When I told a friend I was creating this blog he said, "Well, I guess as long as they continue
reading it, they haven't made a final decision to die." And so, since I still have your attention, I
am going to assume that you haven't made the ultimate decision just yet. Or maybe even if you
have, you might be willing to reconsider. As someone once said of the person who had really and
finally and once-and- for-all made up his mind to kill himself, "He died ten minutes ago.'
What I hope is true of you at this moment is that you are still uncertain about taking your own life. And because I have talked to hundreds of suicidal people, I can make a pretty good guess that you, even in your darkest hour, remain torn between ending your life and trying to go on with it. This is as it should be and, though it may not make you feel any better, almost all people considering suicide remain unsure about taking their own lives- even up to the moment they make an attempt. I can still remember interviewing a woman who had jumped from a bridge into a rushing river and survived. She had worn her raincoat because, as she put it, "I didn't want to get wet."
If I can make another guess about what has been going on inside your head and heart, it is that you have had long and difficult discussions with yourself about whether to live or die. In the psychology business, we call this ambivalence.
Ambivalence simply means that a person is struggling with a decision, examining the positive and negative aspects of some act or other and trying to anticipate the best possible outcome. It means having two opposite feelings at the same time --you want to do something and you don't want to do it.
Sometimes dying seems the best thing to do, sometimes living seems the best thing to do. This ambivalence, as you well know, is a terrible thing to endure. It is a precarious balance of life against death and thinking about it saps all your energy. Ambivalence comes and goes, like a painful toothache.
I don't want to lecture you about the psychology of ambivalence or what it means, but I do want you to know that being uncertain about the decision to kill yourself is perfectly natural and that even though you may feel you are driving yourself crazy by talking to yourself about taking your own life, such self-talk is necessary, maybe essential.
The thing that concerns me most about your ambivalence is that it is as if your desire to live is on one side of a delicate balance scale, and your desire to die on the other. Both strong desires, they are balanced just so and neither of us knows, right now, what it might take to tip the scales in one direction or the other
I would worry for you if, for example, a letter you were expecting did not come today. Such a disappointment, while very small in itself, might tip the scales in a negative direction. On the other hand, that phone call from someone you love might come through tonight, tipping the scales in the other direction, and everything would change for the better. This is what is scary about ambivalence and the delicate balancing act you may be experiencing.
I think that most everyone who has at one time thought about suicide is stronger for having thought about it. They have examined the death option in some detail and have, after weighing things out, decided that as tough as life is, it is still worth living. As one young man told me, "I thought about suicide once, even loaded the pistol. But then I realized I was too much of a coward to pull the trigger.”
“Coward?" I asked him.
“Well, I guess I was afraid to die just then;” he said. "Although, I am not afraid of death now. After all, I looked death right in the eye." Maybe, until we look death right in the eye, we cannot live life so well. And maybe, after we have done so, we are stronger for it. Maybe only after we have come close to death, can we come close to life. To me, it seems so.
You might look at your ambivalence this way: because none of us has ever been dead, it is easier to be negative about life (something we know about), than to be positive about death (something we don't know about). And it is only when we are confronted with our own deaths that death loses its promise to be better.
There is a story about a man who jumped into a river to kill himself but failed. While he was bobbing along in the current a police officer threw him a rope so that he could save himself. The man refused to take the rope. The officer then pulled his pistol and aimed it at the man, threatening to shoot him. The man, faced with a more certain death and the true negativity of it, grabbed the rope.
It might help for you to know that for every person who has made up his or her mind and has no doubts about ending his or her life, there are dozens more like you who remain unsure, uncertain, and hesitant. And if you were in my office with me that is the way I would hope you would be. I would hope that the two of us would have the courage to look death square in the eye and not be afraid to talk about it. Because if we could do this, we might begin to see that dying is something we all have to do someday and by talking about it we might come to a better understanding of what life is and what we can do with the days we have left.
What I hope is true of you at this moment is that you are still uncertain about taking your own life. And because I have talked to hundreds of suicidal people, I can make a pretty good guess that you, even in your darkest hour, remain torn between ending your life and trying to go on with it. This is as it should be and, though it may not make you feel any better, almost all people considering suicide remain unsure about taking their own lives- even up to the moment they make an attempt. I can still remember interviewing a woman who had jumped from a bridge into a rushing river and survived. She had worn her raincoat because, as she put it, "I didn't want to get wet."
If I can make another guess about what has been going on inside your head and heart, it is that you have had long and difficult discussions with yourself about whether to live or die. In the psychology business, we call this ambivalence.
Ambivalence simply means that a person is struggling with a decision, examining the positive and negative aspects of some act or other and trying to anticipate the best possible outcome. It means having two opposite feelings at the same time --you want to do something and you don't want to do it.
Sometimes dying seems the best thing to do, sometimes living seems the best thing to do. This ambivalence, as you well know, is a terrible thing to endure. It is a precarious balance of life against death and thinking about it saps all your energy. Ambivalence comes and goes, like a painful toothache.
I don't want to lecture you about the psychology of ambivalence or what it means, but I do want you to know that being uncertain about the decision to kill yourself is perfectly natural and that even though you may feel you are driving yourself crazy by talking to yourself about taking your own life, such self-talk is necessary, maybe essential.
The thing that concerns me most about your ambivalence is that it is as if your desire to live is on one side of a delicate balance scale, and your desire to die on the other. Both strong desires, they are balanced just so and neither of us knows, right now, what it might take to tip the scales in one direction or the other
I would worry for you if, for example, a letter you were expecting did not come today. Such a disappointment, while very small in itself, might tip the scales in a negative direction. On the other hand, that phone call from someone you love might come through tonight, tipping the scales in the other direction, and everything would change for the better. This is what is scary about ambivalence and the delicate balancing act you may be experiencing.
I think that most everyone who has at one time thought about suicide is stronger for having thought about it. They have examined the death option in some detail and have, after weighing things out, decided that as tough as life is, it is still worth living. As one young man told me, "I thought about suicide once, even loaded the pistol. But then I realized I was too much of a coward to pull the trigger.”
“Coward?" I asked him.
“Well, I guess I was afraid to die just then;” he said. "Although, I am not afraid of death now. After all, I looked death right in the eye." Maybe, until we look death right in the eye, we cannot live life so well. And maybe, after we have done so, we are stronger for it. Maybe only after we have come close to death, can we come close to life. To me, it seems so.
You might look at your ambivalence this way: because none of us has ever been dead, it is easier to be negative about life (something we know about), than to be positive about death (something we don't know about). And it is only when we are confronted with our own deaths that death loses its promise to be better.
There is a story about a man who jumped into a river to kill himself but failed. While he was bobbing along in the current a police officer threw him a rope so that he could save himself. The man refused to take the rope. The officer then pulled his pistol and aimed it at the man, threatening to shoot him. The man, faced with a more certain death and the true negativity of it, grabbed the rope.
It might help for you to know that for every person who has made up his or her mind and has no doubts about ending his or her life, there are dozens more like you who remain unsure, uncertain, and hesitant. And if you were in my office with me that is the way I would hope you would be. I would hope that the two of us would have the courage to look death square in the eye and not be afraid to talk about it. Because if we could do this, we might begin to see that dying is something we all have to do someday and by talking about it we might come to a better understanding of what life is and what we can do with the days we have left.
