I don't get it. why does suicide hurt loved ones?

[BlueThoth]

If someone were killed by another human or died due to illness, the pain isn't as much as to compared to a suicide. Why does losing someone to suicide hurt more than losing someone to something else?

 

[Mr2005]

Dunno I think murder would be pretty hard for any loved ones to take

 

[Lra888]

I think because they may take it personally. They're upset that the person chose to die which makes it different from an accident or murder.

And the fact that most people can't understand what suicidally depressed people go through unless they've been in that state themselves. Same with someone dealing with chronic pain, physical impairment or chronic health issues/disease : people will look at them from the outside and not think it's so bad because they are not dealing with that agony themselves. They can't fathom that ctb is a logical choice.

 

[nzdarkshark]

I guess it could be the fact that the loved one ended their life themselves - it was a choice desision. With other methods of death you mentioned there's nothing that could've been done to prevent it, or they had no say in the matter.
With suicide there is a choice - and the fact that 'it could have been prevented' sticks in peoples brains. Like 'what could've we done to prevent this?'

Losing someone to death will hit anyone pretty hard (unless the person has lost their humanity) - but when the pain of loss 'could have' been avoided - guess it just hits people harder.

 

[s_girl]

If someone were killed by another human or died due to illness, the pain isn't as much as to compared to a suicide. Why does losing someone to suicide hurt more than losing someone to something else?

I totally agree. I was shocked when I learned what suicide survivors means... Of course, I thought it meant you had attempted suicide and survived but it doesn't. It's a label for family / friends of people who have died by suicide. Very strange to me but that's a debate for another day...

Anyways, those left behind feel guilt and blame themselves:
'I should have known'
'I could have helped'
'I should have done something, it's my fault'
'if only they got the help and treatment they needed, then they could have been saved'
Judgement from others 'you should have known' and 'why didn't you do anything to stop this'

And there's still social stigma about it here, why is why coroner's vastly under-report suicides.

Religion has been very harsh to people who die by suicide as well by disallowing burial and excommunicating members.

Then there's the not understanding of the choice 'why would they choose to do this'
'But you have so much to live for' etc...

There's also more of a risk of suicide, if you know someone who has which is why the government puts so many resources into this group of family / friends.

It's a complex social issue with many layers but basically, it's all about them...

 

[onewayroad]

I totally agree. I was shocked when I learned what suicide survivors means... Of course, I thought it meant you had attempted suicide and survived but it doesn't. It's a label for family / friends of people who have died by suicide. Very strange to me but that's a debate for another day...

Anyways, those left behind feel guilt and blame themselves:
'I should have known'
'I could have helped'
'I should have done something, it's my fault'
'if only they got the help and treatment they needed, then they could have been saved'
Judgement from others 'you should have known' and 'why didn't you do anything to stop this'

And there's still social stigma about it here, why is why coroner's vastly under-report suicides.

Religion has been very harsh to people who die by suicide as well by disallowing burial and excommunicating members.

Then there's the not understanding of the choice 'why would they choose to do this'
'But you have so much to live for' etc...

There's also more of a risk of suicide, if you know someone who has which is why the government puts so many resources into this group of family / friends.

It's a complex social issue with many layers but basically, it's all about them...

I agree, but I think the main thing is as you said, the imagined preventability. People think that picking up the phone and calling to ask how you are would have somehow magically taken you out of the hell that most of us experience. And I guess for a few suicidal people it would, but the irony is that I believe the majority of us are suicidal because we know we can't be helped, much less be helped that easily.

Hmmn. Maybe something about that would be good to have in my suicide note. That the only reason I chose suicide was because I was sure I couldn't be helped, and there was nothing anyone could have done for me. I wonder if that will make anyone feel any better.

 

[bigj75]

I think suicide makes you feel more guilty. Like maybe you could have done something or how you didn't notice the signs.

Illness or murder are something you pretty much have no control over but suicide of someone you know makes you feel more guilty.

 

[worldexploder]

Good question. Seems like loved ones would want us to have peace on our own terms.

 

[Sayo]

I had this conversation with a therapist once (so, she had more insight into my mind than a lot of the people who would be most affected by this). She felt it was fundamentally different to a death by accident or my disease because in her eyes it was a preventable choice. It could be helped easily in her opinion (maybe at that point it could), and that would hinder her ability to accept it.

