What is the right approach in that situation? My intuition would be humour, trying to dedramatise, make the person feel the absurdity of the act. But I have no idea of whether that would make things worse.
My advice would be to say hello, ask what's going on for the person, do not approach until they give you permission, do not dismiss what they're saying but hold hope, tell them that while you don't know them that you care about them and don't want them to die.
Don't for fuck's sake try to make a joke about it. This is one of the worst days of that person's life. They're on that bridge, on that train platform, because they intend to end their life. At that point in time this is the only way out they can see. It's not absurd to them.
Thank you for posting that Zero Suicide Alliance link. I was not aware of their training but will be checking it out.
I had a friend phone me late at night a few weeks back and it took me a minute to realize what she was saying when she just said "I don't want to be here anymore". Fuck the thought of it is still haunting now.
Thankfully she didn't follow through. Still really really scary.
I'm not an authority, but in my personal experience that can definitely make things much worse. A person in that state might not be able to see the absurdity (to them, it's the least painful option -- which is very logical and not absurd at all). You run the risk of sounding like your having a laugh at their misery on their expense.
I'm not sure general advice is possible, but if I had to give some it would be the exact opposite: compassion; acklowledging their pain; understanding that they most likely don't want to die -- they just cannot bear living. Be a person they can talk to. Let them know you take their problems seriously, and that they have value to you, just for existing.
There's a men vs women trope of trying to solve the problem vs actually listening. I suspect it actually applies a lot to these situations.
Once someone's to that point, they either don't want you to help - or don't think they want you to help. If they believed it could be fixed they wouldn't be in this situation. But no-one wants to die alone, so you can offer them someone to listen.
I tried pointing out the absurdity and it didn't have the desired effect.
At one point I said 'what can be so bad that you want to do this to yourself' and he said his son had just died. What do you say after that?
Well, you start by saying you hear him and see his pain, that that is an utterly awful thing to happen to anybody, and that while you can't imagine what he's going through, it is completely understandable that he would be feeling so desperate in such circumstances. Acknowledgement is important. After that... that's the tricky bit. _Maybe_, you might say that while it feels right now like there's no hope, that that won't last forever. _Maybe_ you might suggest that his son wouldn't have wanted him to do this. But anything that sniffs of manipulation is dangerous ground, I think. The first part though, the acknowledgement, that's step one in speaking with anyone in emotional distress.
"TV taught you how to love, it showed you what love looks like, feels like. But when you're actually in love, it doesn't look like that, so you secretly suspect you don't have the capacity for love, that there's something wrong with you.
Same goes for sadness. And it's worse when you're in the presence of someone else's sadness, you have no idea what to do. All you really know about experiencing these emotions is the script you got from TV. "Oh your husband died!? Oh my God, that's terrible! I'm so sorry for you!!" But you don't feel any of that. Nothing.
So you think to yourself, what the hell is wrong with me? This woman's husband died-- sure, I can fake it, but am I such an empty monster that I feel nothing?
Of course you feel nothing. Why would you?-- it's not your loss. What's wrong isn't your lack of feeling, but that you think you have to feel something, that you have to tell this woman, remind this woman, how horrible is her loss. You think the only way to connect with people is to have their emotions. You think she wants to connect with _you_. You think she wants _your_ help.
The problem isn't your lack of feeling, it is that you think that unless you feel it's not real. You forget that she has a life that doesn't have you in it.
What you should say is, "I'm very sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" and that's it. But that feels insufficient. You think this because you think that there is something you can do, that the sadness is not real for you so it must not be real for her and you thus have the power to change it.
She's not looking for you to be sad, she's not looking to you for anything, her loss is bigger than you. If she needs anything from you, it's sympathy, not empathy.
But no one taught you this. So you fall back on the character "man helping grieving widow." Action!
----
What's wrong isn't that you don't know what to say to save him, it's that you think there is something you can say which can save him.
I'm not suggesting you simply walk away and let him die, I'm suggesting that if your reason for not walking away is "society would judge /me/ if I walked away" then you're framing the situation in terms of you. And if your reason for staying is "maybe I can save him, I have to try", then you're framing the situation in terms of you. Only God can save him or bring his son back, you or I cannot, and he knows it - although we might not know it, and act as if we can.
Subconsciously framing it as if the most important part of this man's grief over his dead son is the part you play in it, and how it affects you, is screwy, and it's what we're all taught (by TV and media) to do.
What can you do instead? "I'm very sorry to hear that."; acknowledge to yourself that maybe his grief /is/ enough to justify suicide. Acknowledge to yourself that it /is/ a tragedy that cannot be fixed by the right words, if only you knew them. Release yourself from the bondage of having to save him, and from the responsibility of thinking you potentially can save him (and get the credit), and free yourself up to focus on him, listen to him, be there with him. Or to leave if you're only going to make it worse. Because if leaving helps him, but makes society think worse of you .. surely you can endure the hit to your ego to help a grieving man, right?
