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Speaking as someone who has been suicidal, I think that that article is a lot of hot air. This is what it felt like to be suicidal: Imagine the worst heartbrea

Speaking as someone who has been suicidal, I think that that article is a lot of hot air. This is what it felt like to be suicidal: Imagine the worst heartbreak you have ever felt, and multiply this by ten. Imagine the worst anxiety you have ever suffered and multiply this by ten. Imagine that every second feels like a minute, in each of those minute-long-seconds, you feel like a lion is just about to jump out from around the corner and rip you apart slowly. Imagine that everything you used to enjoy is meaningless and nothing at all is fun or enjoyable. Imagine that both your parents just died in a horrible car crash right after disinheriting you because they felt you were a terrible disgrace. Imagine that you constantly obsess on what it was you did so wrong, and what you might have done differently. Imagine repeatedly reliving every word you can remember saying to them with a terrible and critical eye, and repeating to yourself every harsh word they ever said to you. Imagine that you can't think of anything else at all no matter how hard you try, and these obsessive thoughts just spin in your head over and over and over and over and over and over again with no relief. Imagine that all these feelings just go on and on and on and on and on and on, for hours, days, weeks, months, with no relief. Unrelenting torment and misery with no escape, no out, no one who can understand you, no one who can calm you, no one who can make anything the slightest bit better. Imagine that the only reason that you didn't kill yourself in order to end this interminable torment is because you figured you'd fuck even that up and just end up a quadriplegic, and then be truly screwed, since you'd never be able to end your eternal misery then.

