I hate it when people generalize suicidal patients and suicide victims as selfish. I hear my friends, family, and doctor say this about suicidal people all the time. Its even prevalent online. They always say that we are only thinking of ourselves, not those who love us. For me, those who want to keep us alive and call us selfish are in fact the very people that are selfish. They’re the ones who want us to live, to be with them, despite the sufferings and emotional torture we endure. They can’t grasp the possibility of us ending our lives by our own hands and accept us leaving them “prematurely”. They can’t and don’t want to feel what we are feeling. They can’t see the logic and urgency of our liberation from suffering. They’d rather focus of the emotional loss that they will feel instead of our suffering. Thus, it is them who are selfish. Maybe its just like an awful one-sided breakup. “If you truly love us, then you must let us go.”
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Suicide is selfish. Humans are selfish by nature. Everything we do has selfish motive behind it. The problem is lack of understanding.
CV, you are brief and you are a genius.
Can’t tell if sarcasm or not.
Oh sorry. Completely honest and heartfelt. I wish I had read those words last night. I would have never commented in the first place.
I can see your point. At the end of the day, it us who have to decide what’s best for ourselves. Its present in animals and humans… If love does exists, mutual understanding should exist with it.
@Hance: www. youtube .com/watch?v=I9687ZKbZJA
I can’t do this again today. I love you all too much.
Here’s some dubstep, no hate, creatures lie here.
Thanks for that song Hazy Day Sunflower. Good music does help a lot for sad people. In fact, the song you recommended and the songs that youtube featured to be played after it is now helping my somber mood. May I know what you mean by “I can’t do this again today.” Would you mind to share what you did?
It was a previous thread by someone else. But it was from the opposing view and it got really emotional and negative. I do not recommend reading it, it isn’t one of my more mature moments. 2 hours I’ll n ever get back. I should have just took a handful of benedryl and passed out.
Uh-oh. Well knowing it isn’t one of your more mature moments is already good enough. I hope your overdose doesn’t have any long-term or painful effect. If it takes you to the next world, if it does exist, then I wish you a painless journey…
I agree with what you said. But in my case I think I would be selfish because maybe I’m not suffering enough. Most of people would want to change life with me. For a normal person my life would be great. I’m just too weak. Maybe I deserve this suffering and would be really selfish if I end my life. Perhaps my solution is to suck it up and deal with it just like other people. At least is what people say to me.
In conclusion i think people who have problems that don’t have solutions aren’t selfish if commit suicide.
@blackdog: sucking it up saved my life…
Said no one ever.
There’s no such thing as “not suffering enough”. Don’t compare your suffering to anybody else’s. We’ve all got our own personal Hells and we kill ourselves when we feel we’ve ran out of coping resources, and it’s only up to you decide when those resources have completely depleted.
Hi Blackdog. Christianity has a teaching that says, “the cup of suffering is different for everyone.” Well that’s what a priest once said in sermon I heard. Btw, I was raised a Catholic/Christian but I still continue to explore numerous philosophies and religions. I just take what I think is profound and applies to me. 😉 Okay, back to that teaching, I believe one cannot compare their suffering to others. Its not fair for anyone. Everyone suffers in some way. But no one can justly say they’re suffering more than others. Even if a normal person considers your life as great and you don’t feel the same, doesn’t entitle anyone to say you’re suffering any less. What good is a life worth all the gold in the world if your heart and mind are suffering? Most normal people would say my life is pretty good too. But honestly, all this money and love is worthless when I lost all purpose, when I’m in so much pain, and when I’m just waiting to die.
The problem with the word “selfish” is that there’s so much judgement attached to it. Everyone is selfish. All creatures are selfish. That’s not to say that I don’t think there are times when we should put aside that part of ourselves. But some suicidal people’s actions truly are beyond their control – nobody can call that act selfish. For others, they believe no one cares about them, or all they can feel is pain. Sometimes my depression is so severe that I can hardly see the face of a person I love in front of me, or process the words when someone tells me they care. “Selfish” doesn’t seem to me to be a word that should come into discussions like this, because to be selfish is to make a decision, and making a decision means to have a clear head and the facts laid out in front of you. A lot of people who kill themselves are experiencing something very different to life as a happy, healthy person, and they can’t be held completely accountable.
