I'm noticing on this forum that sometimes users criticize others because their reason isn't valid or threads asking if their motive is a valid one or not
But why? First of all, I think nobody can say if someone should or should not kill himself, the choice is up to him and him alone. Also on what basis is a reason valid or not? If someone wants to die because of it, it surely is important, no?
I honestly didn't expect to find such gatekeeping here, on the reddit days this community was much more open imho
As ever, I'm willing to be the maverick in the group and put forward an alternative point of view.
I should perhaps clarify that I have never told anybody in another thread that their reason is not valid, so I'm unsure what thread or individual you're referring to. I am just playing devil's advocate here because I can.
Firstly, this is supposed to be a peer-to-peer support forum.
This website is
not supposed to be a pro-death or pro-suicide cult!
Therefore, we should accept people's choice if they decide to end their lives, as difficult as that may be.
We should also support people who are trying to recover or engage with therapy, who have made the decision to perhaps give life another shot.
I repeatedly see support regarding both of these things.
However, depression or emotional stress (especially long-term) can give rise to 'blind spots' that may not be apparent to the person suffering. Another way of putting this is that 'tunnel vision' tends to come into play.
I have experienced this, and solutions that may be obvious to others don't even occur to you when in this frame of mind.
So making a suggestion along the lines of "have you considered..." or "have you thought about..." may turn out to be just as helpful, perhaps more so, than simply saying "we're here to support whatever you decide..."
If you make a suggestion that has genuinely not been considered, the person concerned may choose to search for a solution to their woes in a place they haven't before looked. This may potentially lead on to a solution, and in the best case scenario eventually lead on to a better life.
Of course it should be taken into consideration that the person has most likely already considered at least the most obvious avenues to deal with their situation.
How is this relevant to someone's reason being 'valid'?
In trying to take a pro-choice stance, it is easy to make almost a reductionist argument and say that the 'validity' of someone's desire to end their lives introduces a standard that people may feel they need to reach, but that everyone is different and it isn't up to us to dictate what this standard has to be.
I find such reductionist arguments too simplistic, as they rarely account for the complexities of the real world.
It isn't about putting a 'standard' in place, it's about helping people to work through and see beyond their emotional pain.
Sometimes this may begin by gently challenging the person's perspective. Doing this can be helpful.
On another forum I once had a guy tell me that he was suicidal, and actively planning what he was going to do.
I chatted with him for about 2 hours.
It turned out that his girlfriend was manipulative and just using him to obtain material things. Because it was his first girlfriend he was head-over-heels in love with her, and because he was quite young his thoughts were perhaps prioritising things that someone with more experience wouldn't...
In short, I challenged his perception by simply asking him questions.
Eventually he came to accept that he was considering ending his own life because of how someone else was making him feel.
A week later we spoke again. He had built up the 'courage' to dump her and although he was hurting and getting used to a new routine, he felt much better in himself.
I would suggest that my talking to him as I did was more helpful than simply discussing methods with him.
From my experience and observation, there is a
handful of members on this site that would have had me hung, drawn and quartered for helping this person in the way I did: I would have been accused of "not respecting his choice"!
So yes, the argument above in
italics sounds good, but doesn't take account of every situation, individual or nuance that may occur in real life.
This is what tends to happen with political or socio-academic arguments; the argument is summed up in a concise, sweet-sounding manner and this argument is then used as a one-size-fits-all argument to challenge anything to the contrary, even though it is itself too simplistic and fails to account for the complexities of the real world.
