When you come to me for help, I want to help you.
I hope you will let me.
I cannot know your secrets without your words.
I hope you will tell me.
Tell me, please, your thoughts of suicide.
You might feel scared to tell me
When I ask if you are thinking of suicide.
I will try to help you feel safe.
I will not judge you.
I will not interrogate you.
I will not panic.
I will listen gently as you tell your story
In your own words, in your own way.
Suicide might tell you not to tell me.
Suicide might tell you I am your enemy.
Suicide lies.
Suicide might tell you that nobody could possibly help you,
That dying is the only way to end your pain.
Suicide might even tell you that you are a bad person
Defective, undeserving of life
Or love, or hope, or compassion.
Please, tell me.
I cannot help you fight the enemy
If you do not tell me about the enemy,
The enemy that is trying to kill you.
Do not trust your suicidal thoughts.
They are not rational.
They are a symptom, a sign, a cry from inside.
Something inside you needs healing.
Healing, not killing.
Tell me, please, what suicide tells you.
Does it tell you everything that is wrong with your life?
Everything that is wrong with you?
Suicide plays tricks with truth,
Telling only the truths that make you want to die
Hiding the truths that make you want to live.
The pieces of hope.
The pathways to healing.
The possible.
Tell me, please.
Or tell somebody else.
I am only one of many people who can help you.
But nobody can help you if you tell nobody.
Thank you.
One day you will thank you, too.
For telling.
For surviving.
***
© Copyright 2014 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, All Rights Reserved. Written for www.speakingofsuicide.com. Photos purchased from Fotolia.com.
Your words have changed my thoughts. I am inspired to talk to someone.
Thank you
I’m too scared and feel like I have no reason to be suicidal. Nothing horrible happened to me, I have an amazing family that is the only thing keeping me alive. Something is wrong with me but I can’t bring myself to tell anybody because I don’t want them to look at me differently. I don’t like sympathy because as I said I feel like I have no reason to feel this way.
You don’t need a reason. Depression is a chemical imbalance in your brain. It is an illness, it can strike anyone. Please seek help – there is no shame in needing help. Would you deny yourself insulin if you were diabetic? Chemo if you have cancer?! No, you wouldn’t. So please, allow yourself to get help. Remember, “it’s ok, not to be ok” but get help
This is still merely an hypothesis. There are no blood or urine tests available to determine whether a patient is suffering from a chemical imbalance.
[This comment was edited to abide by the Comments Policy. – SF]
To “not so anonymous,” yes you do have the right. By definition, it’s there, you didn’t ask for it it’s just there. You do have the right to acknowledge what you’re feeling and it’s real. I got my dream job, counseling state hospital patients with patients that are bipolar schizophrenic personality disorders you name it. I was on my way home from work and I was in a new car, had a good job with good wages and I felt what you’re feeling. But as long as I didn’t say it out loud cuz I thought I didn’t have a reason to be feeling that way, I couldn’t put my finger on it. I began to pray, and I asked God in all sincerity what’s wrong with me and I listed all the reasons why I shouldn’t feel that way. There were things in my life that were eating away at my soul. I didn’t really want to change them and I didn’t really want that to be the problem either but it was. God literally removed suicidal thoughts and attempts for the time I was eight of 35 till now and I’m 58. I think now the medication the doctor has me on is too much and I also am aware that I’m having a PTSD issues. Peace be with you sweetheart. Promise you will accept the fact that you do have it and find you someone, a therapist that can validate your feelings and love you unconditionally. they’re out there. take care my Anonymous friend
If you are suicidal, there is a reason.
Depression often comes to tell us that there is a desperate problem to be solved. Suicidality can follow if the client feels helpless and hopeless, unable to solve the problem.
You have a right to your feelings. You have reasons for your feelings. You might not yet understand how all the pieces fit together – the hows and the whys – but you can figure this out. A good therapist will help you put the pieces together.
There is reason to hope.
