Fear: What to do When Someone is Suicidal NOTE: ARE YOU SUICIDAL? THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. CALL 988 RIGHT THIS SECOND.

Fear: What to do When Someone is Suicidal

NOTE: ARE YOU SUICIDAL? THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. CALL 988 RIGHT THIS SECOND. 

Are you afraid someone close to you suicidal? Read on.

This post is for people who are afraid their husband/wife/kid/parent/friend/roommate/family member is going to kill themselves.

 IF YOUR PERSON IS IN CRISIS THIS SECOND, CALL 988 FOR THE SUICIDE HELPLINE. CALL 911 AND ASK FOR A WELLNESS CHECK FOR YOUR PERSON. They can connect you to whatever local resources are available. 

Okay story time. 

 

So on the 4th of July, a couple of dads in our cul de sac went ALL out. We put our folding chairs on the driveway and lit our tiny sparklers and sat back to enjoy the show. My neighbor-bestie (I shall call her T) took one look at the other neighbors’ DIY Cul-De-Sac of Fire Rocket extravaganza and said, “I hate fireworks!! I know it’s stupid, but I always think they’re going to burn down my house! Sorry!! I know I’m being paranoid, but I just can’t!!” And she retreated to her noise-canceling headphones.

About 15 minutes later, one of the neighbor’s bottle rockets tipped over, scudded along the pavement right in front of my slippahs, and smashed into T’s bins. It immediately lit a row of Arborvitae trees on fire. Arborvitae: a lovely quick growing drought resistant landscaping plant. Read as: a fucking 40 tower of flammable resin.

KWOOOSH. 

Pillar of fire, 6 inches from T’s garage, and spreading fast to the row of other trees..

Now, there were lots of people around. Probably 7 households. And among this crowd, there were a variety of reactions to this disaster. And later, (after the fire department came and chopped down the trees and the fence and impressed us all with their statuesque soot-smeared sexiness,) the different reactions among the witnesses were easy to categorize: flight, freeze, and fight.

Some folks on the scene took one look at the towering inferno and ran the heck away, as fast as possible, as far as possible. Totally fair. Fire=bad. Run away= smart. 

Some folks couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Also fair. Fire=freakin’ scary. Freeze=assess what’s happening and wait for help. 

Some folks ran towards the fire, trying anything to get the fire to stop until the professionals arrived on the scene. Also fair. Fire=Problem. Fight=SMASH IT WITH a HAMMER.

So what does this have to do with your maybe-suicidal person whom you fear for, right now?

So as ya’ll know, my husband died by suicide. Since then (feels like about two years, but it’s been EIGHT), I’ve met manymanymanyMANY other suicide-smashed families. We compare notes and make sick jokes and look to each other in horror-- how is this our lives?

Since people know about Matt’s suicide, I often have people call me when they’re worried about someone. 

This is what they say:

“I keep expecting the police to call.” 

“I keep expecting to find him dead.” 

“I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.” 

And then universally, they say, “But I’m probably just being dramatic.”

And my immediate reaction is: No. You’re not being dramatic. Trust your fear. This is an emergency. This is a crisis. You have to act, and now. There is a non-zero chance that your person is going to die. And if they do, if they complete suicide, no one in the blast zone will ever be okay again. It is worth pissing them off, wrecking the friendship, causing embarrassment, and freaking other people out to keep them alive. 

Please remember this: imminent suicide doesn’t look how you think it does.

!!!!!!! Remember how I said this post IS NOT FOR SUICIDAL PEOPLE? If you are suicidal right now, for real, go call 988. Go to https://www.iasp.info/suicidalthoughts/ 

!!!!!!! Suicidal buddies, don’t read this, it won’t help you. It will hurt your feelings and you don’t need that. 

!!!!!!! Suicidal dear ones: Think of yourself as having sepsis. You need to go take care of that shit, ASAP. No, don’t go to work first, don’t have a drink first. Call 988. Go sit on a friend’s front porch and say: “I’m scared I’m going to kill myself, but I won’t do it with you here. Can we hang out and watch netflix or something till I feel a little safer?”

!!!!!!! Suicidal loves: Have you burned all your bridges? Or does that sound like you’d rather die than admit it? Fine. Then go do something that will feel good: what’s your favorite smell? What’s your favorite taste? What’s your favorite color? Go fill your senses with some stuff you like. Games, shows, music, whatever. Go have an amazing orgasm and be grateful that you have a body that can do that for you.

!!!!!!! Suicidal brothers and sisters. For real, this blog post is not for you. It’s for people who are afraid that someone important to them is going to kill themselves. 

All good? Carrying on.

