What the Suicidal Person Wants You to Know…

This took me about 2 weeks to write – because even though I consider myself “recovered”, I am not too far removed from the darkness. It doesn’t take much for me to get *that* bad, but it has gotten a lot easier to bring myself out of it, and that’s progress.

Anyway - I’ve wanted to talk about this but it’s always felt a little dark, and I don’t want it to be. I think this is important. If people on the outside could get a better understanding of what severe depression feels like, they can be a better resource for their friend, sister, brother, parent, child, or stranger. They could help save someone’s life.

However, I realize there is no “light” way to talk about suicidal thoughts, but as a recovered suicidal person, I am going to try my best.

This is the picture the media, society, whoever… has painted of the “suicidal person”.

That person is sad. That person is pessimistic. That person is dramatic. That person lacks a support system. That person needs to pray more.

Very rarely are those things true.

In fact, these assumptions are incredibly unhelpful.

Here is my experience, here is my *darkness*

That person is sad.

I can’t even call it sad. Sad doesn’t touch the surface of what is happening here.

I wasn’t feeling intense sadness, I was feeling nothing at all – which is worse. Sadness implies you have something to be sad about. I had nothing to be sad about. I was in a life stage I had been longing for. I was a mom!!!! I’ve wanted so badly to be a mom! And yet, *nothing*.

I felt worthless. I wasn’t good enough to be a mom. I was failing my son, he deserved better. I felt guilty for not feeling happy. I felt guilty for feeling consumed by nothingness. It became physically painful for me to do anything, and when all my responsibilities piled up in front of me, I sat in awe of how worthless I was. I proved all those negative thoughts right. I fell so behind on my day-to-day tasks that I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t catch up; I couldn’t start over… and that’s when death started feeling like an option. I wasn’t sad, I was overwhelmed. I wanted a re-start button. The closest thing to a restart button, was death.

That person is pessimistic, dramatic.  

There is no one on earth who wanted to be happy more than I did. I tried so hard to just *be happier*. I wanted to wake up and feel myself again. In my darkest moment I remember asking my husband as he held me sobbing “why does everything have to feel like this?”.

I did not want to feel what I was feeling. No one wanted me to get better more than I did. No one CHOOSES to feel depressed. Depression consumes you in a way that leads you to believe you have no other option but darkness, or more darkness.

I once had someone I love very much tell me, “It can’t be that bad”.

That sentence broke me. I was trying my very hardest to hold myself together, exhausting every fiber of my being just to barely scrape by, and for what? To be told I was, what? Dramatic?

It is that bad. No matter how it looks on the outside, if someone tells you its ~THAT~ bad, believe them. Love them, support them, help them… but do not doubt them. I’ve never broken my arm, but I know that it probably hurts. If you have never felt that pain, you can still muster up some empathy.

That person lacks a support system.

This may be true for some people, but it wasn’t for me. I had the world’s most supportive and understanding husband who was doing everything he could possibly think of to get me the help I so desperately needed, but I still felt alone in my own thoughts. I felt immensely guilty that my husband was having to take on my burden, I felt weak, I felt unworthy. Everything I was feeling on my own, doubled in size when I shared it with my husband, feeling shameful that he had to spend even 1 second of his time worrying about me.

To a normal person, you’d think “well that’s just not true, he loves you and wants what’s best for you, he was just doing his part, you aren’t a burden.”

You are correct, normal person, that is the case. But depression did not let me think that logically. It made me believe that I was undeserving of the love I was receiving, I was a bad wife, a worse mother. These thoughts cycled in my brain, worsening in intensity until I was so alone in my own head, it did not matter how much love and help I was receiving, I’d been convinced that if I was dead, my husband would have less to worry about.

It sounds extreme. That’s because it is.

People think suicide is “selfish”. I’m guilty of that. Before having experienced this darkness, I’d probably agree with that statement. I would have thought, “how could they do that to their families?”.

What I learned in the darkness is that suicidal people have been lied to by their depression. Depression has convinced them, as it convinced me, that their death would be a welcomed sigh of relief for their loved ones. That dying would be a favor.

Onto my last soapbox –

That person needs to pray more.

I got this “advice” a lot. This, to me, was the most harmful advice I received. Let me first clarify, this is the insinuation that the severely depressed person is somehow not “spiritual” enough, that they could “spend more time with God” and be “cured”. 

