Suicide: Breaking Taboos
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The Avoidance
When I was 25, my life was spiraling. I was spinning in response to the intensity of my first quarter at the university, an intensity magnified by remnants of my mom’s death, my experiences in the military, and an unhealthy relationship. These remnants made it so difficult to function that I was constantly irritable. My partner became so fed up with my anger that she finally convinced me to see a therapist.
The decision of who to speak with was readymade. Seattle University offers free mental health services to all enrolled students. Since this was to be my first experience with a professional, I was understandably anxious. Not so much about what I needed to say, but more about what I wanted to avoid. The anticipation of one question in particular was so unbearable that I almost didn’t go to the appointment:
Have you ever considered suicide?
One taboo in America is to respond to the question of “How are you?” with anything other than good, tired, or mad. It is putting yourself at risk of alienating the other person. A much worse taboo is conversation about suicide.
The word suicide itself is so taboo that if you’re reading this as someone close to me, the title of this article made the hairs on your skin as sharp as needles. It made your thoughts race and moved your cursor to the link. This sort of knee-jerk reaction is exactly the reason I write. If in our culture we can’t even discuss personal narratives of suicide, imagine what it feels like for a person who believes there is no other option.
The Source
At my appointment, like any good American, I resolved to lie and brush past the question of suicide. But as soon as I was sitting across from the therapist, looking eye to eye, my anxiety took over and I lost inhibitory control. My default is to tell the truth; the unfiltered, unbounded truth. I burst out with a “Yeah — but…”, telling the following to justify my thoughts:
I was bullied frequently as an elementary school student. It began after a friend’s older brother stole my backpack while we were waiting for the bus after school one day in Kindergarten. I chased after him to get it back. As I was following behind, he looked over his shoulder, smiled, and said the words that cemented my experience for the next several years, “Someone get this gay kid away from me.” The name stuck.
I don’t think anyone that age really understands what the word gay means. All they know is that their parents cringe when they hear it. Or, at least, back then they did. So when a student has the nick name “The Gay Kid”, they’re obviously someone to be avoided like the plague. I made few friends.
This title persisted for several years until finally fading in fifth grade. With its disappearance came a cathartic sense of freedom. Kids talked to me and weren’t ashamed while doing it. I began to feel enthusiastic about school and friendships. The feeling was short lived.
The Solution
When I transitioned from elementary to middle school, I was entering into an environment full of older kids who still remembered my nick name. The bullying was by no means as bad as it was in early elementary, but it was enough. I woke up every day fearing who I might have to defend my sexuality against. I woke up every day thinking of new ways to prove my straightness and show them they were wrong. Eventually, I stumbled into a solution that helped me overcome the bullies.
One morning, I was walking to school and noticed a new, white picket fence surrounding someone’s house. It looked like one of those houses kids dream about someday getting married and having kids and grandkids in. I don’t know where it came from, but my thoughts immediately considered how sharp the new fence must be.
When I saw that fence, my brain jumped to a fantasy of climbing on top of the car, reaching for the roof, climbing to the highest point, and flinging myself off onto the fence. In that moment, in that spontaneous day dream, I finally felt the relief and release of months of fear and frustration. I felt free.
After that one, single, morbid thought, school became easier to handle. I felt more confident walking onto the school grounds. Since I was in control of the off switch, nothing was impossible. I made my suicidal ideation into a routine. Each day I’d walk to school fantasizing about the ways I could end things, and each day I ended in control. The kids who bullied me didn’t matter anymore and eventually they realized it. The bullying faded and I became confident making new friends.
Those dark thoughts powered me through the rest of my grade school experience. That way of thinking faded at the end of high school, but has since popped up time and time again whenever I am in the face of seemingly impossible situations.