A huge part of suicide prevention is recognizing what a suicidal person looks like (https://suicidology.org/2023/06/01/know-the-signs-how-to-tell-if-someone-might-be-suicidal/) . 

This is a good list: They talk about death or suicide, they are hopeless, their behavior changes, they are isolated, and they are making plans. 

I feel like that’s good general information. But one thing it doesn’t show is that a suicidal person may be really, REALLY difficult to be around. 

I’m having some big feelings about this. This may be one of those times where I’m speaking from my wounds rather than my scars so forgive me if I start spitting acid and sprouting hydra heads. I’m going to try to sort through my venomous angry/hurt feelings about this. I will avoid my own major triggers which include: any discussion of specific methods of self-harm or suicide. 

I think it’s sometimes easy to miss the suicide danger signs because they may translate to: my person is in their own living hell and is making life a living hell for everyone around them. They need help. And to help someone like that, you have to be within venom-spitting range. 

But…. boundaries. Those are apparently a thing. A good thing! “Treat me this way or I can’t be around you” is a very fair boundary. 

But a suicidal person needs help. And they need help often while scratching and clawing at everything around them. 

People who complete suicide are not sweet little wilting flowers. The tragic Ophelia suicide trope is pretend. Partially this is gendered. Women are more likely to be depressed and to attempt suicide, but they tend to have more access to help and are more likely to attempt using less lethal methods. Basically suicidal women are more likely to survive their suicidal depression. Girls attempt more but fail at suicide. A gender* success gap to be happy about, yay!

*(LGBT+ folks are 4 times more likely to be suicidal, but actual completion rates are ??? since queer identity data is not automatically collected the way sex is. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/health/lgbtq-suicide-data.html)). 

Men tend to have less access to support and tend to attempt using much more horrible and final methods (and heeeeeere’s my trigger, thanks, hate it.) Which I will not be going into! Because I would like to remain in my body today, thsnks!

Men, more isolated and more likely to default to violence, are better at killing themselves. 

*https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/

I have a lot of suicide widow friends, and we compare notes. Let me tell you some things that suicidal people (not limited to but, statistically, probably men) do right before they die. Imagine this as one person, or as many.

They don’t sleep. Or they sleep all the time. They’re assholes. They quit their meds, or switch them up. Or they self-medicate. They drink heavily. They withdraw. Or they yell. They break stuff. They throw away your valuables and scream at the kids. They rant. They roll their eyes at you. They curse you out. They know how to attack you, in the worst, most pointed and painful ways. Or (and) they say they are unworthy of you, that they’ve ruined your life. They are not fun to be around. Or they are the brittle sparking life of the straw-dry party. 

They are not safe to be around. They come to kid birthday parties drunk or high. You can’t leave your kids alone with them. They assault you. You don’t want to be alone with them yourself. They shit on everything they used to value, and everything you value. The alcohol makes them more unhappy*, so they up the dose. Maybe alcohol isn’t touching their misery at all anymore, so they try other stuff.

*https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/a-z-topics/alcohol-and-mental-health

They say, “fuck it--” and they go do stupid shit. Or they refuse to leave the house. Or they leave and won’t come home. They wreck homes and marriages and careers and relationships. Not in nice palatable “oh you seem to be withdrawing, I should reach out” ways but in “Ghengis Khan meets that Jack Nicholson in Shining” ways. They cut off relatives and friends, often by being a giant dick. They are a walking red flag made out of smaller walking red flags, all waving their own smaller red flags, tesselating into infinity. Think Hecatoncheires. Their picture is in the dictionary next to “bad vibes.” 

They blow up. They blow you off or blow up your phone. They withdraw.

And sometimes, in moments where the light seems to crack in, suicidal people can be so articulate. They explain, logically, why you are the worst thing that ever happened to them. And then, without blinking, they explain why you are the only thing that matters to them. That they could never deserve you. Also that they never wanted you. And you’re the only one they’ve ever loved, and if you don’t love them, they’ll die. Reasoning with them is a mind-fuck.

They apologize. They threaten. They scoff, they flirt, they whine. 

Suicidal people attempt suicide; they threaten suicide. Then they deny it. They accuse you of overreacting. And how can you expect them to stay alive in a relationship where you overreact like this?

Talking to a suicidal person can be like talking to a demon possessing your loved one. They can be smart and canny. But just imagine that you are trying to have a measured discussion with a bloodclot in their brain. Feel free to do it, but it’s not capable of being reasonable. 

Suicidality has one goal: kill itself. 

