Many people who attempt suicide do so impulsively. Extremely impulsively.
One study of people who attempted suicide found that 48% thought of suicide for fewer than 10 minutes before making the suicide attempt.
The haste with which many people die by suicide is staggering. Had they waited a little longer, then the intense impulse to act on suicidal thoughts might have passed.
This brings me to the 3-day rule. I’ve heard about this rule anecdotally and read about it here and there on blogs and other websites. One writer summed it up quite well in a post that is no longer online:
“For me I have a 3 day rule. With most big decisions that will affect my life, I give myself 3 days. If I still think it is the best choice for me after 3 days, then I go with it. Yes even with suicide…
“If even for one moment you feel a smidge of joy or like life is actually worth living, you have to start the 3 days again. Again time many times brings clarity.”
The author, Ali McCollum, also states, “Spoiler… death by my own hand has yet to feel like the right choice for 3 straight days.”
Keep On Keeping On
The old adage “one day at a time” holds true here. With suicidal thoughts, however, the mantra may be “one hour at a time,” or “one minute at a time.”
Even “one moment at a time” can be difficult.
If you hold off for three days, chances are you will not feel 100% intent on dying that entire time. And maybe you will even feel hope, or pleasure, or some other reason to live.
If your suicidal thoughts are so intense that even waiting 3 days seems impossible, please get help immediately. Call 911 (or, if you are outside the U.S., whatever the emergency number is in your country). Or go to an emergency room. Or call someone who will help you stay safe.
Really? Suicidal Thoughts Stop After 3 Days?
Keep in mind that I’m not talking about all suicidal thoughts. It would be foolish to say that suicidal thoughts tend to pass in 3 days. Some people think of suicide for weeks and months, even years.
What I am referring to is the profound intent to act on suicidal thoughts. If someone is on the verge of suicide, those 3 days can mean the difference between life and death.
Suicidal thoughts might persist, but the impulse to act on them can change many times over three days.
To quote the late psychologist Edwin Shneidman, one of the pioneers in suicidology:
“The acute suicidal crisis (or period of high and dangerous lethality) is an interval of relatively short duration – to be counted, typically, in hours or days, not usually in months or years. An individual is at a peak of self-destructiveness for a brief time and is either helped, cools off, or is dead.”
Naturally, my hope is that you are helped or cool off.
What If 3 Days Go By and You Still Want to Die by Suicide?
Time does not heal all wounds, especially not quickly. The 3-day rule aside, I do not mean to imply that you should end your life if you still feel acutely suicidal after three days.
In some ways, 3 days is a long time. A lot can happen. Feelings can change. Perspective can change.
Getting a good night’s sleep during those 3 days, or talking with a friend or suicide hotline, or simply surfing the waves of moods, can weaken the suicidal impulse.
In other ways, 3 days is hardly a blip on the radar screen of an entire life. If after 3 days you still are intent on dying, please get help.
Reach out to others, whether someone you know or a stranger at hotline or online. For a list of places where you can get help anonymously, you can start here.
What Comes Next with Suicidal Thoughts?
Even if you follow the 3-day rule and no longer feel adamantly that suicide is your only option, the suicidal thoughts might still persist or revisit.
Ultimately, to survive suicide’s assault, more is needed than waiting.
You might need to uncover reasons for living. Tapping into hope and rediscovering pleasure can also help.
More than anything, talking back to suicidal thoughts and learning to cope with them can fortify you in your fight against suicidal forces.
A Good Starting Place to Cope with Suicidal Thoughts
The 3-day rule is a good place to start. Not only can it save your life, it can also show you with amazing clarity that suicidal thoughts can waver in their intensity.
Those 3 days can demonstrate that at least the strength of suicidal thoughts, if not suicidal thoughts themselves, can be temporary.
Suicidal thoughts can change, as can you, your mood, and your life.
© 2014 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, All Rights Reserved. Written for Speaking of Suicide.
