how do "normal" people suffer without thinking of suicide?

[daleke]

"normal" is in quotation marks because i am aware people can slip in and out of periods of poor mental health.

but a good proportion of people live under constant stress - most people will face financial pressures, need to deal with toxic people in their lives, juggle multiple responsibilities, sometimes undergo a big crisis like losing a job, medical emergencies, natural disasters, and other personal tragedies. yet my impression is that suicidal ideation isn't that common, even in these moments.

i hypothesized a while back that most humans don't particularly want to live, they just have an innate fear of death so suicide never feels like a real option to them even under immense duress. makes more sense to me than people just liking their lives.

this question is of particular interest to me because i feel like i'm the opposite. my life is going very well and i regularly am blown away (in a good way) by how extraordinarily lucky and blessed i am, yet even now i often think of killing myself. i just don't get much pleasure from living, or it's an ingrained mental habit, maybe? i'm really not mentally ill, i just... think and feel this way, and have never stopped.

what changes? why are some people more resilient and accepting of life, and others default so easily to suicide, even under the same circumstances. it can't be all genetics. there has to be some modifiable factor.

maybe a bad place to be asking this since you're all suicidal, but i was wondering if we had any thoughts.

 

[ma0]

I know quite a few people who are "normal" as you put it, and from my experience it's either that they talk to people about it or they just... don't have issues in their lives somehow? I genuinly don't know how people can just be happy and never have a single low point of mental health, but I've seen people pull it off first hand.

 

[PlannedforPeru]

they just have an innate fear of death so suicide never feels like a real option to them even under immense duress.

My friend expressed this almost exactly, their fear of death is so extreme they'd rather sort the problems in their life or find ways to cope rather than seeing that as a viable option. This is just one representation though, I think there's a ton of reasons as to why someone would be so averse to suicide.

 

[vitbar]

I think a lot of people don't even consider it, not even rationalising against it or feeling any fear. When they do it's usually in the form of existential doubt rather than outright suicidal thoughts (why should I carry on? what is the point? etc). It also passes after a time and things feel lighter again.

My depression comes in waves with gaps where I am not suicidal. During those gaps I feel generally okay or even good. Life is enjoyable and self-destruction couldn't be further from my mind. When I am depressed it seems impossible I ever felt my life was worthwhile. Most people do feel their life is worthwhile as hard as that can be to believe.

 

[ShatteredSerenity]

I think normal people also think of suicide sometimes, it's just more manageable when you have good mental health and decent living conditions. People have support networks to help deal with challenges. When you have support and resources dealing with problems isn't so bad, you just work through it and occasionaly vent for emotional relief, always keeping your eye on the light at the end of the tunnel. Having confidence in being able to attain your goals and build a comfortable future diminishes or eliminates the urge to commit suicide.

When suicide pops up in a normal person during a difficult time, it's generally just a fleeting impulse. That's what I think the suicide hotlines and safety plans are geared towards. They just hope to get the person to hang on long enough for the impulse to fade, then they will remember all the things they're living for. More serious suicidal thinking emerges when the problems are too deep, and/or mental illness is a factor. The person may struggle to find things worth living for, and they may feel hopeless about having a comfortable future.

Areas facing issues like poverty, displacement, or war will have higher suicide rates because it impacts everyone, not just people with mental health issues. People can be incredibly resilient in the face of adversity, but some will inevitable crumble. High rates of suicide in the miliatry demonstrate this.

 

[Cavalcade]

I agree that the idea is simply unfathomable to some- and that might explain some of the reflexive judgement and disgust cast on people who survive CTB attempts.

Something I've noticed in mental healthcare, is that patients who similarly did not have a distinct 'before' their trauma, really, really suffered. A lot of the surface level trauma work involves visualization of a safe space- what the hell does someone who has never felt safe, or as if they had a 'home' they could return to, do? If the concept of safety is so foreign that their shot to hell nervous system can't handle it- and they fall to pieces? Many other survivors I knew from group therapy and peer support would catastrophically fall to pieces when they finally got out and away from their abusive contexts- because all of the weight of their loss and pain came crashing down once they stopped living on autopilot, in pure survival. Same with reparenting your inner child- if even as a child, you were never treated kindly, or kept safe, and were degraded and made to feel less than dirt- how can you practice being kind to yourself, when the concept of you as a child repulses you, has you recoiling from the wretched little sinful beast you were beat into believing you were?

For people who have a 'before,' a baseline of happiness, safety, support- it's much easier to believe they will come out the other side: they have the experience to back it up, that life is not always so bad, that life is not always so painful: that this too, shall pass.

For those without it, for whom their abuse began in infancy, like myself- it is terribly, terribly bleak. If the vast majority of your experiences, even pre-memory formation, have been traumatic, and hideously painful: is it any wonder people tire of suffering, seek to end it by any means they can? It makes me have immense sympathy for fellow trauma survivors who have been lifelong victims- who were set up to fail from the beginning. We're working with shitty, maladaptive, paltry skills- starting a mile behind everyone else at the start of a race, and scrabbling to endure through blinding pain and a lifetime of suffering you'll have no choice but to endure, bear, and try to pull yourself through: because it's do, or die- you have no choice but to live in pain, if you choose to live. Doesn't death seem seductive, in that context? A cessation to your literal lifelong suffering? The repercussions of everything that's been done to you? Endless, unceasing pain?

I think that that level of debilitating horror is difficult for those to envision if they have no experience of it. There is no foundation for a belief that 'things will get better,' because some people are subject to inhumane suffering in this life.

 

[FinalVoid25]

99 % of people are extremely afraid of death, even those that deny ever thinking about it.