Many people feel ashamed of their suicidal thoughts:
“Thinking of suicide means I’m weak,” clients have told me.
“I should be able to cope.”
“I’m a bad person for wanting to kill myself.”
Shame especially can follow a suicide attempt. One small study found that most of the people interviewed felt shame related to their attempt. Some felt ashamed for not living up to others’ expectations. Others felt shame about having survived.
Just as suicidal thoughts can lead to shame, shame can lead to suicidal thoughts. It is a merciless cycle of pain: one begets the other.
An Alternative to Shame about Suicidality
Lost in all the self-condemnation is the understanding that suicidal thoughts are a symptom. If you think of killing yourself, that could be a symptom of a mental illness such as depression or bipolar disorder. But you also don’t need to have a mental illness to have suicidal thoughts. Instead (or in addition), suicidal thoughts can serve as a symptom of extreme stress, the aftermath of trauma, overwhelming painful emotions, deprivation such as poverty and homelessness, a sense of despair and hopelessness, or some other situation that the person experiences as unbearable.
Suicidal thoughts are not who you are. They do not define you. Instead, they happen to you. The same is true of conditions and situations that can lead to suicidality: depression, trauma, and other stress. These conditions do not touch your truest, deepest self, what some may refer to as your soul or your essence.
Close Cousins: Shame and Stigma in Suicidality
It’s hard to talk about shame about suicidality without also talking about stigma. Shame comes from inside the person. It is an emotion, an internal feeling of disgrace. Stigma, on the other hand, comes from outside the person. It is a mark of disgrace. Stigma comes from the messages that society sends out, messages that there is something fundamentally bad about people if they have certain conditions or qualities.
There is a tremendous amount of stigma toward people who think about, attempt or die by suicide. Many movies, press accounts, even random comments on the Internet portray suicidal individuals as cowardly, weak, selfish, defective – and so on. This harmful stigma ignores that there are biological and genetic components to suicide and suicidal thoughts. It also ignores compassion and the fact that humans are wired to avoid pain, so it makes sense that when pain is seen as unbearable and unending, suicidal thoughts can emerge.
Most importantly, stigma feeds into shame. Stigma reinforces for the suicidal person the idea that something is bad about them. And stigma causes many people not to seek help. Stigma isn’t the only reason why people with suicidal thoughts don’t see a therapist or a professional, but for many people, it’s a big reason.
What to Do about Shame and Suicidality?
If you have suicidal thoughts, rather than viewing suicidal thoughts as a character flaw, it is more helpful to look at their underlying meaning. What are your suicidal thoughts telling you that you need?
If you are thinking of dying, it could mean that you need to make a major change in your life. Maybe you need to leave a toxic relationship, or quit a job, or build new ways to cope, or do any number of things that might allow you to experience less pain without killing yourself. Your suicidal thoughts likewise could be a signal that you need therapy or a change in medication or therapy or more connection with others.
The shame itself is telling you something, too. It is telling you that you may have a wound, an injury deep inside of you that needs healing. You may even identify this wound as your self, you true self, not as a piece of your past.
Psychotherapy can help reduce suicidal thoughts. So can other things. The practice of mindfulness meditation helps people to observe that their thoughts and feelings do not constitute their essence. Building compassion toward oneself can also help a person separate their selfhood from their problems or symptoms.
Cognitive behavior therapy can help you to challenge your self-blaming and self-condemning thoughts. You can also come up with realistic coping statements to repeat back to yourself as a way to practice changing your thinking.
Finally, reading about shame and its antidotes is a powerful tonic for many people. In particular, I recommend the works of Brené Brown. A good place to start is her Ted Talks: Listening to Shame, and The Power of Vulnerability.
Whatever path you take, I hope it leads you out of the shame spiral and into a place of hope, healing, and acceptance of yourself and your needs. You’re already hurting so badly that you think of ending your life. The last thing you need is to feel shame on top of that.
© 2013 Stacey Freedenthal, All Rights Reserved, Written for www.speakingofsuicide.com. Photo purchased from Fotolia.com
