how to support suicidality

Experiencing and supporting suicidality can be really scary. I get why a lot of suicide prevention information emphasizes direct action, like when to take someone to the hospital, what questions to ask, etc. Those actions can save someone’s life and it can be helpful to educate yourself about risk factors, warning signs, and how to support. You can find more information about that here.

That being said, I want to take time to highlight what often gets left out of suicide prevention campaigns: the transformative power of simply being seen and heard.

The lived experience of people who experience suicidality is usually not included in these campaigns, which can be pathologizing and unhelpful. When I googled suicide prevention support in preparation to write this newsletter, most pages began with a long list of demographic statistics.

In a world that continues to endure intense environmental disasters and community violence, suicidality must be more deeply understood as a survival resource, not just its prevention.

Peer Support Space, along with one of its founders, Dandelion Hill, have published a collection of offerings from those with lived experience, including what they wished people knew, self harm alternatives, redirections, and harm reduction strategies. You can find these on their instagram here.

I’ll leave y’all with a couple quotes from the compiled anonymous submissions:

On suicidality:

“Please don’t try and convince me that suicide is never a viable option or that I need to act as if it’s completely off the table. Knowing there’s always a way out helps calm me when life is at.its most unbearable, and entertaining those thoughts isn’t necessarily indicative that I intend to end my life. Sometimes it’s just genuinely nice to have a hypothetical escape button.

Also, these thoughts are not a crisis. Please don’t treat me like a fucking liability. I feel like a lot of people panic and focus on the thoughts themselves like they’re a crisis on their own, when really what’s been most helpful for me in motivating myself to stay alive has been collaborating with people and planning ways to build a life worth living.

Put you energy towards improving the circumstances that make us want to die. Don’t pathologize us for our very human and understandable reactions to said circumstances.

On harm reduction:

Something that helped me was framing self harm (SH) as a neutral resource instead of shame/bad, and that I was allowed to do it anytime without shame if I also made the agreement in my mind that I would try at least one other resource first.

So I’d do a grounding exercise (for example) first and then SH.

Removing shame and guilt I felt around SH allowed me to treat it as a resource in my list and to build up my list of resources to work through before getting to having to use SH which ultimately meant I didn’t SH as often.

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Ultimately, remember you deserve care and tenderness.

Supporter or supported, your presence matters.

Yours truly,

Katie

cover art by Evan M. Cohen