Swizec 14y ago
I can confirm this. Those days when I would just sit in the corner of my room staring at a blank wall for ... the whole day ... not fun. PS: I eventually got better and have remained such for years
- roflc0ptic 14y ago
  I've also experienced this. I'd curl up on the shower floor and sit until I couldn't stand the now-cold water coming out of the shower head. I spent consecutive days close to catatonia, dragging myself into work, shutting the door, coming out eight hours later. I don't think this fact has a lot of bearing on this article, though. I feel like these criticisms are just an unfortunate manifestation of HN's tendancy to be contrarian. They're not effective rebuttals; they're just "Wait, I have feelings, too!" Furthermore, being sad/depressed/suicidal really shouldn't be a contest, and the way I experience isn't necessarily going to be the same as the way you experience it. This article articulates a lot of my own experience. I'm sorry/glad that it doesn't match your experience.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    > I feel like these criticisms are just an unfortunate manifestation of HN's tendancy to be contrarian. They're not effective rebuttals Pretty much. I've learned to read HN comments largely as a source of data, rather than as a community of merit. This kind of pot-stirring has happened every time anyone of significance in the tech community has committed suicide. It's just self-aggrandizing.
sliverstorm 14y ago
I can't decide if I think you are exaggerating. I can't help but wonder, had my lowest moments been ten times worse, whether my body would have ceased to function right on the spot. I was pumped with the most adrenaline I've ever had in my life, and I was simultaneously the most depressed I had ever been in my life. I was bouncing off the walls with nervous energy, but all I wanted was to crawl into a hole. My chest was literally in pain, and I can't help but think of people who die mixing "uppers" and "downers". 10x that? Would I have just had a heart attack right there?
- sukuriant 14y ago
  The grandparent post is basing this off of what he imagines is a normal person's extremes. -- or perhaps the GP's own other experiences. I imagine your mileage will vary
hkmurakami 14y ago
>Speaking as someone who __has been__ suicidal I've battled depression in the past, but I don't think I ever quite reached a suicidal state. The way I got out of my depression state, was to finally admit that I can't keep suffering in my current life situation anymore, and to get away from the things that were causing my anguish, anxiety, stress, and despair. I spent the next two months doing utterly nothing (well at least, nothing productive), slowly becoming healthy again. You definitely had it much worse than me, and so I want to ask sincerely, what if anything, got you out of your depression/suicidal state of mind? Or alternately, what has helped you manage these urges and emotions?
- drostie 14y ago
  I am not the person you replied to, just another sufferer. So, for me, depression feels very similar to what both darius and the original article were saying. It's like an erupting storm. It starts with something small -- some tiny failure which a normal person might say "okay, no biggie, I can deal with that." My problem was the multiplication. We have associative memories, and I as a depressed person immediately associated this failure with other recent failures, which associated with others, and others, until there was a deluge of connections. It feels like a literal suffocation by failure -- I mean it becomes hard to breathe and there is often an ache across my chest. There was often a growing sense of paranoia -- that they would all find out. What they would all find out was not terribly clear, but it was something as simple as "I am useless" or "I'll never live up to any of their expectations." (If you've never suffered from depression you might even wonder why this is a bad thing -- but that sort of metanarrative doesn't happen when you're depressed because it's just obviously bad, it's rejection, and rejection is painful emotionally, and there is no reflection.) And so each thing triggers other things, until I am just left with this deep feeling that I have failed as a human, like everyone else has this thing going for them and I simply do not, and my only normalcy comes from the lucky fact that most of them are not paying any attention to me, which is also sad in its own way. I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find. That helps with avoiding that seed of failure from which the storm starts. As for the storm itself, I've found that deep breathing does more good than you'd expect, because if you're focused on your breathing then you're not associating those thoughts so much; the thoughts still swim around your head but they don't breed new ones so much, and you can kind of quietly nod at them without indulging them. This gives me a better sense of the objects around me, which actually seem to totally disappear as I disappear into myself. But sometimes, I will confess, I feel duty-bound to be honest to my younger self. And so sometimes when those seeds start, even these days when I can cope, I do just let them expand and expand until I cry myself to sleep. I feel oddly at home there, as if this is some permanent part of myself which I'm oddly glad I haven't lost. But because this is now a choice, and it's voluntary, I no longer feel suicidal during these periods -- just awful.
alanctgardner2 14y ago
It sounds like you're dealing with severe depression. I hope you're seeing someone you can talk to about these feelings. My email is alanctgardner@gmail.com if you do need someone to talk to. I think he touches on a lot of the points you mentioned: > every second feels like a minute > you constantly obsess on what it was you did so wrong > they felt you were a terrible disgrace That sounds like deconstruction, negative affect, self-blame and 'falling short of standards'. It can be hard to quantify what you just instinctively feel by yourself. A lot of my time with my therapist is basically me rambling about an abstract feeling, and her relating and summing it up in one or two words. I think it helps me better understand what's going on, which can take some of the power away from the raw emotion. Talking to someone about it is the best way to start getting better.
- darius42 14y ago
  Fear not, I haven't felt like that in years. (But thanks for the offer of someone to talk to.) I did talk to people at the time until I was blue in the face. That did not help either, except for the moments in which I was talking. Only one thing helped break the vicious cycle: Remeron. I was better within a day, and I only had to take it for a month. Brain chemistry is a bitch!
- darius42 14y ago
  P.S. What I didn't like about the original article is it made it sound as if the feelings that lead to suicide are some sort of effete existential angst, and therefore rather mysterious, while in reality -- at least for me -- the feelings were just HELL ON EARTH. Anyone who has any inkling of how much real tangible pain your own brain can put you in, would never question why someone might commit suicide. There are times when not doing so requires incredible strength and perseverance. Either that, or not even having the wherewithal anymore to take your own life.