Maybe the best thing you can do is help him die with dignity and without pain, carry a message to someone for him. That's what people say they want from a true friend, isn't it? Someone to help bury the bodies, someone who can and will put a bullet in me to stop me suffering?
Or maybe the best thing you can do is let him know that you understand his suffering is bad and you would do those things for him.
By feeling like you are obliged to care, must interject, must save him against his wishes, must say the right thing, you dismiss his grief, disrespect his sadness, appear false, threaten to take away his control over his own life, and push him away. By accepting his grief, sympathising with it, supporting him, maybe you give him room to move.
And maybe he still dies. And maybe he has as good a reason as anyone for it.
And maybe he doesn't, because someone was there listening to how he hurt without trying to change it or fix it or trivialise it, or make it about them. Someone being there with him, while he suffered, without expecting anything more from him. Like a friend would.
(NB. just realised that I'm interested in sending you a link which will fix you, then checking that it doesn't go to -1 votes instantly, to get my own validation here as "helping", instead of sympathising with your stressful and difficult situation without trying to fix it.
isn't that what we narcissistic generations built the "social" parts of the internet for, after all?)
It's OK to expect validation that you did a good thing or didn't do a bad thing, we are social animals.
It's only a problem when this need starts taking over your life, much like any addiction?
People already feel huge amounts of shame about the pain that they're inflicting upon other people. Calling them selfish just re-affirms what they're already feeling, makes them feel worse, and increases the risk that they'll die.
No! -- at least, that's not what's suggested in the (excellent) course which DanBC linked to. An eye opener for me! Don't divert the focus to others. And (this is my take) don't be talking about what the person mustn't do -- they already feel boxed in! The goal is to steer toward a positive outcome. The course deals with this (and other) points better than I can. Recommended!
They already feel immense amounts of shame. Adding to that shame just re-affirms what they already think, it confirms their distorted thinking that everyone would be better off without them.
The distorted thinking runs something like: "Only an arsehole would kill themselves and leave their family to deal with it, and I'm thinking of killing myself, therefore I am an arsehole. And I'm so terrible that they would in fact be better off without me."
Does it have interviews of people who didn't make a suicide attempt because they were guilted out of it? The dangers of not making a suicide attempt are so low we usually don't even bother to call out "survivors".
It may also work and decrease the probability that they follow through. Every strategy has its successes and its failures. If that were a reason not to do something, you'd never do anything.
Fair enough. There is indeed a chance that, counterintuitively, "burdening" the at-risk person with the consequences of their acts may work.
However, whose "burden of proof" is it? Should "OP" provide evidence to their claim or you to yours? If no claims are provided, what should the "default action" be?
I argue that, in face of the extreme consequences of the proposed action ("burdening" instead of "no burdening"), "no burdening" should be the default action, unless there's evidence that "burdening" works (which none of us in the conversation have so far provided).
> I argue that, in face of the extreme consequences of the proposed action ("burdening" instead of "no burdening"), "no burdening" should be the default action
You're wholeheartedly endorsing the idea I was using to mock you:
>> Every strategy has its successes and its failures. If that were a reason not to do something, you'd never do anything.
The consequences of, in your terminology, "no burdening" are just as extreme as the consequences of "burdening". That's obvious, because they are exactly the same consequences.
And the evidence that people will avoid doing things they might otherwise do, even at significant cost to themselves, for the sake of their family and close friends, is abundant.
> And the evidence that people will avoid doing things they might otherwise do, even at significant cost to themselves, for the sake of their family and close friends, is abundant.
Rational people, maybe. People on the verge of suicide are not acting rationally.
Where's the citable evidence for the claim that "shaming/guilting/burdening suicidal people makes them less likely to commit suicide"?
With that level of public openmindedness, the citable evidence (of which this is a part) is guaranteed to dramatically understate the actual effectiveness of the approach.
The streamer was also suicidal, and responded to the viewer's note with his personal viewpoint on committing suicide. ("People who do it are selfish and weak" -- pretty much the same viewpoint we're discussing here.) Note that, since the streamer was alive, that viewpoint successfully prevented him, the streamer, from committing suicide.
For sharing his successful views, he was made a pariah.
Nowhere in the post says the streamer was suicidal. It says they were depressed.
Even if it did, the suicidal person themselves thinking suicide is selfish is a totally different thing than someone else saying it to them, especially in a moment of crisis.
Not likely IMO. Telling him that ending his suffering makes him a bad person is just adding weight. Suicide isn't a linear decision that can be logically eliminated; it's a vortex of feeling trapped, hopeless, guilty, etc. that needs to be disrupted somehow.
That person is seeing suicide as the only way out of whatever they are going through. You should try to see it their way and not the other way around.
Ask questions and try to be understanding.