To some people it amounts to abandonment, whether they can put it like that or not. They may not even consciously understand that. Also, suicides tend to be shocking and sudden in most cases because no matter how bad a person is, most people have not crossed that border, and so they can't imagine someone really ultimately dying like that. (edit: I should add that this probably draws into question for many whether they really knew the person, so they may experience that kind of loss too.)

Control also has a great deal to do with it. Many people on here fantasise about their lives if something had gone differently or they could exercise control. It's really hard for people to cope with the idea that something like loss is out of their hands - that someone is doomed is a worse idea and feels worse to accept, and it may not be true with suicide anyway -, and since suicide has every suggestion of being preventable in most ways, it speaks to that tendency to hindsight and guilt. This is ignoring all the complicating factors like religious and moral views.

Diseases induce the same stages of grief. In the case of a treatable disease, there is the comfort of knowing what could be done was done, and of going through that journey with the person to some extent. But even with an incurable disease, as societies we are better at accepting them as a reality and coming to terms with them. You'll notice that this is less the case with children and youth who die of diseases, obviously; it's seen as an inevitable fate of the old. That's important. People rarely feel guilty over diseases except where they enabled obvious contributing factors or whatever, and there is usually anticipatory grieving.

With diseases, though, the doom problem really comes up. People can't really truly give up until the end, and they go through hell accordingly.

People take murder awfully hard too, by the way. For some similar reasons, but with an added element of understood direct victimisation and the loss of concern over the victim's own choice. It's also rarely done humanely, and the victim usually suffers emotionally. There is someone who chose to take the victim's future away from them against their will.

I would say the people who go through having their loved ones murdered suffer quite comparably to people who go through having their loved ones die by suicide.

And I would say all types of loss hurt in their own unique ways.

 

[TAW122]

Others have pretty much summed up what I would say. I will further add that it is human nature to intervene and also wanting to feel like they did something great, so they can feel good about themselves.

 

[Kellogg's]

It really doesn't. But most people are dumb and selfish and programmed by society to think it is meant to "hurt."

 

[RM5998]

This post I wrote some time back talks about the cognitive dissonance surrounding suicidal people in the context of thought systems used by fascist states to ground themselves in public consciousness. I'd like to expand on the why of the issue here as a way of explaining my perspective on the question posed.

People in society need to believe that their lives are best spent in said societal system. Just like any country likes to posit itself as the best place in the world to live in, societal systems also like to present themselves as the best form of living. And self-perpetuation would occur only if society encouraged people to live in it, contribute their generated value to it and breed to form more people who will do the same.

Suicide fundamentally shakes that belief. When someone commits suicide, they choose death - and thus, they choose removal from the societal system - and due to the finality it posits, all societal systems. But, since any society posits that living in said society must have value, suicide contradicts this in a more fundamental way than the idea of moving to a different system.

To bring this around to the main topic - societies place emphasis on having connections between the people living in it, and thus the people most strongly affected by a person's suicide are the ones closest to them. Thus, the idea sold to this group, and through them to the people less connected and thus all people part of that society, is that this was an irrational decision that hurts people. The guilt is something that gets disseminated through the people still alive to tell them that they cannot do the same thing. The idea of feeling guilt over suicide gets emphasized because it can cause people to throw themselves further into putting value into society. The associated ideas of communication and caring are easy fixes to help the indirectly affected majority of society strengthen interpersonal bonds, which contribute to making the societal system a much bigger part of the lives of people living in it. The shaky cognition behind the guilt is necessary to let people believe that the society they live in is unquestionably better, by casting the suicide as an aberration of mental state - that can be fixed easily, so that other people contemplating the same thing are encouraged to stay alive so that they can be used up even more.

