

Where professional counselors and therapists come in is they allow the positive benefits of sharing the problems and feelings without the same potential social risks. Moreover, they are trained in how to guide conversations to be more productive, and to see past smaller issues to the larger underlying issues.

An oversimplified example might be the problem wasn’t the spouse forgot to pick up some grocery items on the way home that caused the person to feel like they are in a doomed relationship, the real problem is they feel like they are never listened to or that the person does not care about their needs or desires in general.

From this point the trained professional might help a person go through a logical list of examples where the spouse has done these things many times or that it is actually infrequent and allow a person to determine if the reaction is justified or not, and in that manner to cope with the feelings better; or the opposite and see the reason the person was so upset about a small thing was it is in fact a small example of a recurring much larger problem, so while the specific thing was small, they were correct in being alarmed overall and not over-reacting.

While having a trained professional is a great support, not all have access to counselors and therapists, and it is not reasonable to be able to get a professional for everything that comes up a person might want to discuss. Many people in the world simply do not have a large enough support network of trustworthy friends or family to listen to them. Some issues also have too high of social risk to for many to feel comfortable talking about to friends or family.

If topics like depression and anxiety carry a high social risk, then how does one discuss self-harm like cutting, or actual suicidal thoughts without feeling like they are seriously risking the relationship and trust of their friends and family? If somebody has suicidal thoughts on a frequent basis or has been suffering from depression for a long period of time they cannot see a professional every time a negative thought enters their mind. Friends and family often have no experience in listening and offering feedback on these issues, so that silence comes across as not caring and may make it feel like sharing was  a mistake.

Use of anonymous peer support groups has been proven very effective for many people in dealing with the harder problems and feelings. Everything from addiction to suicidal thoughts has peer groups that will allow people talk to others that have had similar experiences so are not judgmental, and the anonymous nature relieves the social risk of disclosure. Also peer support groups allow far more frequent help than professional services. They fulfill the vital role of sharing thoughts and feelings while relieving the burden of feeling alone, without social risk to the person that is sharing. It is a chance to talk to people that actually understand the feelings and problems because they have had similar feelings or issues currently or in the past. It allows one to not only have a chance to talk, but to be listened to and understood as well.

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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.