For others it may be a conscious decision, and in those cases people just don’t understand or respect how much they’re suffering. I think that’s understandable too. It isn’t visible, and it isn’t something many people could entirely understand. People base too many judgements around their own experiences. I used to never understand how a parent could kill themselves. I’d felt suicidal before so I thought I knew that experience, and I thought it was possible to stop yourself for another person’s sake. I realised eventually that that just isn’t always true. In my particular case, not hurting people I love is one of my biggest reasons to try to avoid suicide. Not everyone would feel the same. But even while I know how important that is to me and try to remind myself every day, it isn’t easy. The pain and effects of depression completely distort my mind, and any push could make it unbearable. If I die, it won’t be a decision. It won’t be selfish.
Regardless of what they think and any frustration they feel, I don’t know why people think that passing judgement would help someone who’s already suicidal. I can understand a friend or family member saying it out of fear, anger etc – love makes people less rational. It’s not excusable in the case of a doctor. I don’t know if it could ever be possible to draw the line between it being a conscious act or not, but the fact that so many people see it as one automatically shows nothing more or less than ignorance of severe mental illness. Like you said, people can’t see what a suicidal person is feeling. It could be argued that that’s where the problem lies – in ignorance.
Hi Trix. Thank you for your comment. I think the problem is that we are beings that feel and decide. If we were just to decide without emotion, we would just simply be robots. But for good or for bad, we feel. Our decisions mix with our feelings and its next to impossible to find out how much our feelings are influencing our actions. “Normal” people all the time feel and decide. I guess, they just feel happier than us, and understandably, they decide to live more than us. I think suicide by or partly due to sadness can still be a rational decision. If I’m not mistaken, a philosopher named Albert Camus once said that all of philosophy deals with the personal question, “is life worth living?” Suicide then can be a rational decision if one weighed that their lives are no longer worth living. It can be as simple as a truthful pros vs cons list.
I fully agree that it can be a rational decision. My comment was quite biased – I wrote a lot about it not always being a rational/conscious decision, but it’s because I think a lot of people disregard that when it’s a possibility.
Agreed Trix. My parents threw me into (well the proper term is “placed”) me in a mental health facility to “help” me become more rational and and prevent me from committing another suicide attempt. It was my first suicide attempt 3 years ago. I had another one a couple of months after. No attempts since then, but unlike those times, my approach to death has become more rational than impulse. Honestly, I’m a hair trigger away from attempting again. But this time, I must succeed. I don’t want to survive and go back into any facilities again. I haven’t fully decided yet, but I think my time of departure will be within a year.
Wow. This is my first post in this site and there are now 8 comments. It shows how active the community is. I don’t know whether to feel good that people care enough to reply this quickly and with such in-depth though, or to feel sad that there are a lot of people that go through the same or similar thing/s I’m going through. I honestly don’t wish this suicidal burden on anyone. Thank you everyone for your comments. I’ll reply to each one as kindly as all of us deserve. :,)
I feel both… Yes, I agree. Let’s be kind and supportive to each other.
If only anyone knew what was actually taking place in our world, on stage in the brain, perhaps they could understand the means to be cheerful, joyful for the switch for us is off and we don’t have those events on stage anymore. No more. Just off and over. I sympathize with your sentiments. The only real reason we rationalize this part of out deliverance is fear. We have nothing to fear and can only leave behind nothing. Those others will never understand our pinpoint in life, but why does it matter to anyone else but us. Leaves us with just enough guts to say enough is enough. But were still here dammit. What a shitty life we meek out of this crap… everyone calls life.. But were still here dammit. What for. What reason. For what. This is all way beyond the realm of sanity. Click. Dammit, were still here. Dammit.