The Redirection
When I finished my story, I looked at the therapist expectantly. My mind went to a place where, under the table, she had secretly pressed a red button, a button that called for two men, a nice comfortable jacket, and a hand full of pills. Of course, none of that happened. In fact, the therapist seemed unimpressed. She explained that, actually, quite a few students come in to her office with stories like mine. She explained that it is an unhealthy coping mechanism that people develop to reclaim power when they feel powerless.
To be absolutely clear, the therapist was not endorsing suicide. If you, or someone you know, are seriously considering suicide, please reach out to a professional and get the tools you need to reclaim your life. Resources for suicide lifelines are listed below.
What the therapist was communicating was that suicidal ideation is so common that it was no surprise to her that I would admit to it. What she was doing for me was normalizing my pain, normalizing my erratic thinking. Thoughts I had kept secret from the world my entire life suddenly seemed quiet, manageable.
What the therpaist had done was validate me, validate what I was doing as a response to extreme stress. A response that, though unhealthy, is just that — a response. And responses can be changed if we give them time, careful consideration, and thoughtful redirection.
The Reason
Normalization is the key part of this process. When we live in a culture where we can’t discuss the dark and the bad and the scary, the dark and bad and scary ideas scream louder and louder and louder until something has to be done to get them out. People who have no way out eventually find one. Forty-four thousand, one hundred and ninety-three people in just 2015 alone.
Even more problematic than such a staggering number of suicides is the disparity of these suicides across genders. In a male/female gender categorization, 3.5 times more men committed suicide in 2015 than women. To tease this gender phenomenon apart is actually quite easy.
American men are historically raised to be stoic people (opinion, not fact). Stoicism is a key component of masculinity. When there is a cultural expectation to be either happy or angry, anything in-between seems scary, inappropriate, and — most importantly — taboo. Without a healthy outlet for their emotionality, men create a way out.
In general, it does seem as if a cultural shift is beginning to create room for a broad spectrum of emotionality across genders, but we still have a long way to go if there is ever any hope to reduce this stigma.
The Stigma
One way to reduce this stigma is to pull out your smartphone right now and download the app Stigma. Stigma is an anonymous community where people can go to find support for whichever mental categorization they identify with. Options include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, OCD, and a spectrum of other options.
Although I have never been diagnosed, my experiences strongly resonate with the experiences of people with depression, general anxiety, and PTSD, so I made sure to select those options. Thanks to Stigma, I can connect with people who not only empathize but also offer ideas for healthy coping mechanisms when I‘m not doing such a good job on my own.
Additionally, Stigma offers an area for everyone in the community to post to. Comments are disabled, so you can feel comforted in knowing that you won’t be openly mocked or insulted for your unique style of thinking. People can heart your post, this enables you to connect to new penpals if you so choose. It’s a great way to meet people with similar experiences despite not identifying with the same mental categorization.
The Conclusion
American culture is writhe with taboo. The only way to overcome our pain and become healthy is to normalize it. By overcoming the taboo of talking about suicide, I realized just how common it is to think about it and normalized the feelings I had hidden for so long. It created the room for me to grow as a person. Though the thoughts themselves may never go away completely, by talking about them, they become an ambient noise that I only pay attention to if I choose to.
For me, suicidal ideation indicates a power imbalance in my life. Once I acknowledge and normalize my ideation, I become capable of looking at the deeper root of my imbalance. Though this is true for many, it is not true for all. To get help exploring the root of your pain, it is always courageous and strong to talk to a professional.
Everything presented in this article is a matter of personal opinion based on personal experience. I am not a professional. I am a recently graduated psychology undergraduate who recently decided to use his passion for creative writing to challenge issues of mental health. Being an opinion piece, my words should never be used in place of the guidance of a licensed professional.
If you, or someone you know, are in a place where suicide seems like a real option, please:
Dial 911
Chat on this free, 24/7 suicide chatroom
Call this free, 24/7 suicide lifeline:
1–800–273–8255
When you talk about your pain, you gain control of it. Control is the first step to a better way. Together, we can become more.
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