  - lilsunnybee 14y ago
    Exactly this. The mental pain and anguish from second to second can feel absolutely unbearable and hellish. When every synapse in your brain feels on fire, and overwhelmingly awful, being able to not exist anymore seems a very enticing proposition.
kstenerud 14y ago
Speaking as someone who has been suicidal and very nearly succeeded had someone not pulled me down, this article pretty much nails it. The strange part is, I can kind of get into my past self's head and replay all of my reasons, but from my current perspective they seem corrupted and perverse. I know that I was trying to escape from my own twisted feelings of guilt, but the whole episode seems almost surreal now; me yet not me. Another interesting thing that I'd never considered before is that I have a very high pain tolerance and fearlessness. I've always suspected that my grandfather, whom I take after quite a bit in this respect, decided to stop taking his medication after my grandmother died.
- rdtsc 14y ago
  > but from my current perspective they seem corrupted and perverse. Thank you for sharing. I was wondering would it make a difference at all if someone else, (a friend, therapist, partner) would say how the current perspective is corrupted or warped. Would that make a difference? Would it help in that situation? If not, what does help, if anything to get out of that mode?
  - m22 14y ago
    I think it would be more helpful to have the - relatively - insignificant problems remedied one-by-one, rather than just talking. Being deeply depressed is like having a burden/cloud over your head, you can't think straight because all those issues are just sitting there in the background, blocking normal thoughts. Once you come out of it, you don't really recognize the depressed individual that was running on auto pilot. That's my take on it anyway.
  - pprd 14y ago
    I have "pain is temporary" tattooed on my inner thigh to serve exactly this purpose. Unfortunately, when you're depressed the tattoo seems stupid. PS: This might be because it's a stupid tattoo to begin with.
    - kahawe 14y ago
      I never found comfort in "all this pain is an illusion" but Pearl Jam's "Present Tense" lyrics have something simplistic, true and healing about them that honestly make me wonder how they could have written it. Especially the part leading to "you're the only one who can't forgive yourself". And Tool "Reflection", especially "And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt, Don't want to be down here feeding my narcissism, I must crucify the ego before it's far too late" which is of course a bit long to have it tattoo'ed but the idea, how narcissistic it actually is what you are doing... and how you must crucify this ego, this part of you, to find your true self and find peace.
thebrokencube 14y ago
> Imagine that the only reason that you didn't kill yourself in order to end this interminable torment is because you figured you'd fuck even that up and just end up a quadriplegic, and then be truly screwed, since you'd never be able to end your eternal misery then. Oh man. This struck way too close to home, as it is was the biggest reason I didn't actually go through with suicide when I was at the darkest point in life. That feeling that you can't do anything right, even ending your already frail and delicate life: I don't know of many things more disheartening than that. Your description of how it feels to be suicidal is very well written and probably the most accurate summary I have read in this regards.
- brazzy 14y ago
  It's a relatively well-known fact that a very dangerous phase of depression is when you start to get better, because when you feel worst, you typically lack the energy to do anything, including suicide. When you start to pull out of it (such as when you begin taking effective medication) there can be a time when you aren't feeling paralyzed anymore, but still suicidal.
  - thebrokencube 14y ago
    I actually wasn't aware of that, but it makes a lot of sense and aligns with my experiences with depression/suicide a lot. The times I've felt suicidal were all when I was picking myself up and put myself out there and it crashed and burned horribly (in my mind at least; in reality it was just a small setback). Now that you mention it, my worst was actually when I just didn't care about anything, and when I had suicidal tendencies I was trying to get better and had just hit some small speed bumps that I felt were insurmountable in the heat of the moment.
suicidethread1 14y ago
I worked hard in 2011 to pull my wife back from suicide while I tried to carry on running my business. She came close more than once. I've supported her closely through the patchy public mental health system, private therapy and so on. [And she's in a better place now, but I don't stop watching] It's interesting that you and someone else here don't recognise those symptoms. But when I deconstruct my wife's experience of suicidal ideation, the article's summary match what I observed pretty closely, in terms of the escalation. She left her job due to latent anxiety, had mental health issues, blamed herself strongly, this turned out to stem from a teenage trauma I'd known nothing about. There more anxiety, drinking, an overdose and a very scary amount of "disinhibition". In the end a 3-day stay in a secure ward and lots of drugs was the start of a slow recovery. It doesn't describe her mental state. I don't think I knew it well enough, and I'm not sure she'd be able to tell it to you, as your own pain is clearly hard enough to put into words. But from the outside, I know what I saw, and that article covers. If you know or support someone with mental health problems, you'd do well to think about their behaviour in terms of those categories. [an HN regular with a throwaway account]
n3rdy 14y ago
I remember experiencing very similar emotions, everything I loved had become unenjoyable, feeling like a chore, I felt like there wasn't a single person on the planet who would even miss me when I was gone. I took a different direction completely. I became enraged at all the people in my life who led me to thinking this way, who destroyed my passion for what I loved, for taking it away from me, and making me feel so obligated to them, while getting nothing in return. I rejected the thought of no future and mentally put myself in a new one. I became a recluse and shut everyone out of my life, and then I moved to another state 600 miles away. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving, except my parents, I told them I was taking a vacation, just so they wouldn't file a missing persons report, but honestly, it would have taken them weeks to realize I was gone, that's how little we talked. I have a better relationship with my parents now, but that's probably because of the distance. We only talk every few months, and they know if they attempt to assert any control over my life I would have no problem cutting off contact with them. I don't talk to my siblings, and I haven't contacted anyone else from my past since. Whether I'm missed by anyone aside from my immediate family. I doubt it, and I don't care either. The experience was liberating to me. I live for myself and don't allow baseless obligations to dictate any decisions I make. I don't allow my decisions to be dictated by how others will judge me.

