Before I talk about suicide, I want to note that people who die in tornadoes are so selfish. They have people who love them, people who will be hurt terribly if they die. Yet they die anyway.
People who die in tornadoes are thinking only of themselves. They take the easy way out when they refuse to overcome the storm. They don’t care that their death shows others that not everybody can survive tornadoes.
Obviously, I am being absurd. Yet substitute the word “suicide” or “suicidal crisis” for “tornadoes,” and I have summed up arguments of those who say that suicide is selfish.
“How could she abandon her children like that?”
“He was only thinking of himself.”
“Her suicide sends the wrong message to others.”
Suicidal forces are a storm inside one’s head. The harsh winds of a tornado – and the debris they kick up – batter the body. The pain accompanying suicidal forces batters the mind.
But…People Choose to Die by Suicide
It might seem that choice sets apart suicide and tornadoes. People choose to end their lives. Nobody chooses to have a tornado demolish their home.
The mind is deceptive. What appears to be a choice often is not truly a choice. Otherwise, people with obsessive-compulsive disorder could choose to stop experiencing obsessions and compulsions. People with schizophrenia could decide to turn off the voices they hear. And so on.
Forces outside the person’s control cause the person to “choose” suicide. Those forces happen. Nobody chooses to experience so much pain, loss, trauma, or mental illness that they feel compelled to die by suicide.
But…Most People Survive a Suicidal Storm
It is true. Thankfully. Almost everyone who experiences suicidal thoughts – even most people who survive a suicide attempt – make it out of the storm alive. They recover. Many thrive. It is a reason to celebrate. Life goes on, and their loved ones need not be hurt by their loss.
It is not that those who survive a suicidal storm are selfless. For whatever reasons, their suicidal thoughts become less intense. They get good help from professionals or people they know personally, or their mind offers some relief, or some other change occurs that helps them to resist suicide’s forces. It’s not personal.
But…Concern for Others Does Stop Suicide for Some People
Some suicidal people vow never to act on their suicidal thoughts because “It would devastate my parents” or “I could never put my children through that.” It is wonderful that those individuals’ concern for others helps them resist suicidal thoughts. I hope they take advantage of that. However, it is wrong to presume that those who fall victim to suicide did not have concern for others.
In his book Myths about Suicide, the psychologist Thomas Joiner writes of the movie star Halle Berry, who says she halted her suicide attempt by carbon monoxide poisoning when she thought of how her suicide would hurt her mother. It is a mistake to compare those who die by suicide with those who survive, Dr. Joiner writes:
“It is a mistake because those who die by suicide have experienced a rupture in their social connections, and thus ideas like ‘my mother would be distressed if I were gone’ do not occur to them, not because they are selfish, but because they are alone in a way that few can fathom.”
But…I Got Through It for the Sake of Others, So Why Can’t They?
Perhaps you felt suicidal in the past, and you did not hurt yourself. Perhaps to resist suicide, you thought of those you loved, and the thought of hurting them hurt you.
Be careful not to expect others’ experiences (or resources) to be like yours. The suicidal storm is different for everyone.
Suicidal thoughts can be a whisper or a shout, a suggestion or a command, an idea or an obsession. Some suicidal people have fleeting suicidal thoughts a few times a week. For others, suicidal thoughts intrude loudly every day, throughout the day, without relief. Other people fall in between to varying degrees.
What worked for you might not help another. Sometimes, the difference between a suicide victim and a suicide survivor can be just one thing, like finding a good therapist, starting a medication that works, or simply waking up one morning and inexplicably feeling better.
Something else might make the difference between living and dying, something unknowable. Your own suicidal experiences do not reveal anything about another person’s.
But…Is Suicide Selfless?
Contrary to being selfish, many people who act on suicidal thoughts do consider the welfare of others. The problem is, their considerations are distorted.
“I am a burden to those who care about me.”
“They’ll get over my death and be happier once they can move on.”
“I can’t bear to put my parents through the pain of watching me fall apart.”
I have heard those statements, and many more like them, in my work as a psychotherapist. Right or wrong, many suicidal individuals truly believe that others would benefit from their death. As Dr. Joiner notes in Myths about Suicide:
“Ideas like ‘my mother will be better off when I am gone’ are primary. These are the antithesis of selfishness.”
I would not go so far as to say that people trapped in a suicidal storm are selfless. Instead, they are victims of their mind’s deception.
The concepts of selfishness and selflessness simply do not apply. Suicide’s victims are neither selfish nor selfless, just as it is not selfish or selfless to die due to a heart attack, cancer, a car wreck…or a tornado.
© Copyright 2015 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, All Rights Reserved. Written for www.speakingofsuicide.com. All photos purchased from Fotolia.com.
