How do you deal with heart-breaking stories on this forum?

[noname223]

I have read about some people who said this website makes them sometimes more sad. But others say it is comforting. I think it can be both in my experience. Some stories really go under my skin. I have some mechanism how to deal with it. I don't want to have too close contact or a strong bond with people on this website. I have read from people who chatted with dying people. I would never do that. I am too scared to get traumatized even further. I can think about even a promortalist who said this event was pretty rough for him. (I don't want to name him, I hope it is okay for him)
Another coping mechanism is I think some day I will follow them. I will be in the same situation as them. For the moment I can deal with the pain I have. But I know for sure that very very bad things gonna happen in my life because I am unable to solve some big problems I have.
Another trick is I am not online in this forum for too many hours. I have found the optimal time of being here. Roundabout 1-3 hours but not more.
Sometimes it is hard to read pople expressing their horrible suffering. I can relate to a lot though. Again I think about the pain in which I am, was and will be in order to lessen the impact on me.

This post sounds like SS would be a very sad place. But I can relate so much to the people on this forum. I have daily treatment resistant longterm suicidality. It is comforting to know I can share my pain with other people who are in similar situations. So many on her know this "unique experience" of severe suicidality, being trapped or being abused. Here we can vent about the things the normies don't get and never experience. We know how cruel, nightmarish, unfair and horrible this life can be.

 

[FuneralCry]

Of course it is sad how much some people suffer, but after all life is mostly just pain and suffering, it is inevitable in a life like this. The way I see it, everything is meaningless. What we go through may seem terrible but eventually we will all die and be at peace eventually no matter what. I find death to be comforting and it is what I look forward to.

 

[Foresight]

I could seriously listen to people's thoughts and their struggles for hours on end. I'm definitely impacted by the suffering. I really have a love for people. I'm drawn to the back and forth of conversation and the sharing of deep feelings. I think that's why I know I won't overcome the isolation I face in real life. In a way, I don't feel SS in itself is sad. I don't feel it's sad to be heard. It's more sad when it's happening and you're screaming into the void and no one ever hears it. I spent three years rotting before I found SS and I don't think I had a single productive or meaningful exchange in that time. Here it's just straight honesty about what we're going through, how we feel about it all, and what we can do. It does hurts when people say goodbye. It should hurt, it matters.

 

[D&D]

When I first discovered the forum, I remember thinking that it is like a virtual wall of humanity. On which all kinds of human pains and sufferings are allowed to leave their imprints.

Incognito.

It taught me two important things; a) human struggles are as varied as they are endless, b) despite a) - they mostly remain hidden. Humans hide the true extent of their pains from each other, even those close to them in real life. It tells a lot about the nature of human society.

It is said that being loved means being acknowledged for living. To that, I would add that having one's pain heard means being acknowledged for being human.

 

[Quiet Desperation]

Yes, it can be quite sad at times, but it is also a place where at your absolute bottom you can find people who will listen to your story and understand when nobody else will. After the trauma of being sectioned and other such "helpful" treatments that follow from the assumption that we're all just out of our minds, it can be affirming to know that you aren't alone.

 

[avoid_slow_death]

All depends. Some of us have lived pretty tragic lives and tbh? It makes you sort of used to atrocities. Not to say that you are indifferent, far from it. You just can absorb the pain easier since you have seen and heard so much tragedy already.

That said, even those of us like that need to step back and take a break every once in a while. It can get too overwhelming otherwise.

When I first discovered the forum, I remember thinking that it is like a virtual wall of humanity. On which all kinds of human pains and sufferings are allowed to leave their imprints.

Incognito.

It taught me two important things; a) human struggles are as varied as they are endless, b) despite a) - they mostly remain hidden. Humans hide the true extent of their pains from each other, even those close to them in real life. It tells a lot about the nature of human society.

It is said that being loved means being acknowledged for living. To that, I would add that having one's pain heard means being acknowledged for being human.

Very well worded. And very true.

 

[D&D]

Very well worded. And very true.

Thank you very much @avoid_slow_death

 

[SuicidallyCurious]

I've seen too much IRL. I'm numb to all but like the worst of the worst bad news stories

The 2019 Kyoto animation attack is one that was still bad enough to make me raise my eyebrows. I'm not into anime at all but it just bugged me some but would kill people that bring a lot of joy to children and some adults too

 

[onleana]

last night i decided to read some goodbye threads... had to close my computer after reading two or three of them. the fact that so many people are in excruciating pain is heartbreaking but it also brings me comfort knowing im not some freak for feeling like this.

 

[subj]

Interesting question. Therapists, funeral directors , doctors and nurses often are burned out and traumatized so why wouldn't we be?Probably not good to stay too long. I have read a couple of good byes and been upset for a few days.

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

Attachment disorder gang.

 

[omoidarui]

maybe not healthy mindset but I have a theory akin to solipsism that helps me deal with reading about cruel things that happened

I think of it like we're all inside simulations that are mostly independent from each other, and any heartbreaking stories relayed to us, either from reading this forum or the news, are actually just part of the simulation and designed to 'develop' us emotionally, and that the person concerned is ok within their own reality or living a filtered /less traumatising version of the story (which is deliberately magnified in our own realities by God to 'challenge' us )

dont care if solipsism is scientifically feasible or not it gives me comfort

 

[noname223]

maybe not healthy mindset but I have a theory akin to solipsism that helps me deal with reading about cruel things that happened

I think of it like we're all inside simulations that are mostly independent from each other, and any heartbreaking stories relayed to us, either from reading this forum or the news, are actually just part of the simulation and designed to 'develop' us emotionally, and that the person concerned is ok within their own reality or living a filtered /less traumatising version of the story (which is deliberately magnified in our own realities by God to 'challenge' us )

dont care if solipsism is scientifically feasible or not it gives me comfort

Yeah but what if the other person has also a horrible simulation. What if it is also a hellish nightmare simulated. And if everyone had a less traumatizing version. Why are you in a suicide forum. Don't you experience also a nightmare? Why are you the only one with a painful simulation?

 

[Julgran]

I have read about some people who said this website makes them sometimes more sad. But others say it is comforting.

This community shows that we are not alone in our suffering, and that there are other people who are willin got listen and support others, which may or may not be a factor in deciding whether to end one's life, or not - either choice is the right choice, depending on the individual.

 

[omoidarui]

Yeah but what if the other person has also a horrible simulation. What if it is also a hellish nightmare simulated. And if everyone had a less traumatizing version. Why are you in a suicide forum. Don't you experience also a nightmare? Why are you the only one with a painful simulation?

There are incidences where the pain dealt to the person would be completely incomprehensible if they had taken place, like what the victims of burning high-rises had to go through, where you really cannot believe how much the person would've suffered in their final moments. This is where the possibility that this was not their true fate as I know it, would really help me deal with reading about something like that. I haven't gone through physical pain of that extreme - and I like to believe simulations are RELATIVELY balanced - so it doesn't have to be that I must believe this happened to someone else, within their own reality.

I know this is gonna translate to some people as like denial and I realise this doesn't negate the fact that if pain exists for oneself then it would still likely be true for others. So this isn't to negate the existence of pain external to one's own perception of it occurring, but a mental cope that considers the *possibility* of hope or some kind of an equivalent counterforce that stops pain seeming all-encompassing in any situation, the knowledge that your perception of how things are is not necessarily what is true in terms of the perception others are having and how the universe works and its wider plans for everyone

maybe denial but it's cope and gets me through this shit world slightly better