Why is it considered so wrong or evil to want to die? Doesn’t anyone realize that at 70 and suffering years of therapy and medication I’ve simply had enough? Pills no longer work so I need the peace of deaths oblivion. Once again is that such a bad thing? I can no longer bear the constant replays of childhood abuse and workplace bullying dominating my brain. I just want to go.
As someone living with Major Depression, this is something I do in fact struggle with on a regular basis. As a matter of fact, i was having a really hard night when I stumbled across this letter. I read it and burst into tears. It was a reality I needed to hear right now, so thank you. I’ve lived with depression for most of my life, and was hospitalized twice when I was in high school for suicide attempts. I have come a long way, but of course, recovery is a lifelong process. Moments where I struggle and am able to stumble across something like this letter are the very reason I keep believing and holding on. Thank you again.
I wonder if shame is behind much suicide ideation. Old parental messages cut deep, and they don’t always go away with cognitive behavioral therapy. We are a very shaming culture. Shame kills. Do you hide out because you’re afraid that if people really knew who you were, you would feel humiliated? Do drugs or alcohol help you do that? I’ve been suicidal a number of times in my life, and when I examine what appears to be making me depressed at the moment, and then really get honest and real, it goes back to a shame-based upbringing. I find Max Ehrmann’s poem, Desiderata, consistently uplifting. We’re all children of the universe. We have the right to be here.
How can I ever tell someone when they threaten to send police to my home? How can you expect people not to lie when therapists open with “if you’re feeling suicidal, you’re not entitled to confidentiality”? How can anyone like me get treatment when no one is willing to hear us or treat us in safety?
“None,”
This is a paradox in suicide prevention, and one I struggle with philosophically. In some ways, it is akin to requiring someone with a heroin addiction to seek help from the police. On one level, I understand the need to protect people from themselves. But on another level, I fear we would save more lives if we stopped working so hard to save people’s lives involuntarily.
All that said, therapists should call the police only in the most extreme of circumstances. Hospitalization should always be an absolute last resort. Suicidal thoughts – even intense suicidal thoughts – do not require hospitalization. Only when someone’s life is imminently in danger should hospitalization be imposed on them, according to most (and perhaps all) state laws. Unfortunately, though, some therapists overreact, sometimes out of fear for their own liability.
For information on how to find a therapist who is unlikely to resort to unnecessary hospitalization, see my post How to Find a Therapist who Does Not Panic about Suicide.
Another post that might be helpful is, Will I Be Committed to a Mental Hospital if I Tell a Therapist about my Suicidal Thoughts?
Please also check out the Resources page for a list of places where you can talk to someone for free by phone, text, email, and online chat.
I appreciate the letter from a therapist. I’m living with a mental illness that was only just recently diagnosed but, I have had suicidal thoughts for more than a couple years. Additionally, I am living dealing and coping with a recent suicide of a stranger just short of a couple days I considered suicide yet again. It’s hard to deal at times with the idea of death and existence but, I find hope in videos, sites, words, of others who share compassion. I really appreciate it as they give me a sense of care and push to simply keep going. Thank you again.
-Erika Viveros-Leon
Keep fighting!!! I just attended a funeral visitation yesterday for a 17 yr old girl who lost her battle with depression. It made me angry to know a young girl was suffering so much but couldn’t get the help she needed.
Mental illness sucks!! The stigma sucks! The lack of affordable, quality care sucks!!
We can’t let depression win! Keep fighting. Know the lows don’t last forever, there are good days on the other side.
“It’s ok not to be ok”
I have been having suicide thoughts for awhile but I don’t know how to talk to my therapist about it since I just started seeing her.
I am struggling with the same situation. I started therapy about a month ago but have had a bit of a trigger and don’t know if contacting him is ok. I think he would be fine with it and would only want to help. I bet your therapist would be the same.
If a client tells his therapist that he’s suicidal and he has a plan, there is an excellent chance the therapist will call the police and have him confined in a hospital.
Sometimes, the police will handcuff the client – or even put him in leg irons – for transit.