Swizec 14y ago

I can confirm this. Those days when I would just sit in the corner of my room staring at a blank wall for ... the whole day ... not fun. PS: I eventually got better and have remained such for years

roflc0ptic 14y ago
I've also experienced this. I'd curl up on the shower floor and sit until I couldn't stand the now-cold water coming out of the shower head. I spent consecutive days close to catatonia, dragging myself into work, shutting the door, coming out eight hours later. I don't think this fact has a lot of bearing on this article, though. I feel like these criticisms are just an unfortunate manifestation of HN's tendancy to be contrarian. They're not effective rebuttals; they're just "Wait, I have feelings, too!" Furthermore, being sad/depressed/suicidal really shouldn't be a contest, and the way I experience isn't necessarily going to be the same as the way you experience it. This article articulates a lot of my own experience. I'm sorry/glad that it doesn't match your experience.
- saraid216 14y ago
  > I feel like these criticisms are just an unfortunate manifestation of HN's tendancy to be contrarian. They're not effective rebuttals Pretty much. I've learned to read HN comments largely as a source of data, rather than as a community of merit. This kind of pot-stirring has happened every time anyone of significance in the tech community has committed suicide. It's just self-aggrandizing.

sliverstorm 14y ago

I can't decide if I think you are exaggerating. I can't help but wonder, had my lowest moments been ten times worse, whether my body would have ceased to function right on the spot. I was pumped with the most adrenaline I've ever had in my life, and I was simultaneously the most depressed I had ever been in my life. I was bouncing off the walls with nervous energy, but all I wanted was to crawl into a hole. My chest was literally in pain, and I can't help but think of people who die mixing "uppers" and "downers". 10x that? Would I have just had a heart attack right there?

sukuriant 14y ago
The grandparent post is basing this off of what he imagines is a normal person's extremes. -- or perhaps the GP's own other experiences. I imagine your mileage will vary

hkmurakami 14y ago

>Speaking as someone who __has been__ suicidal I've battled depression in the past, but I don't think I ever quite reached a suicidal state. The way I got out of my depression state, was to finally admit that I can't keep suffering in my current life situation anymore, and to get away from the things that were causing my anguish, anxiety, stress, and despair. I spent the next two months doing utterly nothing (well at least, nothing productive), slowly becoming healthy again. You definitely had it much worse than me, and so I want to ask sincerely, what if anything, got you out of your depression/suicidal state of mind? Or alternately, what has helped you manage these urges and emotions?

