TW: Mention of suicide and suicidality
Nobody hates you. You’re not a burden.
It’s just been a bad week. It’s gonna be worth it.
Nobody hates you. Your world isn’t burning.
Just ’cause you think it, don’t make it true.— Jessia. “Nobody Hates You.”
Established in 2003 by the International Association for Suicide Prevention, World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD) is observed each year on September 10. The theme for 2024–2026 is Changing the Narrative on Suicide. Last year’s post Use Your Words focused on the language we use. This year I want to explore some of the unhealthy stories we tell ourselves.
A few months ago I was writing a letter to a friend. I was thinking how sometimes our thoughts add to the difficulties we face rather than helping us through them. As I put it, “our minds aren’t always our best friend.” The moment I wrote the words I knew they were important and relevant to the WSPD theme.
Our minds are our constant companion. Sometimes chatty. Sometimes quiet. But always there. Mostly, they are good friends to us. That inner voice represents our accumulated wisdom, built from all we’ve learned and lived through. What works for us. What doesn’t. What’s likely to keep us safe. What’s uncertain, perilous, or risky. The things that align with our values and those that don’t. These narratives exist because they serve a purpose but it’s worth checking in with them from time to time. As I’ve described previously we may find some have outlived their usefulness. This is especially true of stories that begin “I’m not the sort of person who ...” I’m thinking of stories that tell me I’m not the sort of person who would do a charity zip-wire challenge from the Tyne Bridge, who strikes up conversations with strangers in coffee shops, or writes a book about supporting someone with mental illness. Those were once true for me but I challenged each in its turn. Others remain, including the one that tells me I’m not the sort of person who enjoys social situations. I still listen to that one.
We might liken such stories to a cautious friend. Not long ago I counselled Fran to decline an invitation to house and dog sit. She’d been depressed and I felt she needed rest not additional responsibilities. Fran listened to my concern but decided to accept her friend’s offer. As I’ve written elsewhere it worked out well in the end. The change of scene gave Fran the opportunity to check in with herself. “It feels good to just veg,” she told me. “I didn’t realize just how tired I was.” My caution had been well-intentioned but Fran was wise to set it aside.
Such narratives might hold us back but they’re not inherently dangerous. That’s not always the case. In her next letter my friend agreed that our minds don’t always work in our best interest. “You know that saying about being in two minds?” she asked. “I feel as if I have two minds. One that works for me, with me, and one that works against.” She described how it sometimes feels like a constant struggle to keep the latter in check. The example she gave wasn’t dangerous but I could imagine how exhausting it must be to have that “niggly little voice” playing all the time, encouraging her to do things she doesn’t want to do. I replied that her analogy made a lot of sense to me. “Not exactly an angel and a devil, one on each shoulder,” I said. “But voices or thoughts that seem to tug you in different directions.” Shoulder angels and demons are a common literary device. I don’t know how common the experience is but I recognise it in my own life, most notably in the urge to overeat.
I’m reminded of the incessant — and decidedly dangerous — “stinking thinking” Fran used to experience as a symptom of her bipolar disorder. The following is taken from our book High Tide, Low Tide.
Fran once described these thoughts as a relentless marching army. Each thought must be acknowledged individually, picked up, and set aside before she can take on the next. The assault repeats again and again, sometimes for hours. It is exhausting, and the danger is that weariness and desperation may lead Fran to harm herself, if only to stem the onslaught.
Her description mirrors that of a friend who told us: “A voice takes over my system that is stronger than I am to fight it. It convinces me that I must leave. That leaving is the only way to end my suffering. It is irrational, but it happens.”
It’s fortunate — the word is scarcely adequate — that this particular form of suicidal ideation responded to a change in medication. The result was rapid and remarkable. The “marching army” didn’t completely disappear but within a couple of months it had reduced enough for Fran to handle it without too much difficulty. Other forms of suicidal thinking were resistant to the change in medication and persist to this day.
