No Stupid Questions

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.

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.

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.

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.

Its normal enough to just be fed up with everything and want it all to stop. It means you're in distress and you need to find a way to bring everything back into within coping range. SI is probably a step quite beyond that and basically at the end of one's rope after awhile that there's literally no hope and such suffering that the only logical choice seems to be exiting.

Suicidal ideation is your mind telling you the current circumstances are not tenable and you don't feel that there is any other viable way to make things better and be out from a dead-end pit of suffering that exceeds your coping abillities and resources.

Are there any conditions or challenges that are dominant in your life that you are distressed by and see no way out of, that overshadow any hope of change and easing up?

One can be extremely stressed and challenged by condition(s) in life that they see an end date to and where they will be better of and have time to recharge before they need to deal with the next challenges and be able to cope with that because there is hope and the motivation/experience that tells them they will get the rewards if they persevere thru the darkness and bumpy stuff

If there's

• no hope
• no rest/recovery
• no motion/possibillity for change
• no reward

And thats just your life, its not really sustainable and one would likely turn to such thoughts or impulses like you're describing.

The thing is, if suicide is an option in one's mind, thats such an extreme outcome and thing to try to plan and execute on that there's basically always a better option that you can find but you need to ask for help and radically open your mind to other situations you might be able to transtiion yourself into that might suck but is allows you to start fresh(er) and have somethint workable as a foundation to try again and at least not be in the situation that is shutting you down and making you imagine having to resort to S