drostie 14y ago
I am not the person you replied to, just another sufferer. So, for me, depression feels very similar to what both darius and the original article were saying. It's like an erupting storm. It starts with something small -- some tiny failure which a normal person might say "okay, no biggie, I can deal with that." My problem was the multiplication. We have associative memories, and I as a depressed person immediately associated this failure with other recent failures, which associated with others, and others, until there was a deluge of connections. It feels like a literal suffocation by failure -- I mean it becomes hard to breathe and there is often an ache across my chest. There was often a growing sense of paranoia -- that they would all find out. What they would all find out was not terribly clear, but it was something as simple as "I am useless" or "I'll never live up to any of their expectations." (If you've never suffered from depression you might even wonder why this is a bad thing -- but that sort of metanarrative doesn't happen when you're depressed because it's just obviously bad, it's rejection, and rejection is painful emotionally, and there is no reflection.) And so each thing triggers other things, until I am just left with this deep feeling that I have failed as a human, like everyone else has this thing going for them and I simply do not, and my only normalcy comes from the lucky fact that most of them are not paying any attention to me, which is also sad in its own way. I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find. That helps with avoiding that seed of failure from which the storm starts. As for the storm itself, I've found that deep breathing does more good than you'd expect, because if you're focused on your breathing then you're not associating those thoughts so much; the thoughts still swim around your head but they don't breed new ones so much, and you can kind of quietly nod at them without indulging them. This gives me a better sense of the objects around me, which actually seem to totally disappear as I disappear into myself. But sometimes, I will confess, I feel duty-bound to be honest to my younger self. And so sometimes when those seeds start, even these days when I can cope, I do just let them expand and expand until I cry myself to sleep. I feel oddly at home there, as if this is some permanent part of myself which I'm oddly glad I haven't lost. But because this is now a choice, and it's voluntary, I no longer feel suicidal during these periods -- just awful.

alanctgardner2 14y ago

It sounds like you're dealing with severe depression. I hope you're seeing someone you can talk to about these feelings. My email is alanctgardner@gmail.com if you do need someone to talk to. I think he touches on a lot of the points you mentioned: > every second feels like a minute > you constantly obsess on what it was you did so wrong > they felt you were a terrible disgrace That sounds like deconstruction, negative affect, self-blame and 'falling short of standards'. It can be hard to quantify what you just instinctively feel by yourself. A lot of my time with my therapist is basically me rambling about an abstract feeling, and her relating and summing it up in one or two words. I think it helps me better understand what's going on, which can take some of the power away from the raw emotion. Talking to someone about it is the best way to start getting better.

darius42 14y ago
Fear not, I haven't felt like that in years. (But thanks for the offer of someone to talk to.) I did talk to people at the time until I was blue in the face. That did not help either, except for the moments in which I was talking. Only one thing helped break the vicious cycle: Remeron. I was better within a day, and I only had to take it for a month. Brain chemistry is a bitch!
darius42 14y ago
P.S. What I didn't like about the original article is it made it sound as if the feelings that lead to suicide are some sort of effete existential angst, and therefore rather mysterious, while in reality -- at least for me -- the feelings were just HELL ON EARTH. Anyone who has any inkling of how much real tangible pain your own brain can put you in, would never question why someone might commit suicide. There are times when not doing so requires incredible strength and perseverance. Either that, or not even having the wherewithal anymore to take your own life.
- lilsunnybee 14y ago
  Exactly this. The mental pain and anguish from second to second can feel absolutely unbearable and hellish. When every synapse in your brain feels on fire, and overwhelmingly awful, being able to not exist anymore seems a very enticing proposition.

kstenerud 14y ago

Speaking as someone who has been suicidal and very nearly succeeded had someone not pulled me down, this article pretty much nails it. The strange part is, I can kind of get into my past self's head and replay all of my reasons, but from my current perspective they seem corrupted and perverse. I know that I was trying to escape from my own twisted feelings of guilt, but the whole episode seems almost surreal now; me yet not me. Another interesting thing that I'd never considered before is that I have a very high pain tolerance and fearlessness. I've always suspected that my grandfather, whom I take after quite a bit in this respect, decided to stop taking his medication after my grandmother died.

rdtsc 14y ago
> but from my current perspective they seem corrupted and perverse. Thank you for sharing. I was wondering would it make a difference at all if someone else, (a friend, therapist, partner) would say how the current perspective is corrupted or warped. Would that make a difference? Would it help in that situation? If not, what does help, if anything to get out of that mode?
- m22 14y ago
  I think it would be more helpful to have the - relatively - insignificant problems remedied one-by-one, rather than just talking. Being deeply depressed is like having a burden/cloud over your head, you can't think straight because all those issues are just sitting there in the background, blocking normal thoughts. Once you come out of it, you don't really recognize the depressed individual that was running on auto pilot. That's my take on it anyway.
- pprd 14y ago
  I have "pain is temporary" tattooed on my inner thigh to serve exactly this purpose. Unfortunately, when you're depressed the tattoo seems stupid. PS: This might be because it's a stupid tattoo to begin with.
  - kahawe 14y ago
    I never found comfort in "all this pain is an illusion" but Pearl Jam's "Present Tense" lyrics have something simplistic, true and healing about them that honestly make me wonder how they could have written it. Especially the part leading to "you're the only one who can't forgive yourself". And Tool "Reflection", especially "And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt, Don't want to be down here feeding my narcissism, I must crucify the ego before it's far too late" which is of course a bit long to have it tattoo'ed but the idea, how narcissistic it actually is what you are doing... and how you must crucify this ego, this part of you, to find your true self and find peace.