 

[longingforrelease]

I've been thinking of little else since I started to come to the conclusion that suicide might be best choice for me. The biggest obstacle right now is how my suicide would effect my 10 year old daughter. I worry about that far more than I worry about taking my own life. Here's what I think. I fear that my daughter will feel abandoned by the father she loved. Because of huge mistakes I made i now live 10,000 miles from her, but in our skype sessions it's clear that despite all my faults and shortcomings she truly loves her daddy. Now she would grieve for her loss no matter how I die. She will have to confront the existential verity that her daddy is gone and never coming back. But if she loses me to a conscious choice I make to take my life, it seems reasonable to assume she will wonder, inter alia, why our love for each other wasn't enough to keep me from doing that? I can imagine her asking questions like "why wasn't she important enough to me to not put her through such pain?" Indeed, why wouldn't we expect her to feel that ultimately my choice was to abandon her? She's only 10. She's already had to deal with her parents' divorce, some public shame associated with my behavior, and now the fact that I had to to move to the other side of the world. I can only conclude that my suicide would have devastating effects on her emotional health. This is why I am searching for a way to make my suicide look accidental. My current thinking is to ctb in the context of scuba diving. My death will still hurt her enormously, and I grieve for that, but at least she wouldn't be burdened with all the (perfectly understandable in my view) additional emotional trauma that my suicide would inflict.

 

[Just A NPC]

First of all I am suicidal and honestly don't really have any concerns about what would happen to my family in my death. My death is meant to bring me peace, and if the choice is ever made it's a personal one. No one has the right to take that away from me, and my peace is mine. We all have our different paths.

Never thought about if one of my loved ones killed themselves. I would be sad to realize they were in such pain. I would be sad that I would not see their face anymore or be able to hear their voice. I would miss them deeply because my loved ones are part of what helps keep me from just fucking vanishing into the night.

It's not a scientific answer, but it was the very first thought in my head after never ever even considering the question before it was posed to me here.

 

[Fucking loving it]

When my step dad ctb I grieved just like any other passing . I also totally understand why he did it.

 

[sadak_the_wanderer]

I will add a reason: we have a self-perpetuating stigma against suicide. Everyone is constantly told how tragic it is, but few ever ask if suicide is any more depressing than dragging through a miserable, hopeless life until you are allowed an "acceptable" death of cancer, heart attack, stroke, and the like, probably in a retirement home where nobody comes to see you.

 

[violetskin96]

I think one more thing that people haven't mentioned is anger. when someone is murdered loved ones are usually very angry with the perpetrator, when you murder yourself so to speak loved one often feel anger at you because your actions hurt them so badly. it's hard to reconcile that anger, with the love, the guilt, the sadness - all the directed at one person. It's much more complex then grieving other types of loss.

 

[hunter_lewis]

People don't get that ctb isn't a choice. I for example am suffering from worsening chronic pain that is difficult to treat. I am 27 so if I didn't ctb I would suffer with it till age 90 or so. I can barely walk and can't work. This is not a choice!

 

[EpidemicOfDenial]

If someone were killed by another human or died due to illness, the pain isn't as much as to compared to a suicide. Why does losing someone to suicide hurt more than losing someone to something else?

It's cultural. In Ancient Japan my parents & peers would be proud of me.

 

[swanfil]

While I know many here may not agree, for the most part suicide is spontaneous and preventable. Not in all situations of course, I personally don't feel mine will be but having lost the love of my life to suicide I know she could've been saved.

Had I just been more aware she'd slipped back into a dark place and needed me to remind her how much she meant to me then she would still be here. She thought no one cared and that she was a burden and I will now spend the rest of my days having lost the most beautiful person inside and out due to my failure to act.

Losing someone to a physical illness, accident or even perhaps murder is of course agonising but for the most part there is no real guilt over feeling you could've done something. It's the knowledge they did it to themselves while in a very dark place and feeling you may have been able to do more to help. Of course I do understand that there are those who have a lifetime of suffering and that additionally plays on those left behind knowing they struggled so much.

 

[Asylla]

It's so much different. Suicide usually happens after years, decades, or even an entire life of severe suffering and unhappiness. It implies unbearable pain. The thought of a loved one's life getting so bad that they felt like ending it was the only option is heartbreaking beyond what most diseases and accidents could cause.

Grief isn't just about the loss of a person, a lot of it has to do with how much pain the deceased went through before passing away. That's how I see it.

 

[RM5998]

The thought of a loved one's life getting so bad that they felt like ending it was the only option is heartbreaking beyond what most diseases and accidents could cause.

But why would this be any more painful that, say, cancer that lasted a few decades? Or some other slow-acting terminal disease?