If you truly want to die – or even if you don’t want to die but cannot stop thinking about suicide – don’t ever mention your thoughts to your therapist. Therapists betray their suicidal clients to the police.
They will tell you, after the fact, that they only betrayed you ‘for your own good’.
Ben,
This may be true of some inexperienced and/or overly fearful therapists, but I assure you it is not true for all therapists. I know many therapists who are extremely conservative about hospitalization, myself included.
That said, if someone is suicidal and intent on acting on their suicidal thoughts imminently, if they choose to disclose the full extent of their planning and intent to the therapist, you are right — the therapist is usually ethically and in some cases legally obligated to intervene.
(An exception exists for people with terminal illness who live in a state where physician-assisted suicide is permitted.)
Thank you for your response.
I have suffered from Major Depression (recurrent, severe, w/o psychotic features) for some four decades. Until recently, I owned and managed an online support group, and so I am in contact with hundreds of others like myself .
Once upon a time, I encouraged others to tell their therapists about suicidal ideation, based upon the premise that a therapist cannot help her client if the client purposefully withholds important information. Unfortunately, after four decades of personal, and two decades of third-person accounts of such interactions with therapists, I now recognize that the *vast majority* of therapists will jump the gun and hospitalize the client – an action frequently leading to gross abuse of the client.
While I have never known a therapist to act abusively in such a situation, police and hospital staff can be terribly abusive once they enter the picture. Such abuse greatly exacerbates the client’s depression. It is hard to stabilize in the hospital once such aggression has occurred within the very scenario of supposed healing.
Here is a simple example. Once, when dealing with overwhelming suicidal ideation, my therapist and I agreed in tandem that I should check myself in voluntarily. I packed a suitcase with a week’s worth of clothing and drove myself to the ER. After intake by a psych nurse – an intake in which the nurse acknowledged that I was there voluntarily and requesting admission – I was sent back out into the lobby to await room assignment. I sat in the lobby for several hours, reading a Harry Potter novel. Finally, the psych nurse came out and called me inside. Relieved the wait was over, I followed him with my suitcase and book. He directed into a room just off the lobby. When I entered, I found four burly security guards were inside; without explaination or discussion, they immediately picked me up, one person per limb, lifted me off the floor, threw me down onto a table, and strapped me in four-point restraints. As they stripped me of my watch, wallet, and other items, the psych nurse explained that he ‘had to do this’ because he was afraid I would run away. The following day, my attending psychiatrist read the report and apologized profusely. Although the nurse was strongly censured for his behavior, the damage was already done. I will never forget what happened.
I have experienced and witnessed such inexplicable abuse on many occassions. Even though my therapist never engaged in such behavior, given my experiences over some forty years, I can no longer recommend that clients express their suicidality to their therapists. Therapists do tend to punt their suicidal clients to the hospital, and abuse frequently occurs as a result of their actions.
If I tell you, then statistically, I won’t do it. Those who do it don’t talk about it.
Anonymous,
Actually, you might be surprised by how many people who die by suicide do talk about it beforehand. It’s a dangerous myth that those who talk about feeling suicidal won’t act on their thoughts, a myth that can cause people not to take the person seriously. Of course, some people do keep their suicidal thoughts secret, too.
I agree that’s a dangerous myth. Some people just need that one person to tell them how much they mean to them to talk them “off the ledge.” If someone talks to you about it, take them seriously. Are they just looking for attention?? Maybe. But there’s also a strong chance they are really needing help. I’d rather give them the attention then risk losing them
Anonymous,
You put that very well. I discuss these topics in my post, “Is a Suicide Attempt a Cry for Help?”
I’d rather take seriously someone who says they’re suicidal but actually isn’t, then dismiss someone who I think isn’t truly suicidal, but is.
This is not true. You have to take everyone’s word for what they say. Psychologists unfortunately are bound by laws. Confidentiality has limits for all professionals, except clergymen. If religion hasn’t been too demonized for you, like it has throughout much of our culture, you might find what you need from one. If someone tells you they plan do do it, tell them all the reasons why you and others would miss them, and why you hope they won’t.