thebrokencube 14y ago

> Imagine that the only reason that you didn't kill yourself in order to end this interminable torment is because you figured you'd fuck even that up and just end up a quadriplegic, and then be truly screwed, since you'd never be able to end your eternal misery then. Oh man. This struck way too close to home, as it is was the biggest reason I didn't actually go through with suicide when I was at the darkest point in life. That feeling that you can't do anything right, even ending your already frail and delicate life: I don't know of many things more disheartening than that. Your description of how it feels to be suicidal is very well written and probably the most accurate summary I have read in this regards.

brazzy 14y ago
It's a relatively well-known fact that a very dangerous phase of depression is when you start to get better, because when you feel worst, you typically lack the energy to do anything, including suicide. When you start to pull out of it (such as when you begin taking effective medication) there can be a time when you aren't feeling paralyzed anymore, but still suicidal.
- thebrokencube 14y ago
  I actually wasn't aware of that, but it makes a lot of sense and aligns with my experiences with depression/suicide a lot. The times I've felt suicidal were all when I was picking myself up and put myself out there and it crashed and burned horribly (in my mind at least; in reality it was just a small setback). Now that you mention it, my worst was actually when I just didn't care about anything, and when I had suicidal tendencies I was trying to get better and had just hit some small speed bumps that I felt were insurmountable in the heat of the moment.

suicidethread1 14y ago

I worked hard in 2011 to pull my wife back from suicide while I tried to carry on running my business. She came close more than once. I've supported her closely through the patchy public mental health system, private therapy and so on. [And she's in a better place now, but I don't stop watching] It's interesting that you and someone else here don't recognise those symptoms. But when I deconstruct my wife's experience of suicidal ideation, the article's summary match what I observed pretty closely, in terms of the escalation. She left her job due to latent anxiety, had mental health issues, blamed herself strongly, this turned out to stem from a teenage trauma I'd known nothing about. There more anxiety, drinking, an overdose and a very scary amount of "disinhibition". In the end a 3-day stay in a secure ward and lots of drugs was the start of a slow recovery. It doesn't describe her mental state. I don't think I knew it well enough, and I'm not sure she'd be able to tell it to you, as your own pain is clearly hard enough to put into words. But from the outside, I know what I saw, and that article covers. If you know or support someone with mental health problems, you'd do well to think about their behaviour in terms of those categories. [an HN regular with a throwaway account]

n3rdy 14y ago

I remember experiencing very similar emotions, everything I loved had become unenjoyable, feeling like a chore, I felt like there wasn't a single person on the planet who would even miss me when I was gone. I took a different direction completely. I became enraged at all the people in my life who led me to thinking this way, who destroyed my passion for what I loved, for taking it away from me, and making me feel so obligated to them, while getting nothing in return. I rejected the thought of no future and mentally put myself in a new one. I became a recluse and shut everyone out of my life, and then I moved to another state 600 miles away. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving, except my parents, I told them I was taking a vacation, just so they wouldn't file a missing persons report, but honestly, it would have taken them weeks to realize I was gone, that's how little we talked. I have a better relationship with my parents now, but that's probably because of the distance. We only talk every few months, and they know if they attempt to assert any control over my life I would have no problem cutting off contact with them. I don't talk to my siblings, and I haven't contacted anyone else from my past since. Whether I'm missed by anyone aside from my immediate family. I doubt it, and I don't care either. The experience was liberating to me. I live for myself and don't allow baseless obligations to dictate any decisions I make. I don't allow my decisions to be dictated by how others will judge me.