Just to add on to my last comment – if I do ever commit suicide, then it will probably be in order to save myself; it’s unlikely to be because I feel guilty about being a burden to anyone else. So I’m happy for people to pre-judge my motives as selfish; and feel that them making that accusation really just holds up a mirror to their own character flaws.
But if everything that I say is automatically pre-judged to be somehow inauthentic because it is produced by this “tornado” of emotions that you refer to; then it’s much harder to make myself heard.
I believe that this may be the rationale which underpinned the change in legal status of suicide, when the 1961 Suicide Act was passed in the UK. When suicide was criminalised, it could be perceived as an act of tyranny against people at their most vulnerable moment. But the passage of the Suicide Act changed the paradigm – instead of people with failed suicides being criminals who needed to be punished; they were ‘vulnerable’ people who just needed some protection. It’s far easier to rally the public around the cause of ‘protecting’ people who can’t think for themselves, than it is to rally them around the cause of criminalising people who violate very subjective moral norms. And the end result is effectively the same, anyway – the person doesn’t have the right to suicide, and they are locked up somewhere…but this way, you don’t have to give them the same rights that would be afforded to the criminal, because they’re incapable of exercising their rights rationally, anyway.
To call suicide selfish is to recognise the volition and agency of the suicidal person, and judge them for their actions. But in your article, you are saying that even if I (as a suicidal person) feel as though I’m in control, that actually, I’m the helpless witness of a “tornado” of emotional instability, and not acting with any volition. That’s akin to how psychiatrists consider “anasognosia” to itself be a symptom of mental illness. The very fact that you have denied having a mental illness is even more proof that you do have one; because the fact that you don’t think you have one is proof that you lack insight into your own thoughts. So you’re really telling your entire audience of suicidal people that their perspective is inauthentic. You’re telling those people what their thought process is. In a word, you are gaslighting them.
If I ever commit suicide, then I’d be happy for them to inscribe on my gravestone “here lies a selfish bastard who chose to escape his own suffering at the expense of others”. Because whoever would judge me as selfish for making that decision believes that I am obligated to remain alive against my will for their benefit. Even if I’m no longer around to make my argument, I feel that the fact that someone had the sense of entitlement to believe that it was selfish of me to choose not to be a slave to them will eventually speak for itself, once societal attitudes evolve.
If you condemn a suicidal person as being “selfish” for contemplating the act; then at least that opens up the opportunity for them to defend themselves. But what you’re doing by likening suicidal thoughts to a “tornado” is shutting down any avenue for that person to resist your judgement of them; because the very fact that they disagree with your assessment is proof that they lack insight and cannot be taken seriously. I’d always rather be judged to be a moral agent who can be judged for his decisions, as opposed to someone who has no volition and is at the mercy of a tornado of emotional instability, who needs others to make his decisions for him and tell him what his authentic interests actually are.
I certainly don’t feel as though I’m caught up in a tornado of emotions. In fact, I feel very level headed and emotionally stable most of the time. But no doubt you will attribute that to a lack of insight on my part.
spot on! i will say that mental health professionals have done a great job at demonizing anything that doesn’t fit their viewpoints (like their belief that suicide is always wrong) by associating any thought, emotion, belief, or action they don’t like as part of a mental illness like this article comparing suicidal thoughts to a tornado or, as you mentioned, using the term “anosognosia” to describe a lack of insight in one’s own supposed illness. it’s an effective way to invalidate someone’s choices without having to provide meaningful reasons as to why you disagree with them because you can just claim that their ideas or actions are part of a pathology and therefore must be problematic. mental health professionals have repeated this “suicide=mental illness” mantra so many times and with such authority in an unchallenged platform that it’s hard not to be swayed but at the end of the day, it’s nothing more than manipulation. i am absolutely disgusted with this article and all of the people in the comments praising it to death.
You are not being absurd. The exact opposite, in fact. People that stay to protect to try to protect their homes from tornadoes, floods, fires, etc. usually have sufficient warning in the 2000s to get the heck out of there before the crisis occurs! Many who choose to remain behind do not survive. For those with family or community who love them, I find their deaths INCREDIBLY selfish.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/death-roared-up-to-naylors/news-story/c07d9bea815480bd3dab941c33a85f02?sv=1665da7b58f24dba03d73338e7ccc3e3
While I understand the point you were making, I think you used a poor example to make it.
John,
With all due respect, I am not familiar with any documented accounts of people staying to protect their home during a tornado. A flood or hurricane, yes. But a tornado? Typically people retreat to a basement or a ditch or some other place to protect themselves, not their house — if possible.
There are storm chasers, and perhaps in the interest of logic I should address those dare-devils as exceptions. But to call anybody who dies in a tornado “selfish” is, I believe, a misunderstanding of the word “selfish.”
Thanks for sharing — and for challenging my thinking!