I follow the three day rule. Often, it is exhausting and my feelings do not change at the end of them, they are just a little bit *less*. Right now, I have just set yet another 3 day rule. But the older I get, the more tired I become.
Why do people talk about those we leave behind? I’ve busted my ass to have a six figure income, have a house, family and all the stuff I dreamed of. My family uses me for my bank account, and have clearly displayed that I mean nothing to them. I’m too old to start over. I’ve too many scars to keep talking this out. There’s no joy, no higher meaning to life. I’m a lump of self-aware carbon floating on a rock around the universe; I’m nothing. I’m not going to kill myself, I just today realized how insignificant I am on the small scale that is my life.
[This comment was edited, per the Comments Policy. – SF]
Hi, I just saw your comment and I wanted to see if you were ok. I wanted to say I am sorry you are struggling and feel used.
I have suffered from anxiety and depression so I Understand.
My husband left me for a year to pursue his 150k plus job in Indonesia so I understand from both perspectives
Being left behind with all the burdens of caring for a home and my terminally ill dog. Still recovering from taking care of my terminally ill mom’and Trying to survive cancer myself.
When I find myself feeling like you do I have to tell myself not to allow those people who render me as insignificant To have that much control over my emotions. I try to think of that one person where God is using me to make a difference in their life. Right now it’s my 84 year old dad, but it could be a stranger you smile at and acknowledge who might be feeling the exact way you are and you just gave them hope to survive. Sometimes finding the way out of the darkness and hopelessness is a gesture that shakes us up a little by looking outside ourselves.
I hope you are having some better days.
Honestly I’m only 21 but I’ve had my fair share of past suicidal attempts. One almost successful and left me with a body full of scars and emotional pain. More pain than when I was physically abused by my father. Or maybe my scars were a reminder of that pain and the fact that I had to continue seeing him for the rest of my life. I had just come to somewhat of an acceptance for my body and my self worth and image and to look past some scars on my body. Being a black female, it’s hard in today’s society. Now i recently suffered another accident, causing more big scars on my face. I just got comfortable looking at my previous scars, but my my face is mangled. My body is mangled. The goals that i had for myself, the ones my father and mother wanted me to make so that I can continue wanting to live, is pointless. I was doing it to make them happy. But I’m not happy. I can’t now. I’m planning an attempt that I thought of long ago, but was too coward to do it.
Things waiting three days doesn’t solve:
– A history of abuse, and related lifelong PTSD
– A lack of support system, or in many cases, an actively destructive family
– Poverty and associated cyclic stress and limited choices that come from having no money, no home, no food, and no job
– Having a chronic, painful illness that impedes daily tasks and relationships
Medication and therapy won’t solve those problems, either. Those are money-based solutions to problems that can’t be solved with money. Therapy assumes that the mental illness is a product of disordered thinking, but in many cases, it is a rational result of an inescapable set of circumstances that have destroyed a person’s chance to ever lead a peaceful, safe, healthy life. It is unfair to put the onus on the patient, when the patient has often exhausted all coping techniques and resources already, and is cognizant of the fact that feeling better is not the same as living a better life.
What are these people to do?
Knowing what I do, it always seems like a risky venture to send a suicidal individual to the hospital.
I sought inpatient care for myself, in concert with my therapist, a number of times over my life. On each occassion, I was scheduled for a voluntary admission. I drove myself to the hospital, walked into the ER with a suitcase of clean clothes and a Harry-Potter-type book in-hand, and waited quietly to be admitted.
Unfortunately, even as compliant and easy-going as I am about such admissions, I was seriously abused both physically and emotionally by staff on a number of occassions. I also witnessed the abuse of other patients. We daily experinced serious violations of our Patient Rights, those very rights posted on the walls of every psych hospital. Patients are often even denied phone privileges and phone books, so they are not able to call the police or an attorney to seek protection. How cruel to incarcerate a depressed and suicidal individual ‘for his own good’, only to then abuse him!