Fran’s suicidality isn’t due to psychosis but I have friends whose minds are subject to delusions and hallucinations. “Weird thoughts,” as one expresses it. Some of these respond well to antipsychotic medication, others less so. As I wrote recently in How to Be There for a Friend When You Don’t Understand hallucinations don’t just seem real to the person having them. They may be indistinguishable from what we call real experience.
[Thinking about this] gives me a sense of how confusing and scary it must be to hear, see, think, or feel things that other people insist are not real. How would I feel — how would you feel — if everyone you trust told you the things you could see or the voice you could hear or your most concrete beliefs about the world were false? How terrifying would that be? How would you ever trust them again? How would you ever trust your senses and thoughts about anything? How would you know what was safe to believe or act upon?
For more on the realities of living with psychosis check out our guest posts including Bipolar Disorder and Psychosis: There Is Help and There Is Hope by Amy Gamble, One Small Chip: Living with Psychosis by Roiben, Peter McDonnell’s How Writing a Memoir Has Helped Me Talk More about My Mental Illness, and How to Gently and Kindly Talk with a Friend About Difficult Bipolar Symptoms by Julie A Fast. My friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson writes extensively about psychosis and its relevance to self-harm and suicidality on her blog I’m NOT Disordered.
Our minds can undermine us in other ways. How many of us recognise the following thoughts or have heard friends express themselves using similar words?
“I don’t see how things are ever going to get any better.”
“It’s just too much.”
“I feel like a burden.”
“Nobody cares.”
“There’s no point reaching out.”
“Nothing works.”
“Sometimes I think people would be better off if I wasn’t here.”
Such thoughts are profoundly unhealthy and deserve to be taken seriously. They can nevertheless feel totally true when we’re struggling. Change begins by acknowledging that alternatives are possible. That’s true whether the stories are ours or other people’s. Talking things out, whether with a friend or a professional, isn’t a guaranteed or immediate fix. A good conversation over a cup of tea (coffee for me, please) won’t cure depression, counter psychotic delusions, or dismiss your frustrations and sense of unfairness or overwhelm. Our fifteen year friendship has nevertheless taught me and Fran that holding space for one another can make a huge difference. Sharing what’s going on for us reminds us that the stories we tell ourselves aren’t the only ones available.
We do this by acknowledging our thoughts and feelings are valid whilst also examining how closely they accord with reality. Maybe there are other ways of approaching the situation. Is there a pattern to our thoughts and behaviour? If so, how did we handle things last time? Are we responding consciously or reacting from instinct? Are our minds stuck in unhealthy or outmoded patterns of thinking?
I remind (re-mind) myself of Dick Sutphen’s assertion in The Gateless Gate. “This thought is not me. I’m just an observer.” Leaving aside the deeper metaphysical question “Who am I, then?” the insight offers a degree of clarity. My thoughts are not reality. They’re just thoughts. As Canadian singer-songwriter Jessika Harling puts it in her song “Nobody Hates You,” “Just ’cause you think it, don’t make it true.”
Separating our thoughts from what’s actually happening can help when all seems hopeless, stuck, or beyond our capacity to cope. Another friend expressed it well. Managing mental and physical illness, frequently suicidal, recovering from surgery, in chronic pain, barely sleeping, and dealing with the physical, mental, financial, and emotional turmoil of a close family bereavement, she observed with commendable self-compassion, “Things feel harder to do now. I suppose that might be normal given the circumstances.” Sharing with me doesn’t fix any of her problems and yet I know it helps her find a way through. It helps her still be here.
Changing the narrative on suicide isn’t just about awareness days and social media campaigns, important though those are. Changing the narrative on suicide is personal. It happens close up. Quietly. One-on-one. It happens in chat conversations, e-mails, and handwritten letters. It happens in voice and video calls and face-to-face. It happens at home. In the workplace. In coffee shops and walks on the beach. It’s accompanied by tears. Anger. Frustration. Occasional laughter. Cups of tea or coffee. Pizza and chips, sometimes. It happens when one person feels safe enough to share what they’re thinking and feeling and the other person stays long enough to hear them.
Our minds aren’t always our best friend. That’s why we have each other.
Photo by Darth Liu at Unsplash.
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