These days, anyone of any political persuasion can find reasons to despair. Dramatic social upheaval. Climate change. Wars. Artificial intelligence. Mondays.
If you wish you could die, or if you outright think of killing yourself, what keeps you going?
In another post, I asked, “What stops you from killing yourself?” to help you identify your reasons for living. Now, I’m asking because I want all the ideas I can get.
I’m giving a keynote talk at the American Association of Suicidology conference in April, on how to want to stay alive in dark times. Want to, because for many people it’s not enough to just survive.
True confession: I don’t really know how. The title is aspirational. I chose it in the spirit of Dale Carnegie’s famous self-help book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” His book offers good ideas, but it doesn’t have fool-proof answers.
Similarly, I have many ideas about ways to want to live. Ideas based on my own suicidal crises. Ideas based on my clinical work as a psychotherapist. Ideas based on my research and scholarship as a suicidologist.
I have a lot of ideas, but I don’t want to miss something important. Which is why I’m inviting you to share in the comments below what helps you want to stay alive.
Yes, it’s kinda weird, isn’t it? I’m crowd-sourcing the ultimate life-or-death advice.
Reasons for Living when You Want to Die
To get your ideas flowing, I’ll share the results of a novel study. Researchers looked at more than 7,000 Reddit posts by people with suicidal urges and analyzed the reasons why they didn’t try to end their life.
The study authors identified 12 major reasons for staying alive, listed here in order of how frequently they appeared:
Friends and Family
By far, concern about loved ones was the most common deterrent to suicide. This showed up in 43% of the Reddit posts. In comparison, the next most common reason was cited only 10% of the time.
Specifically, people said they didn’t want to hurt their friends and family. They also mentioned wanting to spare loved ones from finding the body, organizing a funeral, cleaning out the person’s belongings, and other consequences.
Those same things weighed heavily on me in my own suicidal episodes. Once, during an especially bleak mood in Paris many years ago, I ruled out suicide because getting my body back to the U.S. would have been a huge hassle for my parents.
Purpose
Fulfilling responsibilities, working toward goals, and finishing projects gave many people’s lives purpose. This is reminiscent, to me, of that Robert Frost poem:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Curiosity and Optimism about the Future
Hope for the future. A belief that things would get better. Curiosity about what will happen in their life. Each of these kept people going.
It’s like that famous quote from Project Semi-Colon: “Your story isn’t over.”
(Sadly, the founder of Project Semi-Colon, Amy Bleuel, killed herself in 2017. But her message is still true.)
In my 20s, a therapist asked me, “Don’t you want to see what happens?” And: “Can’t you have the humility to acknowledge you don’t know what will happen?” Powerful questions, because at the time I felt certain my life would never get better. Thankfully, I was wrong.
Hobbies and Activities
What do music, masturbation, and Minecraft have in common? All were listed as reasons to not die by suicide. So were football, exercise, and books.
For myself, I’d add eating chocolate, petting cats, writing, traveling with my husband Pete, and swimming in the ocean as compelling reasons to stick around.
What hobbies and activities make life worth living for you?
Animals/Pets
A questionnaire called the Reasons for Living Inventory lists 72 reasons across six domains: responsibility to family, child-related concerns, fear of suicide, fear of social disapproval, beliefs about survival and coping, and moral objections. (You can see the questionnaire and learn more about it in my post, “What Are Your Reasons for Living?”)
Researchers use the Reasons for Living Inventory a lot, but to me it has a striking failing: it doesn’t include pets. Pets help people cope. Pets also need to be taken care of.
People have told me they don’t kill themselves because they don’t want to subject their pets to abandonment, an animal shelter, or euthanasia. As one person in the Reddit study posted, “My dog needs me.”
Pets factor so big in people’s lives that an animal shelter in Oregon started asking everyone who came to surrender a pet if they had suicidal thoughts. In the first three months, seven people were identified – and helped – as a result.
Intervention by Others
Intervention doesn’t have to mean calling the police or taking someone to the hospital. A shout from someone to “get down from there,” an unexpected visit, and other actions by others stopped some people in the Reddit study from following through with their suicide attempt.
There’s an oft-told story of someone who left a suicide note saying, “I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.” The medical examiner and a psychologist found the note after the person’s suicide.
It goes to show that you never know what impact a few words, a smile, or a little act of kindness can have on others.
