SI trigger warning. Question will be visible in the text body instead of the headline.
SI trigger warning. Question will be visible in the text body instead of the headline.
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First, I apologize if this is too heavy of a question, so I will delete upon request. However, a thought came to me recently...
Isn't it normal for people to occasionally have suicidal thoughts and/or thoughts of self harm?
I mean, think of it this way ...every human being gets sad now and then, right? So it seems like this would be a normal effect from it. We pathologize things like this, but I'm wondering if it's just common to the human experience.
I know it sounds like an incredibly stupid question, but that's why I'm posting it here.
Before you get concerned, no I am not going to harm myself. I have a lot of really good days too and have recently seen a psychiatrist to ask some questions. I'm in a very good mood right now. So all is good here. Just had this one question. Because I realized that I've always been kind of that way when I'm in a really bad mood is all!
Thanks!
Given how concerned my therapist was when the topic came up.. probably not super normal?
It is interesting tho, cause I used to think the same thing :3
I dunno. I hope not. I suffer suicidal ideation on a daily basis; at least on days that end in ‘y’. The thing is, I don’t really want to die; as in I have things I want to live for, and people I have to live for. But there’s always that glimmer of hope every time I lay down to sleep that I quietly whisper to myself, “maybe this time I won’t wake up”. To my dismay, I always wake up.
My stupid question to piggyback on yours is this: if I genuinely wished myself unalived, why don’t I just do it? What is it with our brains that revels in this cognitive dissonance?
Anyway, good question op. We should feel free to talk openly about such “taboo” topics.
Void thoughts. A sanity check for your brain. If your answer to "should I?" becomes a "maybe" or "yes" instead of "no", you need serious help. Otherwise, don't dwell on it, look for good things to do. If you sit idle too long (sit/lay and do nothing at all the entire day/night), these thoughts can increase in intensity with the lack of external stimulation. Life's hard, but don't check out early or your enemies win.
I don't know about "normal people". Among the psychiatric patients I met, most people with addiction, most people with psychosis and most people with personality disorders (other than borderline) deny suicidal ideas altogether. People suffering from depression usually admit to having had suicidal ideas at some time during there life, but even among them there are quite a lot denying to have had any ever. And a quite lot of traumatized people suffer from mostly ego–dystone intrusive suicidal thoughts.
So I wager that it's not "normal" to have suicidal thoughts, unless you're depressed, borderline or traumatized. (Though arguably, it might be getting "normal" to get depressed in today's living conditions...)
And yes, every human gets sad every now and then, if they have a reason to be sad – but why should anyone get suicidal thoughts just because they are sad? AFAIK sadness is not linked to suicidal ideas, unless the sadness us a symptom of depression. It's almost impossible to find reliable data on the relation of non–depressive situative sadness and suicidal thoughts with a cursory search, though.
Self harm is even stranger, I've seen self harm only with borderline and trauma. But that's just my experience.
I guess there is a difference between thinking about suicide and considering to commit suicide. But often people confuse one with the other.
I learned that when my mother had taken me to a homeopathitioner (or whatever you call these quacks) and she asked me if I had ever thought about suicide. And since that was a topic I found myself confronted with often enough, like at school, I truthfully answered yes. What she meant to ask was whether I had ever considered committing suicide myself, for which I would have given a negative answer. I only puzzled that together after my mother wanted to talk to me more about that after the appointment.