I will never forget the time I saw a nurse pull down the trowsers of a calm, rational patient – right in public, in a co-ed environment! – and inject him with an anti-psychotic he clearly did not need. How could I ever forget seeing that poor catatonic woman dragged naked down the hall on a sheet?
Truly, I must say, psych hospitals are not safe places, and they are often inhabited by power-hungry staff. ER staff members who handle psych admissions are also not to be trusted.
Given that, in almost every case, I felt more suicidal upon discharge than upon admission, I really cannot recommend inpatient psych care. Once there, you are a prisoner to be treated as they will, and you effectively have no rights.
Agreed; I am a nurse and have worked in psychiatric inpatient situations; I would NEVER recommend this type of “care” to anyone. You will forever be labeled as a nutjob, and if you have a professional license, you can pretty much kiss that goodbye.
Depending on your financial status, you could take a road trip to another house, state, or country to readjust your mindstate. It has worked for me and could possibly work for others as well.
I have become such a horrible person. There is no hope and there is nothing about me that deserves to live.
Every attempt of kindness or encouragement has only made what I am worse. I have hurt my wife in horrible ways and I have become so evil that I dont even see it.
I have worked so hard at being what she has demanded that, instead I end up hurting her to the point that I make her feel, what my deluded mind thinks is positive or neutral is actually a mean or vindictive attack on her.
I suffer from non stop intense chronic pain that doctor after doctor cannot ease and I feel everything that I am, even when I think I am being kind or loving, turns out I am actually being a monster.
I cannot find any reason to continue because I obviously am unable to change what I am.
I live(d) This! Massive doses MSCONTIN and MSIR for 15 of 18 years.
I had No Idea of the way I was while I thought a loving father and husband of 30 years.
SEEING this for the 1st time, is staggering!!!
The morphine was killing me. I found relief with R.F.S.
Jail cold turkey made me quit Not By Choice.
11 1/2 years later I TAKE ZERO PAIN MEDS, yet I smoke marijuana.
I’ve lost everything and everyone that meant anything, everything… My World!
I barely survive yet do.
Many associated say I’m the most chill, easy going person they know. Many compliments from everyone BUT the 4 people who matter all, my (ex)wife and children who describe me as a “monster”?!?
I’ve had Enough.
The “3 day” concept I do recognize, as I do find Any aspect or reason of joy to be sufficient to ease my mind. Though, even during good times I ask JESUS Christ to “end this existence”.
Is this next Christmas my LAST CHRISTMAS?!
I’ve been “red flagged” twice by the V.A.
I’m so tired of being alone!
It’s been 6 years now I’ve been fighting suicidal thoughts every waking minute of every day.
It started with a major financial loss due to bad advice, then my career ended and I had accidents 2 cycling and 1 car over 4 years . All were serious and I am now very disabled.
Then I was arrested for asking for help with suicidal thoughts -prosecuted for “malicious communication”
Now my wife has had enough and wants to live separately.
3 days ?? I wish it was
You sound like a braver person than me. I wish you all the best of luck in the world. You deserve some. Just know that if a stranger cares enough to write to you on the internet then you probably have people in real life who would miss you. If I could I would give you a hug.
I certainly do, but I feel guilty for being a burden to them.
This site has real people talking about real problems
Often there is NO answer, but now trying mindfulness again
Control of a long term problem that has become automatic to multiple stressors is a lie. It has become a biological reaction to over whelming stressors that one feels powerless over .
I have had vivid imagery of stabbing myself, jumping off a building, swimming out to sea that I’m glad I haven’t acted on it like my dearest mother
I’ve had suicidal thoughts for the past month. Every single day. It’s hard to smile anymore. So should I just end it? There’s no purpose to my life.
List purposes that make you feel , wonder, awe , presence.
Do by history of . Forget this moment , look by history. Whom would experience you giving them the ultimate duck you to them . What do you love. List this stuff down . Add and subtract as needed. Talk re to trusted others. Talk re to your higher powers , sacredness. I have survived suicidal ideation since 18 , now almost 69. Be the power to get thru these 24 hours. Meds and therapy help some . Do not isolate.