Fear of Pain, Death, and/or the Afterlife
Everyone knows Shakespeare’s famous question in Hamlet, “To be or not to be?” In that speech, Hamlet’s main reason for being is the uncertainty of what comes after death:
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause…
Hamlet goes on to say that the uncertainty “makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.”
These same fears of a harsh afterlife stopped people in the Reddit study. So did fears of regretting one’s suicide at the last, irrevocable moment, fear of physical pain, and overall fear of dying.
I have to say, similar fears troubled me when I was suicidal. I worried in particular that I might be reincarnated into a life of even more suffering, to teach me whatever lessons I didn’t learn this time around.
Transience
“This, too, shall pass” is a phrase thought to bring joy to the suffering and suffering to the joyous. Everything changes. Maybe not the situation – a dead loved one doesn’t come back to life, for example – but the intensity of despair and pain can change.
Apathy, Laziness
Suicide requires effort; the proverbial path of least resistance is to keep going. Who knew apathy and laziness could be life-saving?
Procrastination is life-saving, too, for that matter. Putting off suicide, thinking without acting, taking a long nap – all of these have helped some people survive.
Fear of Surviving a Suicide Attempt
People have survived suicide attempts with horrific injuries – paralysis, brain damage, blindness, to name a few. How tragic that the act they undertook to end their suffering only created more. That prospect was enough to keep some people in the Reddit study from acting on their suicidal thoughts.
Spite
I love this one! “I don’t want my haters to win,” one person posted on Reddit. You know what they say: “Living well is the best revenge.”
A recent memoir, The Chair and the Valley, gives a poignant example of surviving out of spite. The author, Banning Lyon, had been abused by doctors at a psychiatric hospital. When he was in an especially dark place, he remembered a friend’s words: “You can’t let the doctors win.”
Pharmaceutical Drugs
Some people credited antidepressants with saving their life. I believe they saved my life, too. This is a controversial topic, because other studies have reported that taking antidepressants caused harm. Stopping antidepressants also can be treacherous.
Other Reasons for Staying Alive When You Want to Die
The study authors also listed reasons that didn’t fit neatly into one of the above categories. Not having a gun available was one reason. Getting into therapy was another.
What Helps You Want to Survive?
What reasons in the Reddit study most resonate with you? What reasons do you have for living that the study didn’t capture?
And, most importantly, what helps you to want to live?
© 2025 Stacey Freedenthal. All Rights Reserved. Written for Speaking of Suicide.
Despite my abysmal upbringing – an absent father and an abusive mother – making a realistic assessment of the life I’ve lead, I see concrete evidence that I have not failed at life. Growing up like that, I think there’s a natural tendency to have really low self-esteem. I have worked very hard to overcome that and racked up some achievements and experiences that demonstrate my life has been fruitful and promises more in the future. When I feel that I was doomed to failure and I recall every time I did fail at anything, I remind myself of all I’ve accomplished in my long life. Looking back, I can clearly see that working seven days a week to finish my Ph.D., e.g., and starting my career late in life (age 48 for my first college-level teaching job and 52 for my tenure-track position) took ambition and grit. This is far beyond what my miserable background promised me. So, I guess the bottom line is that I know I’ve created a life worth preserving. I still have those slivers of suicidal ideation from time to time, but I’ve learned to ignore them and they pass away instead of me.
Linda,
I so appreciate your sharing your experiences here, both in many comments and in your guest post How I’ve Survived and Thrived with Suicidal Thoughts. You’re a testament to the value of the phrase, “Keep on keeping on!” And also, one of my favorites, which is in the article above, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” I’m grateful you’ve kept going. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Stacey,
You’re more than welcome. In fact, I am grateful to you for sponsoring this valuable site. Formulating replies helps keep me focused on what works in my life and I appreciate the time and care you dedicate to this site. Good luck in your presentation; it’s an intriguing idea, crowd-sourcing data on resisting suicide on your site dedicated to affording us a forum to express our feelings on the topic. I also appreciate your providing me a forum to express my thoughts to a wider audience.
k, just read this…and these reddit responses might be very different now. How many have family they can talk to? Friends, maybe. There are a lot of folks (hi researchers) that are wondering if they will have a job let alone their strong desire to serve people with their own unique gifts. I think that curiosity about the future is almost too painful for people. Hobbies and activities might be a universal thing (whether you have friends/family or a career/purpose) But by the time you go down the list to this, how do you even feel about doing anything? Pets have been my life saver. Often moving to cities where I don’t know anyone, pets (at least dogs) need to go outside. And if you don’t have friends/family, hobbies, (you likely need a career to care for them, although I often see our unhoused folks make it work) a pet might be it. And we are seeing that with record numbers of folks getting dogs (Like during covid). I wonder if we need to find post-covid ways to self soothe and find a reason to not die. Would be interesting to do this study now and see what folks think.
