I have this friend, who self harms and has suicidal thoughts. We don’t talk much anymore, but she still means a lot to me. I feel like it partially were our messed up minds that torned us apart and caused that now I’m afraid to send her a simple text.
She once said that I can’t help her and that I have to deal with the fact she will leave once. I remember crying for hours after she said that. It was like all my nightmares coming true.
And I want to help her so desperately, but I don’t know how.
I always want to help people. I don’t want them to hurt, I don’t want them to be ill. And I know lots of people don’t understand it. They ask things like “why do you try to help others when you need help too? When you’re fuc*ed up too? When you can’t help yourself?”.
Helping others helps myself in a way. I am distracted from my own problems, I feel valid, if I can help somebody I know I’m doing good, at least in something, I am doing good.
However, there’s many I can’t help.
I often wish to be gone soon so that I will not be here if she kills herself, so that it will not break me. I often wish that I could take all her pain so that she wouldn’t feel this way.
I wish I knew better how to help her, how to help you, how to help.
Because what’s the point of being the doctor when I can’t save you?
share your suicide story
Report Post
Please log in to report posts
8 comments
I don’t really have an opinion either way, but I’m reading a book called No More Mr Nice Guy, and you are like, the archetypical nice guy.
As a nurse I feel the same way. I used to think my skin had become thicker(and maybe at one time it was)but everything is cutting through me like a knife now. So much so I have to leave the job for a while or good. It’s unbelievable the horrors that people are going through. I don’t know how the doctors do it. It’s so much responsibility. It seems impossible not to internalize it. It invades even my dreams now. I just can’t do it anymore.
Good, caring docs are hard to find. So many have become angry, bitter, jaded. I hope you can continue as you are needed and appreciated. I know it must seem like you’re “the little dutch boy/girl” holding you finger in the dike while it all cracks around you but you would probably be surprised to know the extent at which you have made peoples lives better even years down the road. At the hospital I work at I always thanked the heart surgeon who gave my father 8 more years whenever I saw him. As I passed him I just said thank you and he knew what I meant.
As to your friend. I don’t know what to say. You know better than most you can’t save everyone. Even those closest to you. Do you have someone you can pour it out to?
Please forgive the cyniciism but I had to say it: wow a doctor who cares about people. Next you’re going to tell me my mechanic really is trying to fix my car.
Ok I feel better. Seriously, with 2 sociopathic doctors in my family, I’m surprised and refreshed to read your post although it’s very sad for you. I’m not a doctor but I was a first responder and I concur with wallower above. The job is so full of horrors it’s almost impossible to last without becoming thick skinned, or outright malicious, to justify what you see every day. To answer your question, what’s the point in being a doctor if you can’t save someone, the point is, if you didn’t try then the world would be totally fucked.
This applies to you career wise as well as your specific personal problem with your friend. Take it from a many-times failed rescuer as well as a hopeless victim myself, just knowing that someone is trying their ass off can be more comforting than the actual recovery.
But this doesn’t help you I know. When you’re desperately trying to save someone but losing the battle, all you can think about is your failure.
Dr. Jordan Peterson talks about how life guards are trained to save drowning people. You swim at them feet first because if you swim head on to save someone drowning they will press you under and maybe you both drown. So, be careful if you jump in to save someone.
I used to answer suicide hotline phones. I had to quit after 6 months because I was talking to 20 people in a 4 hour shift. That’s 20 screaming, wretched voices calling out and nothing I could do except listen to their crying. It was dragging me under. That’s all anyone can do, listen. Shut up and listen. you can’t solve their problems…you just can’t. Shut-up…listen…be a friend.
To make some things clear: I am not a real doctor, not yet, although, I’m planning to study to become one. I didn’t make things clear, because I didn’t fully realize in the late night when I was writing this post.
“What’s the point of being the doctor, if I can’t save you?” is a quote from my favourite TV series and I relate to it quite a lot, since the character is not a real doctor either.
I’m really sorry I made things unclear, should’ve think it through more.
But I really appreciate all your kind and interesting words, thank you.
Don’t doctors have one of the highest rates of suicide in the professional world? I think male doctors have a rate that’s twice as high as other professions, while female doctors have a rate that’s something like four times as high, which is kind of insane.
Yeah, but they have easy access to potent drugs. And are often chronically sleep-deprived. Great cocktail.
Good doctors are selfless to the point of self-sacrifice while bad doctors are selfish to the point of negligence and malpractice because they’re in it for the paychecks. Sad that we all wish to praise doctors for their selfless hard work but people are people and not all have good intentions going into that profession.