I also felt Reg was off the mark (although perhaps not to the extent that you do), but that's why i messaged him what i thought was the real issue. I think it's important to communicate what that feeling is.
So many people misunderstand the actual nature of suicidal tendencies. They think that it's just about someone feeling alone, or unhappy or whatever. But those feelings all have "normal" analogues such that a person that's never felt seriously depressed will misunderstand what that hole is truly like on the inside.
True depression is knowing that not being is an option equally viable to being.
And that's a feeling, or an understanding of the world that can't be reasoned with. All others can do is make the choice of "not being" less convenient of a choice than "being". Whether that's trying to make a connection and rekindle one's interests in something, or dragging someone out to do something (which should be done carefully), or simply being present. Regardless i don't think people appreciate what it is they can or should do to keep someone else moored/tethered to the reality where being vs not being is an equal proposition.
> True depression is knowing that not being is an option equally viable to being.
There's a quote by David Foster Wallace that states it better:
"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flame yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."
In my experience true depression feels exactly like extreme grief: each morning you awake to the shock of loss and the total bleakness of a lack of a personal future, the confusion over what has happened and the anxiety of separation. It hurts, all over your body, really badly.
Have you ever felt like there was no point to your life after a bad breakup? Ever felt inconsolable after a close friend or relative died? That's the feeling. Grief has a purpose and people know how to help those in grief. Most understand that grief brings with it physical illness: tiredness, memory loss, eating disorders, anxiety (sometimes even stomach ulcers, hair-loss, skin problems etc). People understand that grief can last a year (or more) but with help the grieving can be brought back to functionality within a few months.
Real depression is rogue grief. It is an illness that destroys lives and kills. It usually comes without trigger and without reason.
Real depression works like a tsunami: each depression comes as a wave that often overlaps with the last. As you ride one wave out and begin to return to normality another wave crashes in. Sadness and pain becomes the normality and you begin to feel like you are drowning: if you let go and let it take you then at least the pain will go away. Won't it?.
It annoys me when people who have never experienced the pain of depression are quick to dismiss those who commit suicide as selfish. They are often the same people who would help a loved one die if they were in extreme physical pain.
True depression is knowing that not being is an option equally viable to being.
The few times I have been close to the brink, I wasn't even sure there was a distinction to be made anymore between being and not being. It was like drowning in nothingness.
Throughout my life, I have observed that the "nature of suicidal tendencies", which I think falls into the broader category called depression, is in fact nothing more than energetic deficiency. I'm of course talking about the kind of energy most of us know for a fact that it exists, but which is not scientifically proven and the mainstream health care system doesn't work with it. I think chinese call it Chi. I found out that a daily practice of a very simple visualization technique, where one closes eyes and imagines colored spheres at the 7 points of their body where the "main chakras" are said to be located, this energetic deficiency can be beaten to the level where it's not a problem anymore.
Also, depression is not the only thing this works on, for example you can use this after you have eaten something your body finds hard to process, and basically to help solve any other problem. But you have to take a good care to not overdo it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra
Nonsense. Depression is a physical brain illness caused by an misbalance of neurotransmitters.
Dismissing a serious, dangerous and often fatal illness as something that can be cured by 'rebalancing your chakras' is akin to using homeopathy to cure cancer.
While I suspect those with mild mood disorders may be able to think their way out of a lethargic period those with a serious depression need real help.
Depression is a big killer:
• suicide is the 8th leading cause of death in the United States
• 15% of those who are clinically depressed die by suicide
• The majority of suicide attempts are expressions of extreme distress that need to be addressed, and not just a harmless bid for attention
Depression is an emotional-mental illness, and those two categorizations surely are not physical. Equilibrium of these aspects of the human being is not as simple as taking a drug - the drug does not correct the psycho-temporal conditions* that is causing the depression in the first place.
*For example, taking a drug will not relieve the depression caused by the loss of a loved one.
I also felt Reg was off the mark (although perhaps not to the extent that you do), but that's why i messaged him what i thought was the real issue. I think it's important to communicate what that feeling is.
So many people misunderstand the actual nature of suicidal tendencies. They think that it's just about someone feeling alone, or unhappy or whatever. But those feelings all have "normal" analogues such that a person that's never felt seriously depressed will misunderstand what that hole is truly like on the inside.
True depression is knowing that not being is an option equally viable to being.
And that's a feeling, or an understanding of the world that can't be reasoned with. All others can do is make the choice of "not being" less convenient of a choice than "being". Whether that's trying to make a connection and rekindle one's interests in something, or dragging someone out to do something (which should be done carefully), or simply being present. Regardless i don't think people appreciate what it is they can or should do to keep someone else moored/tethered to the reality where being vs not being is an equal proposition.