Anonymous,
Those are great points about people’s reasons for living today possibly being different than when those Reddit responses were written. The authors note that the threads appeared on Reddit between 2011 and 2020 — a lot of chaos has happened since that time period! The pandemic, 2020 election violence, new wars, deepened political polarization, etc. have brought new challenges. I hope someone will do this research again, with more recent responses.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here!
When I reached the point of committing suicide,the things that stopped me were 1)the thoughts of the pain that I would inflict up on my family 2)prayers to a Higher Power to help me 3)thoughts of the struggles of others-having worked as a nurse for 25 years……I remembered one patient saying to me that the secret to life was “never give up “…….later when I was getting treatment for my depression I carved those words in a wooden plaque which I keep in my room as a daily reminder of how close I came to suicide…….I take an antidepressant daily and work to maintain my mental health daily.
Thank you for your support and for helping others!!
Chris,
Those words, “Never give up,” have helped many people. That would be a good tattoo, if one were so inclined. Your reason for living are very powerful – care for your family, prayers to a higher power, the perspective from others’ struggles. Thanks for sharing your experiences here!
To ask the question, “What helps you want to stay alive?,” implies that those who suicide, Want to die. It is my belief that people do not want to die but rather seek to stop whatever pain it is that they are going through.
I believe that there are very deep and often unrecognizd reasons that support each of us to live. The question implies that death is our ultimate goal (thus our Wanting to Live) and yet l see life forms around me avoiding death (barring Nature’s intent, such as ants sacrificing their lives for the greater community).
Most people seem to have a propensity for Life. If true, they do not merely “Want to Live,” they are wired to Live. As such, there is not a choice in wanting to live but a need to live that overrides that choice. And those who suicide do not choose to die nor want to die (though there may be exceptions), they just want to stop the pain and disharmony that they are presently experiencing. Even those people who are anxious of the future are moved to escape from that fear that is facing them in the Here and Now, and thus they may find death more attractive.
As someone who eventually saw a therapist for long-term suicidal ideation and then finding my partner dead from suicide, l found the question very interesting and a necessary one to think upon.
So….What keeps me alive? Firstly, my empathy for other life forms that others usually have issues with.
Reflecting on this thought one night, as I was coming home from work in the wee hours of the morning, feeling a tad depressed, an insight arose from deep within. This is what I later wrote in my Journal –
I exist to pick up a little caterpillar who is caught in the fibers of a carpet as I gently extract him and put him outside or the time that I managed to remove a sticky piece of fluff from the legs of a spider, with a pair of tweezers, who was slowly dying from the exertion of trying to remove the fluff herself, even though I am arachnophobic. Most people wouldn’t really care as their indifference would overshadow this; their indifference would blind them to her individuality, the fear to the insect’s struggle – for, It is only a spider! But I do care and I care deeply so for all these Beings who share that ethereal thing with us that we call Life. This is my Compassion and Compassion is my Purpose. That is the answer, the only answer that I can find for my existence. (Entry -September 2, 2023)
and secondly, knowing the pain that suicide causes others.
Now l have been at the door of pain (stemming from childhood abuse and neglect, a dysfunctional family, my own ideation and my loss to suicide, among a host a other losses) where l have just been strongly beckoned to pass into death. As such, l appreciate why people suicide as opposed to wanting to die. Having experienced these issues, l know that others would suffer and so to avoid their suffering, l push on. It isn’t easy at times, and yet it is necessary.
I met a lady a few years back going through her own loss to suicide, and as we discussed her concerns over many months, and l listened to her and allowed her to cry, she grew stronger. She eventually shared that meeting me gave her the support and encouragement required for her to live. She is another good reason for living.
As someone who now wants to work in the postvention field, l now have a stronger reason for living. Do l really want to live? Mostly not. Do l have a Purpose for living? Yes l do but it has taken an awfully long time to be able to distill that Purpose.
Thanks for reading my lengthy reply.
