KuriGohan&Kamehameha
想死不能 - 想活不能
- Nov 23, 2020
- 1,535
In light of recent events, it becomes clear to me that there is still an enormous stigma against suicidal people, even with the upsurgence of "mental health awareness" messaging becoming more mainstream and prevelant.
I think the caricature of what a suicidal person is meant to look, think, and act like must contribute to this judgement in a substantial way. When I was a child in the 2000s, there was a pernicious perception of people who engaged in self harm or committed suicide in net culture, often being depicted as attention seeking teenagers who post angsty black and white photo edits and proclamations of pain for manipulative purposes. I can't even begin to count how many memes there were back then about "barcode wrists" or how being suicidal is a first world problem for tumblrinas.
While the Overton window has shifted towards having a modicum of sympathy for suicidal people at least, the underlying accusations of attention seeking seem to prevail no matter what. I think most people have an idea of how all suicidal people behave, and when one deviates from this script, all patience and compassion gets thrown out the window. If someone spams you with hotline numbers, and you don't get anything helpful from that call (or God forbid, the person on the other end of the line makes things worse for you) your reliability as a narrator is called into question.
Plus, people seem to think that you should be grateful for any crumbs they throw at you, even if whatever help or support they think they're providing actually does the opposite. I think there is an underlying assumption that during these interactions, we should feel ashamed and mortified to be struggling to the point of suicidality. Hence why there is such a huge emphasis on "think about how others would feel if you went through with it" rather than, "how do YOU feel and what do you believe would help YOU".
From my personal experience, people do treat you differently when you open up to them about these things. Despite there being so much insistence out there to talk about these things and open up to someone, no one really wants to hear it. It feels like they especially do not want to hear it if the problem which is causing you to be suicidal in the first place does not improve (which many people do not believe that there is an underlying problem in the first place, they think suicidality exists in a vacuum) They reduce it to nothing more than a symptom of extreme depressive mental illness which exists in nebulous isolation.
What I have learned from being suicidal for 10+ years is that I am meant to feel ashamed of myself for feeling this way, I am meant to hate my dispostion and use that shame as a motivator for change- a punitive quasi wake up call. Yet, when you've been through the fucking wringer trying to improve your life, no one seems to believe you ever made any sort of effort in the first place. Or they will insist that you do the same things over and over again, because once again you're treated as an unreliable narrator with 0 insight into your life. Why do people think one chooses to be miserable?
It doesn't matter how many times I bring up the laundry lists of physical and "mental" health problems that I have, or how many medications and types of therapy I can list off that didn't help me, or how many supplements I wasted my time and money experimenting with, my multitude of experiences dabbling with psychedelic drugs or moving across the fucking planet... They do not want to believe anything except that I am lazy, not trying, and should feel ashamed of myself for the pain I cause people by being suicidal and "refusing to change."
Before she severed our relationship completely, my bf's mother was threatening to section me or shove drugs down my throat herself, advocating for violence, restraint, and forced drugging against my will so that I could be "straightened out". She unironically thought that violence should be used against me to carry out a forced section, that I needed to be sectioned for months (which would cause me to be dropped out of my degree permanently and ruin everything worse) and that I should not be allowed to talk to her son until I am in her words, fixed. All this taught me is that I can't tell anyone how I feel or they will make threats against me and make me feel worse.
Yes, I do feel ashamed, but the hatred which other people have forced me to internalise has only made me MORE suicidal. I have deep seated self hatred because I have been abused so much for being sad, negative, physically inactive, a downer, and not being able to mold myself into what is normal. Yet no one questions whether I am physically capable of doing that in the first place, they magically believe I can because some quack on TV says all suicidal thoughts are temporary no matter the situation.
When that NYT article dropped, I remember there was an interview with one of the investigative journalists that wrote the piece which released shortly after. Here is a quote from that follow-up piece which really drove home for me how much of a pariah I am to people like this: ".. she and Dance met almost daily with suicide experts, who advised them to make sure they weren't glamorizing anything, that stories included true messages of hope instead of only despair, and that people usually pull out of suicidal thoughts."
How the fuck is that meant to make a person like me who has been suicidal for over a decade meant to feel? My life is fucking ruinous, and ever since childhood I have been forced to grapple with neglect and abuse from my family, developmental disabilities, exposure to death and loss, bullying, sexual abuse, grooming, abusive romantic relationships, prolonged isolation, being called ugly and treated like less of a woman because I am an autistic freak, abandonment, incurable health problems that I have been told have no treatment, health problems that required invasive interventions which have spawned more issues.. but I am meant to feel ashamed and despise myself because I cannot be happy carrying the weight of all of this or convince myself that this is a life worth living.