A tornado strikes without warning, often in the middle of the night. She wasn’t talking about other natural disasters that you can see coming. (Even some of the others you mentioned defy predictions) Even with all our new technology we can still only give a few minutes warning and possible location of a tornado. Even if you can take shelter you have no guarantees in an f4 or f5. So no it’s not Selfish.
Thank you for recognizing the devastating effects of suicide and suicidal thoughts. These are lies your brain —the physical organ —tells you and brings such pain as can’t be felt as physical pain but surely causes physical side effects.
When your leg is broken, you walk funny. When your heart is broken, you have pain and other debilitating symptoms. When your brain is broken, it signals with debilitating thoughts and suicidal thoughts. This is why medicine is all important in treating a person with such issues. Like you would set a bone or treat a fluttering heart with electric shock and a pacemaker, you treat the whole person who has debilitating mental illness, because the brain affects EVERYTHING.
My sister lost her life to suicide, and she couldn’t muscle through her crises —which were many and included persecution for being gay—just like I can’t muscle through mine without help.
If you are struggling with stuff that seems foreign to you —I’ve had suicidal thoughts that came out of nowhere and weren’t my will —find someone who will listen. Make them listen. Make your doctors listen or fire them and find another. Require them to treat you as a peer. Bring a list of questions. Tell them what is you and what is not you. (I make sure they don’t confuse my religious practices with my mental illness.) Go to a support group like NAMI.org or DBSAlliance.org and connect with people who have similar would to yours.
One in four people are affected by mental illness. There are people out there from all walks of life who have been through things you have and can help you find your way.
I am bipolar, and I have dealt worth symptoms like this and others which are common to many affected by mental illness. I freely talk about it so that others can find what they need.
Don’t suffer suicidal thoughts or think it’s “all in your head.” It is a persecution thing, and the illness will grab every sad thought you have to make you cry, and it will be a lie.
Measles leave red marks. Polio paralyzes you. Smallpox leaves pustules. Mental illness takes over your saddest, darkest memories and throws them at your confidence and stamina. And, like the evil dementors in the Harry Potter books, destroys you utterly.
You don’t have to go it alone.
Suicidal thoughts are not natural. They are unbearable pain. It is this pain that victims want to stop. In any way possible.
Dr. Freedenthal, thank you for the link.
I agree with you, there are many points of view with regard to what is selfish or selfless. To presumptuously assume that someone threatened or succumbing to suicide is selfish is to, in my opinion, misunderstand what a suicidal person is likely dealing with. To your metaphor, it IS like a storm, and we can’t always successfully duck out of the way of a storm (ask any pilot), despite our best efforts. To say someone gave up trying and simply allowed the storm to overtake him is to not understand that the storm can be so large there really isn’t anywhere to go.
BTW, another metaphor that comes to mind for me is a chronic health condition related to lifestyle choices, such as smoking. I have no problem arguing that a life-long smoking habit is actually very slow suicide. Most smokers know the health hazards, they have or had a choice when they started, and they continued throughout their lives. Knowing it may lead to their deaths, usually after prolonged and expensive healthcare interventions, they continued anyway. Is that selfish? I think so.
But even as our society has begun to understand the connection between smoking and poor health, rarely does the term “selfish” get thrown about when health issues arise. In fact, regardless of what family members may think (“he did this to himself, you know”), many feel sorry for the victim of smoking-related issues. In fact, a rather large and extensive (and lucrative) class-action lawsuit was initiated and settled with regard to smoking-related health issues and those who suffer from them, with one of the underlying contexts being that smokers (regardless of personal choice) “didn’t know or understand” the true consequences.
Imagine a similar lawsuit regarding victims of suicide. Who would be the target? What would be the argument? A rather intriguing notion, I think.
Thank you.
Mike,
Your comment is beautifully stated, especially this part: “To your metaphor, it IS like a storm, and we can’t always successfully duck out of the way of a storm (ask any pilot), despite our best efforts. To say someone gave up trying and simply allowed the storm to overtake him is to not understand that the storm can be so large there really isn’t anywhere to go.” It makes me think, too, of those people who jumped out of the Twin Towers, because it was the only way to escape the flames, which were their own kind of storm.
To your last questions (“Who would be the target? What would be the argument?”), I think you’ve elucidated why some people sue therapists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals when a loved one dies by suicide. Granted, sometimes true negligence did occur and the professional failed the suicidal person. Other times, though, loved ones blame the professional for forces beyond the professional’s control.
For example, if a person is suicidal but doesn’t tell their therapist, pretends to be feeling better, and even outright denies having suicidal thoughts, then there’s only so much the professional can do. Yet many people expect professionals to foresee the unforeseeable. This isn’t quite parallel to your point about the people who sue tobacco companies, because in those cases the companies were providing poison that the people chose to use. In this case, professionals are providing help that some people choose not to use.
Good food for thought!