Heath,
Your words, like many others’ here, are beautiful. You capture the essence of major reasons for living: helping others, connecting, purpose in life. I agree with you about this: “Most people seem to have a propensity for Life. If true, they do not merely “Want to Live,” they are wired to Live. As such, there is not a choice in wanting to live but a need to live that overrides that choice.” What I encounter in my work as a therapist, and in my own lived experience, is that sometimes people don’t have that automatic pilot, and that’s when people want to want to live. You know?
What you wrote about helping the caterpillar is especially moving, to me. It revived a dormant memory of my being on the beach in Hawaii last summer and seeing a bee in the sand, next to my towel. It had something caught in its wings and was struggling to rise above the stand. I used a stick to free the debris from its wings, and it soared away from me.
I’m very sorry about your own suicide loss and chronic suicidal thoughts. I appreciate your sharing your experiences here to help others. Thank you!
Dear Stacy, thank you so kindly for pointing out to me that not everyone has that automatic pilot and and that’s when people want to want to live. This is a very useful and necessary distinction that I had overlooked when reading your original article. So I am extremely grateful for you highlighting this and will make it a part of my awareness as I continue to learn more about the nuances surrounding the issue of suicide.
Take care
I think my own reasons are fairly typical.
If not for my son there is zero chance I’d still be here. Zero. I had one night where I was really close due to a mix of chemicals I took and woke up with respiratory depression. I knew immediately what it was and thought, yeah, OK… if this is it I’m good with it. Then I remembered that if I died that night, my son would be alone in the house with me and he’d find my body, so I went outside, shirtless at 3 am in October or November, and just walked around until I felt normal again. Lord knows what I must have looked like. I don’t know if I was bad enough that night to have been life threatening, but if not for my son I would have been willing to find out. There’s other situations where I was close to doing something, and didn’t because of him.
Fear of failure is a big one, too. I’ve done my research and there is really no quick, painless, 100% reliable way.
Getting off anti-depressants was extremely hard. It took 6 months of slow tapering. Off topic, this is one of my gripes with the typical psychiatrist/patient relationship. The psychiatrist I used to see, if you were late or missed an appointment she would ghost you for a month or two. You can imagine how much fun that was, if you were on SSRIs and amphetamines. I would take less than the dose advised so I could build up a stockpile. She wanted me to take Xanax every day to which I told her there was no way that was happening with her tendencies. The last time she ghosted me I just decided not to bother with it anymore and used my huge stockpile of SSRI’s to get off them. It sucked. I thank them for nothing and credit fitness and running for truly saving my life.
This is a good study and article. I’m rarely on Reddit anymore but I also think r/depression could be a really useful tool for people who want to analyze the thought patterns and processes of depressed/suicidal people. Since it’s a community of like-minded people, everyone talks real there.
Paul,
Thanks so much for sharing here. I’m very grateful you’re still here to share.:) And I’m sorry that you’ve had so many difficulties. It sounds like the Reddit article really resonated with you. I appreciate that the authors used real-world responses. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scholarly article that lists masturbation as a reason for not dying by suicide, for example!
Anyway, thanks again for sharing here. I know your words will help others in some way.
As a practicing clinician, psychotherapist, I conceive that there maybe some distinctions between “wanting to survive and wanting to live”
People survive tragedies, cancer, abuse, adversities of life and misfortunes.
Surviving presumes a level of existing that constitutes coping and tolerating life circumstances with a passive disposition.
Wanting to Live seems like it constitutes having more agency and autonomy over the journey of life.
Wanting to live presumes, there is a deep spiritual awareness that there is an ontological obligation that something unique, distinct and specific about the self is present and there is a thing in you wanting to find its expression in the world.
There is an inner realization that like nature we are all here to Give, Grow and Create and this provides a life of meaning and purpose.
Wanting to live further suggests there is a philosophical understanding that your opportunity of life is not capricious and like nature you are here to give something that benefits the ecosystem of life.
Having an intuitive relationship with the user manual of the self allows you to engineer outcomes that provide a service that is of utility to the self and others.
Wanting to live is not devoid of responsibilities and its shapes and gives life its essence.
Wanting to live is a force of nature, it takes courage and boldness to challenge our fears which is a first principle of life and to negate it violates living.
Wanting to live also presumes another deep understanding that the language of the universe is not Mandarin or English or Hindi but frequency and we all have the capacity to tune in and vibrate energies that allow us to become the alchemist of our desires.
Oliver Harper, you explain beautifully some of the distinctions between staying alive and *wanting* to stay alive. Your words also beautifully illustrate distinctions between existing and living fully.
Thank you for sharing here!