I've got to get out of here at some point. I don't know how anyone is meant to last like this. I am so scared of slipping up and being sent to a ward where I would no doubt be treated horribly. Just let me out of here.
I think the caricature of what a suicidal person is meant to look, think, and act like must contribute to this judgement in a substantial way. When I was a child in the 2000s, there was a pernicious perception of people who engaged in self harm or committed suicide in net culture, often being depicted as attention seeking teenagers who post angsty black and white photo edits and proclamations of pain for manipulative purposes. I can't even begin to count how many memes there were back then about "barcode wrists" or how being suicidal is a first world problem for tumblrinas.
While the Overton window has shifted towards having a modicum of sympathy for suicidal people at least, the underlying accusations of attention seeking seem to prevail no matter what. I think most people have an idea of how all suicidal people behave, and when one deviates from this script, all patience and compassion gets thrown out the window. If someone spams you with hotline numbers, and you don't get anything helpful from that call (or God forbid, the person on the other end of the line makes things worse for you) your reliability as a narrator is called into question.
Plus, people seem to think that you should be grateful for any crumbs they throw at you, even if whatever help or support they think they're providing actually does the opposite. I think there is an underlying assumption that during these interactions, we should feel ashamed and mortified to be struggling to the point of suicidality. Hence why there is such a huge emphasis on "think about how others would feel if you went through with it" rather than, "how do YOU feel and what do you believe would help YOU".
From my personal experience, people do treat you differently when you open up to them about these things. Despite there being so much insistence out there to talk about these things and open up to someone, no one really wants to hear it. It feels like they especially do not want to hear it if the problem which is causing you to be suicidal in the first place does not improve (which many people do not believe that there is an underlying problem in the first place, they think suicidality exists in a vacuum) They reduce it to nothing more than a symptom of extreme depressive mental illness which exists in nebulous isolation.
What I have learned from being suicidal for 10+ years is that I am meant to feel ashamed of myself for feeling this way, I am meant to hate my dispostion and use that shame as a motivator for change- a punitive quasi wake up call. Yet, when you've been through the fucking wringer trying to improve your life, no one seems to believe you ever made any sort of effort in the first place. Or they will insist that you do the same things over and over again, because once again you're treated as an unreliable narrator with 0 insight into your life. Why do people think one chooses to be miserable?
It doesn't matter how many times I bring up the laundry lists of physical and "mental" health problems that I have, or how many medications and types of therapy I can list off that didn't help me, or how many supplements I wasted my time and money experimenting with, my multitude of experiences dabbling with psychedelic drugs or moving across the fucking planet... They do not want to believe anything except that I am lazy, not trying, and should feel ashamed of myself for the pain I cause people by being suicidal and "refusing to change."
Before she severed our relationship completely, my bf's mother was threatening to section me or shove drugs down my throat herself, advocating for violence, restraint, and forced drugging against my will so that I could be "straightened out". She unironically thought that violence should be used against me to carry out a forced section, that I needed to be sectioned for months (which would cause me to be dropped out of my degree permanently and ruin everything worse) and that I should not be allowed to talk to her son until I am in her words, fixed. All this taught me is that I can't tell anyone how I feel or they will make threats against me and make me feel worse.
Yes, I do feel ashamed, but the hatred which other people have forced me to internalise has only made me MORE suicidal. I have deep seated self hatred because I have been abused so much for being sad, negative, physically inactive, a downer, and not being able to mold myself into what is normal. Yet no one questions whether I am physically capable of doing that in the first place, they magically believe I can because some quack on TV says all suicidal thoughts are temporary no matter the situation.
When that NYT article dropped, I remember there was an interview with one of the investigative journalists that wrote the piece which released shortly after. Here is a quote from that follow-up piece which really drove home for me how much of a pariah I am to people like this: ".. she and Dance met almost daily with suicide experts, who advised them to make sure they weren't glamorizing anything, that stories included true messages of hope instead of only despair, and that people usually pull out of suicidal thoughts."
How the fuck is that meant to make a person like me who has been suicidal for over a decade meant to feel? My life is fucking ruinous, and ever since childhood I have been forced to grapple with neglect and abuse from my family, developmental disabilities, exposure to death and loss, bullying, sexual abuse, grooming, abusive romantic relationships, prolonged isolation, being called ugly and treated like less of a woman because I am an autistic freak, abandonment, incurable health problems that I have been told have no treatment, health problems that required invasive interventions which have spawned more issues.. but I am meant to feel ashamed and despise myself because I cannot be happy carrying the weight of all of this or convince myself that this is a life worth living.
I've got to get out of here at some point. I don't know how anyone is meant to last like this. I am so scared of slipping up and being sent to a ward where I would no doubt be treated horribly. Just let me out of here.
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