 

[Zzzzz]

They shouldn't feel too bad, not if they understand your life was a living hell , and that you are no longer suffering. Mental illness is not easily cured. It often is just as terminal and horrible as cancer is, the sooner society starts understanding this the better off we'll all be.

 

[ouvreyes]

I think one more thing that people haven't mentioned is anger. when someone is murdered loved ones are usually very angry with the perpetrator, when you murder yourself so to speak loved one often feel anger at you because your actions hurt them so badly. it's hard to reconcile that anger, with the love, the guilt, the sadness - all the directed at one person. It's much more complex then grieving other types of loss.

Was gonna add something similar. When people are dealing with the loss of someone who was murdered, there is a very definitive place to direct blame. With suicide, the big scary taboo that it is, people don't want to blame the victim, though the victim is technically the one that does it. And without that someone to blame, those feelings go unresolved.

But why would this be any more painful that, say, cancer that lasted a few decades? Or some other slow-acting terminal disease?

I think with disease, people have more time to experience and process their grieving. Suicide is rarely expected, so it's like the grief that would have been otherwise spread out is instead hitting them all at once. Or something.

 

[RM5998]

Was gonna add something similar. When people are dealing with the loss of someone who was murdered, there is a very definitive place to direct blame. With suicide, the big scary taboo that it is, people don't want to blame the victim, though the victim is technically the one that does it. And without that someone to blame, those feelings go unresolved.



I think with disease, people have more time to experience and process their grieving. Suicide is rarely expected, so it's like the grief that would have been otherwise spread out is instead hitting them all at once. Or something.

I think that the notion of preventability that hurts people more. There's a somewhat brutal situation here - if it was inevitable, it means that you weren't important to the person who's dead, and that's often difficult to accept; if it was preventable, you keep asking what you could have done to prevent it, and question whether they were important enough to you.

 

[AndyCurious]

I believe suicide would hurt and confuse loved ones more than a natural death.. There would be more questions after a suiced.. I may be wrong though..

 

[MAIO]

I think because they may take it personally. They're upset that the person chose to die which makes it different from an accident or murder.

And the fact that most people can't understand what suicidally depressed people go through unless they've been in that state themselves. Same with someone dealing with chronic pain, physical impairment or chronic health issues/disease : people will look at them from the outside and not think it's so bad because they are not dealing with that agony themselves. They can't fathom that ctb is a logical choice.

Their is no life is worth it fact. I don't understand how they think by default everyone is better off alive and don't even bother checking to see if this is true? Like seriously

 

[Final Escape]

I told my bf that I plan to ctb, we haven't been seeing each other that long but he said the absolute most supportive stuff when I started my suicidal talk to him. I was so glad he responded acceptingly, but it did make me feel more guilty and like I should try to live. He's upset about it but he says he understands and wants to enjoy the time with me till I decide to cut out. It was like he knew exactly what to do in reaction to my suicidal ideation. I've never met anybody who knows how to handle the crazy mood shifts related to BPD. Everybody else just aggravates my BPD further and augmenting the insecurities and rapid shifts of moods.

 

[MAIO]

I think that the notion of preventability that hurts people more. There's a somewhat brutal situation here - if it was inevitable, it means that you weren't important to the person who's dead, and that's often difficult to accept; if it was preventable, you keep asking what you could have done to prevent it, and question whether they were important enough to you.

I disagree. You are trying to turn something insanely complicated into a false dichotomy. Preventibility? Someone could live their entire life even though they despise it. Loving someone does not take way painThat doesn't mean they were better off choosing life it. Killing yourself also has little to do with important to people. If someone isn't better off-you are suppose to support that period- to say you know a person who took their life was actually better off alive is beyond arrogant.

 

[RM5998]

I disagree. You are trying to turn something insanely complicated into a false dichotomy. Preventibility? Someone could live their entire life even though they despise it. That doesn't mean they were better off choosing life it. Killing yourself also has little to do with important to people. If someone isn't better off-you are suppose to support that period- to say you know a person who took their life was actually better off alive is beyond arrogant.

I'm not saying that that is the reason why suicide happens - I'm saying that popular consciousness visualizes it that way while processing grief and responsibility (well, more of the second option, but the first group isn't that small).