I know people who told me this did not mean it harmfully, but in my darkest moments, this advice just made me feel more alone.

I had been praying, I had been seeking out God. Guess what? I was still depressed. I still thought I was better off dead.

At night, after my baby and husband had gone to sleep, I’d sit in prayer. Most of the time through heavy tears, I would plead for God to take away the pain, to take away the darkness, or even to just take me away from all of it, I’d tell Him how thankful I was for all the blessings I had, but I struggled to feel the joy of being “blessed”. I spent countless nights crying myself to sleep, only to wake up and do it again.

Depression would rear its ugly head and say, “not even God can save you.”

I was led to believe that God’s cure for depression was somewhere in between the lines of verses about anxiety, overcoming obstacles or finding strength. That simply isn’t true.

When the bible does address depression and suicide, the answer is far from “pray harder”.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah is overwhelmed, he is tired, he is comparing himself to others and he just doesn’t understand “God’s plan” for him. He gives up. Elijah becomes suicidal and asks God to take his life.

God sends an angel to Elijah who tells him to “take rest, eat cake”. 

When he is rested, Elijah seeks God again. He still feels unworthy and overwhelmed. God understands, so to ease Elijah’s burden, He names 2 men who Elijah can depend on to step in for him, and a 3rd man who is to be his right-hand man.  

Gods actual cure for depression had 3 parts.

1. Take rest

2. Fuel your body (eat cake)

3. Ease the burden

This brings me to the real point of this post.

Lets summarize all the things that are NOT helpful to say to a severely depressed or suicidal person.

UNHELPFUL

-          choose happiness

-          just be happier

-          you are just sad, sadness will pass

-          you need to be more positive

-          you are being dramatic

-          it’s not that bad

-          you are being selfish

-          spend more time with God/in prayer

-          maybe you need a hobby

-          try making new friends

- everybody feels like that sometimes

-          you need to “get out” more

(if I missed one, please DM me, I will add to this list because I think its helpful to know)

If these are all the wrong and unhelpful, then what is right? What is helpful?

Ultimately, what helped me come out of my darkest moments was God’s actual cure for depression. Those three things are what could help save a suicidal person. THESE things are helpful.

REST.

I needed to take rest, I needed to let go of all responsibility and just ~rest~. On a few occasions, that was laying in bed for the whole day. On those days, my mom or my husband would take on my household duties. I laid in bed, painfully fighting intrusive thoughts, but the laundry still got done, the baby got to daycare, the floors were clean (thanks mom). I didn’t have to watch those responsibilities pile up in front of me, I got to take the rest my mind and body needed.

EAT CAKE.

This goes hand in hand with rest. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t doing much of anything for myself. My mom came up and stayed with us and she and my husband planned dinners, she would go to the grocery store, she would bring breakfast up to my office, she asked me what I wanted for lunch and would make sure I got that thing. She was making sure my body was fueled and taking one more thing off my plate.

EASE THE BURDEN

You can see what a huge role my mom had in easing my burden at home, she was truly a God send.

My husband helped a lot too, he is also the one who researched therapists in our area and found one that he thought was the best fit.

Whitney, my therapist, helped me learn coping mechanisms, provided an outlet to talk to and an honest feedback to tell me when I wasn’t thinking logically or needed more intervention.

While I never told my boss outright what was going on with me, she could tell I wasn’t performing at my “normal” and when things got bad, I had to tell her the workload was just to much for me, and she took care of it. Somedays, I just called in sick because that was easier than trying to work.

Little by little I chipped away at what I could, but I couldn’t fully do it on my own. I needed support, I needed guidance, and I also needed medication. Those are the things that pulled me away from the darkness, and it didn’t happen overnight. It took weeks, if not a few months, to be able to look back and say “wow, I don’t even know who that person was, because it was not me”.

Helpful things –

-          Is there anything I could take off your plate?

-          Let me take *child* for a few hours so you can get some rest.

-          Would you like me to come stay with you for a few days, I would love to help around the house.

-          I saw this funny video and it made me think of you.

-          Can I bring you a meal?

-          Can I pick up some groceries for you?

-          Do you need someone to talk to? Cry with?

-          YOU are the best YOU for your family, they are so fortunate to have YOU.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis call 800-273-8255 to talk to a dedicated suicide prevention specialist. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger of committing an irreversible act, call 911.