Hmpf… I think were still here since there is still a tiny amount of conscious or unconscious hope in us… I don’t know if its misplaced or not, but its still there. And I guess our activity in this site proves that we still hope no matter how small. When it truly runs out, then it would be time.
Suicide is not selfish. In the sense that it is not an action taken lightly, and the person committing pays the ultimate price.
That said, I do know that loved ones suffer terribly. Hell, it even seems to infectious. The daughter kills herself, then the mom, etc.
The problem is you feel alone, so the last thing you need is the blame of being “selfish”. But clumsy though they may be, these people are only saying it because they care. They mean it: they would suffer if you died. They love you.
You feel alone in your suffering and you need someone to understand the depth of it. Right?
Personal story: my friend’s friend was this pixie-like ball of craziness I took an instant liking to. I only met her maybe twice, but she was the kind of person I was grateful existed, because… well, it was impossible not to like her. And then she killed herself. And I never even told her how much I appreciated her.
Hi muspelhem. I can identify with your friend’s friend. Most of my friends and my acquaintances consider me to be very crazy and fun to be with. It must be due to my extremely sociable character. I can easily shock people by being the life of a party. But when, at times, when I’m all by myself, I cry and find myself to be in a lot of pain. I don’t know if the crazy pixie-like (for males in my case, hehe) attribute is a call for help, a facade, or its just me. Maybe, its just a moment wherein we can lose ourselves in fun when normal people are more inhibited. Maybe it comes with the territory of not caring for our lives. Thus, we really don’t care. Maybe in those situations, we just let lose and spread the love, fun, and cheer to all present.
Suicide is selfish? I think what’s more selfish is to ask someone to live only for the sake of someone else. To live just because someone doesn’t want us to die. That’s selfish. You know what else is selfish? Blaming someone whose suicidal for the way they are. Suicide is selfish and screwed up they say? What’s more screwed up is causing someone enough pain to the point they think killing themselves is their only chance at relief. The world we live in…
So say for a minute suicide is selfish. People aren’t selfish by nature. In fact, people who are narcissistic or selfish are only that way because they are so love-deprived that they believe stealing from others is the only way to get it. It can go both ways. These thoughts and feelings are not the truth of who we are, but something that seek to be understood and learned from. Not “fixed” or rid of, understood. Or at least… that’s what we seek ultimately. Love, understanding, relief. We believe we can’t find it, and that’s what makes people take their own life. Hell, I have trouble believing I’ll find it. Human language is too limiting to explain these things, emotions…
Ah, for the record, I do believe there’s a lot of judgement attached to the idea of being selfish. Because we are all selfish and need to be at times… but I don’t call this selfishness. I call it being self-loving. We need to love ourselves to some extent. Just the fact we are all here talking means that we have some ounce of self-love in us. Something that’s keeping us here. It’s kind of contradictory, but even suicide is a form of self-love only that’s tied in with self-mutilation. Because we killed ourselves to hopefully find some relief, understanding, or love. No matter what we believe happens afterwards. Isn’t it strange that some part of ourselves is willing to put ourselves in pain, and even die, to gain love based on what our perception of that is? To people living the happy, healthy life they see it as self-destruction. And yet, we see it as a calming release. Just food for thought. Perspective is everything.
Agreed! :’) Perspective is everything and human language is indeed limiting. I’m no genius but I do try to understand and study a lot of religions, philosophies, sciences (including theoretical astrophysics, hehe), and human social behavior. So far, I haven’t found anything that absolutely splits what is right from what is wrong. How can one consider something fixed or broken if they cannot come up with its purpose? If we were watches, if its not showing the correct time, then its broken and has to be fixed. But we aren’t watches. These theories, “facts”, formulas, have never come up with a solid conclusion for man’s purpose. So honestly, what is there to be fixed if we are suicidal? What if death is our ultimate purpose? What if attachment to life means your broken? So people clinging to every ounce of life may need to be fixed then. Just saying… I do hope everyone finds their purpose.