Phew, okay. There is my grim portrait of a person who is about to commit suicide. You might be reading this and going…. Oh shit. That’s my person. They’re awful and I’m worried about them and it’s not safe to be around them and I need them to not die but no-- they no, wouldn’t do that. But maybe there’s that niggling fear you’re going to come home and find them dead.

And to that I say....Yeah! You should be worried. Trust that instinct. You’re not overreacting. This is a crisis. The bottlerocket could absolutely crash into your house. All of the incendiary ingredients of the bomb are there.

So what do you do?

What on earth do you do? You are entitled to safe relationships and safe homes. And removing yourself from danger is good and right. And also, this person is in legitimate danger, like someone having a stroke on the kitchen floor. 

Remember, I’m not a professional. If you are worried about your person’s safety right this second, call 911 for a safety check, or 988 for professional support. 

Here is a great resource https://afsp.org/brief-interventions-for-managing-suicidal-crises/

If you have a second to breathe and want to read my take, read on.

Some options: 

Option one: Flight response option. Aka Run for your Life.

Get away from them; get yourself safe. This is 100% legit, especially if you are protecting kids, and getting your own body away from harm. Good luck to them. Hopefully they won’t die when they hit rock bottom. Hopefully there is some little part of their brain that will snag them on the way down, and they will decide that they don’t actually want to destroy everything. Maybe they’ll scare themselves enough into calling their mom or their doctor or checking themselves into rehab. In the meantime, get yourself safe.

Your running might help them. Some people, left alone, will be able to do some reflection and come out with a better plan than “fuck it.” 

And if you run and get safe and they die, just remember, that’s on them. Not you. As much as suicide is an illness, there is an element of choice. It is their choice, not yours, whether or not they live or die.

Option two: Freeze response option. Aka Grit and bear it.  

You know they’re a danger to themselves and others. You know they are hurting you. You know they are walking around with a suicide plan, as lethal as a blootclot in their brain. It could jiggle loose and kill, any second.  But what can you do? 

Who knows? So you put up with the shit. You don’t want to leave them alone. You make yourself into a human bomb shield, and hope that they will stop hurting you. After all, you know them. You know their good heart, their humor and wisdom and ability and bravery. You know this suicidal depression isn’t really them. You hold on and hope that, like the cursed fairy prince Tam Lin, they will eventually stop turning into monsters trying to rip you up, and be themselves again.

This is you, frozen deer in the headlights, immobilized. There are no good options. But without new inputs into the system, this won’t change. Until something changes, you’ll be there, trying to absorb the violence and contain the damage, and hoping that they get better.

Freeze. Wait for something to change, and for the way forward to become clear.

Option three: Fight Option. Aka Run Towards the Fire.

This is the option where you treat the person’s suicidality as an emergency. The trees are on fire, and the garage is about to go up unless you personally do something about it. 

Just like with my neighbor’s fire, you frantically throw everything you can at the problem to keep your person alive until the crisis passes and they’re able to manage their own safety. With inadequate hoses and a half-forgotten fire extinguisher from under the kitchen sink, you run at the fire and try, try, try. If you stand there, in the dark behind the house, in the alley between the garage and fence (currently on fire), with sticky ashes raining down on you from the pillar of fire on the other side of the fence-- if you just stay there in the heat, soaked and ashy, with the garden hose you ripped up from the back garden sprinkler, maybe you can mitigate the damage, keep the garage from catching. And if the tree crashes through the fence towards you and the whole place goes up in flames around you, you just have to hope you can outrun the fire.

You use the script

“Do you wish you were dead? Are you suicidal? Have you attempted suicide? Do you have a plan to kill yourself?” 

Often just saying the word out loud is scary enough to shock the person back into themselves.

Turn on the light. Blast those UV rays.

Like mold, Suicide LOOOOVES the damp dark places: shame and isolation. You turn on the floodlights and illuminate the situation without shame. In a crisis, you ignore their wishes for privacy. They are suicidal; their suicide-protective wishes are shit. They have proved that they are not competent to ensure their own safety. You call their friends and family and say, “look I know they were a dick the last time you saw them, but can you come chill with them? Just sit around and watch sports or play cards so they won’t kill themselves today.

Get rid of methods

You remove any lethal means from the house. I’m not going into that because see above about my particular triggers.

Use your safety plan

You activate any safety plans they have in place-- you call the doctor or the AA mentor or the motherfuckin exorcist. Call frikkin SCOOBY DOO and the Winchesters and the Monkees. Call in HELP.  Of course, this requires having a safety plan in place in advance, which is a kind of honesty and forethought that suicidality doesn’t often allow for. 

*note: make mental health safety plans and practice them waaaay before they become necessary. Just like practicing finding the hose and the fire extinguisher. Practice when you don’t need it so you’ll know how to get to it when the fire starts for real.

Call the professionals

You get the suicide crisis line on speaker (Call 988). 

You call the cops for a well-check (911), or directly to your local non-emergency line. 

You call local crisis centers (here in Eugene it’s White Bird: https://whitebirdclinic.org/crisis) Look up crisis lines near you: https://gprivate.com/6c892

Activate community

You tell their family and any friends that have survived the maelstrom of their addiction and/or assholery that they are in a suicidal crisis. You get people to hang out with them 24/7. 

Will this violate their privacy and piss them off? Yes. Could it shock them into making changes, and keep them alive until they’re willing to take over their own care? It could. 

Okay. So, obviously, this level of “I’ll keep you alive whether you like it or not,” is not really sustainable for a long-term solution. You can’t actually quit work and school and everything and stand guard over an adult. It will be a pain, and everyone will be furious. There will be *drama.* You will be accused of overreacting. More stuff will break. But, like a hot compress on a boil, it will bring the crisis to a fucking head.

This method is all about running towards the problem. It’s going to suck. But, heck. The whole situation sucks. But with this method, you crank open the hose, you use the fire extinguisher under the sink, and you holler FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!

But this is important: Crisis state is TEMPORARY 

When your person is in an acute suicidal crisis, their brain is so inflamed, they HAVE NO IMAGINATION. They physically cannot think about the impact of their actions.  A suicide grief counselor told me that in the moment of suicide, they are like a woman giving birth. In transition, there is no thinking happening: only bearing down. Only an instinct to END THIS and GET IT OVER WITH.

But here’s the thing. Just like birth, acute suicidal crises don’t last forever. There will be little breaks in the dark. There will be moments of mental clarity, where the suicidality recedes enough for them to go from “I’m going to kill myself right now” to “I wish I wasn’t alive but oh well, time to make some coffee and check my email.” 

Those times are an opportunity to set up more help. Call in the neighbors and friends and family. Tell everyone what is going on. Call the doctors and crisis teams and priests and tarot readers. Get everyone to be sticky.

Practice for when the crisis comes again

Here’s another thing about the fire the other night.

The week before the fire, I had been housesitting for T’s family, and one of my duties was to water the blueberries. This meant that when the fire went WHOOSH, I didn’t have to think about how to find water. I ran immediately to the hose, cranked it up, and dragged it back over to the fire. When another neighbor came over to help, I handed him that hose, and ran around to the back to the other hose, and came at the fire from the other side. 

In other moments of crisis, I have frozen. The only reason I was able to spring right into action and get the water going on the night of the fire was because I had practiced. In calm moments, I had been practicing turning on the water, fiddling with the pressure, making sure the hose was connected to the right splitter. In a moment of crisis, I didn’t have to make any decisions or do any complex problem solving. In crisis, that part of your brain is offline, anyway. You can only rely on muscle memory.

So be ready. Prepare for the worst. Get everyone in the family practiced at calling the crisis number. Get everyone involved aware of the danger. Make a plan. Get rid of lethal items in the house. Talk frankly about suicide, and plans to prevent it.  If it’s not safe for you or your kids to be around your suicidal person, and they’ve chased off all of your friends and family by being an insufferable asshole, hire a big guy to come in and do it! (Apparently pro bodyguards cost $75-100 an hour, which is about the same as therapy, and will make you look like a movie star!) 

And then what?

I don’t know if any of this can prevent suicide, ultimately. 

It comes down to luck, good and bad. It comes down to a zillion other circumstances in the crisis, multitudinous as atoms, colliding into each other and off-breaking a zillion new multiverses. Ugh, none of this is easy. 

I guess I just want to say-- you might flee, freeze, or fight. The suicidal person might hit rock bottom and decide to climb out of the pit. They might gain some perspective and take on the tasks of getting sober or getting medicated or finding religion or talking to a therapist or checking into an in-patient facility. They might be so shocked by the flurry of action-- cops and family and doctors and crisis workers-- that they see how their choices really DO impact other people. They might have the tiny bit of space in their brains they need to make a plan to stay alive.

Or, they might not. They might be too cruel or dangerous to be around. Their pain might be too much for them to survive. Their determination in the next crisis might be too strong, and they may kill themselves.

I hope not. I really truly hope not. I hope all of the fire drills and the active shooter drills and the suicide safety plans end up being totally unnecessary and that everyone gets through the crisis intact and alive. 

But don’t dismiss your fear. Don’t wave your instincts away. Your gut is telling you the truth. You are seeing it: all of the ingredients for an incendiary disaster.