Happy Holidays... Let's Talk About Suicide

“My suicides have always been metaphors.”

Screenshot of Jimmy Steward, Donna Reed, and Karolyn Grimes in the American film It’s a Wonderful Life 1946

I scrawled the words on the interior column of my friend Courtney’s studio apartment.

Courtney is a cosmetics cowboy. A makeup artist and hairstylist with his bandolier of tools slung over his shoulder, ready to go anywhere to fix a face. He lives in West Hollywood with his boyfriend Andrew who is a visual artist. Their apartment building used to be an old spice factory, and nothing screams Courtney more than learning he’s now living in a renovated spice factory.

The first time I visited the couple in their new place I noticed the giant white column in the middle of their dining room. It had been graffitied and autographed from floor to ceiling by guests.

I added my signature line: “My suicides have always been metaphors.”

Every time I hear about a recent suicide and someone says, “check on your friends,” I think, “is that really going to make a difference? We can’t be with our friends 24/7.”

I held a different philosophy regarding suicidal ideation. And I wished more people did, as well.

Here’s a short friendship history for comparison’s sake:

Courtney and I were two peas in a pod when we lived together several years ago.

He was post-split from a narcissist. And I was divorced and struggling to find work.

We were so poor we shared a bed. Despite having almost no money, I tried to pull off pretentious Sunday night dinners where I’d experiment with weird ingredients, and we’d eat a weekly feast. These recipes routinely used up all our cash, but they connected us.

Courtney took a job as a dancer to help us with the bills. I’d pick him up after his late shift. In the mornings, I’d rush off to a crappy temp job but not before I’d scavenge the passenger floorboard in search of any stripper $1s that had fallen out of his underwear the night before.

Some mornings I’d get a full breakfast. On other mornings, all I could afford was coffee.

Even as close as the two of us were, I can’t say I knew all about Courtney’s emotional struggles. And I’m sure he didn’t fully understand mine, either.

Life changed and I moved out. Luckily, it didn’t kill our friendship. Courtney’s now a mega hotshot hairstylist in LA and I visit him a few times a year. But we’ve each had to recreate our map for navigating life. A mostly solitary journey when it comes to dealing with your interior world.  

I respect the intent of a message like “check on your friends,” but is it helpful? Do most friends open up about their suicidal feelings? Even close friends?

I’m not immune to suicidal thoughts. But I can’t remember ever admitting those thoughts to another living soul. Not to Courtney and not to my husband.

I think that’s probably a common occurrence with this taboo subject. We shield the people closest to us from our innermost truths.

I come from a family filled with mental illness. Addictions. OCD. Depression. Anxiety. It’s all accounted for. But it’s only addressed by a few family members. I had to find ways of navigating these psychological beasts.

In my mid-20s I read The Van Gogh Blues by Eric Maisel. In the book, the author describes the depression of artists as a necessary phase. A time of gathering and of distancing one’s self from the outside world. This is a normal period. Something to be expected, not to fear or push away.

The book was an excellent resource for changing one’s perception of depression from a broken brain syndrome to an artistic time of laying low and conserving energy.

Maisel’s writing was so convincing that I established a new belief system. I accepted that if my emotional tides were allowed to flow in and out, I’d eventually become productive again following any depressive episode. In other words, I had to acknowledge my depression to let it pass, not just ignore it.

Depression wasn’t just something to endure, it became a useful tool. A way to reassess my life.

And this belief has shaped my feelings about suicide, too.

Suicidal thoughts, while they can feel paralyzing, are just thoughts. We all have the power to use our thinking in creative ways before they manifest into reality. But we must acknowledge our terrible thoughts first.

As someone who has faced chronic illness twice—my current battle and one I overcame in 2011—suicidal ideations have arisen for me during periods of inescapable pain. I dwell on how much easier it would be to not feel anything.

I’m not a weed smoker. I had a doctor suggest medical marijuana as a way of managing pain recently, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. My sober 9 years addict husband thinks my drug dabblings are hilarious.

I once ate an adult muffin. But when nothing happened, I gobbled up a second one. An hour later and beyond stoned, I sat in my front yard chatting with a tree. It was a comedic act in the best sense. Comedy often reveals great truths.

“It’s only pain,” the tree quipped when I felt the familiar knife to my left kidney.

It’s only pain. Wow! That tree knew how to minimize pain’s power over me!

This sense of unreality didn’t take away my pain, but it did augment my perception of it.

No, I’m not suggesting you get stoned and talk to plant life. I’m also not suggesting all pain can be overcome—certain types can only be managed by a doctor. What I’m saying is that for many of us, seeing pain differently can lead to a paradigm change around both pain and suicidal thinking. When I stopped seeing difficult experiences as having hard boundaries and started seeing them as metaphors capable of teaching me about life transitions, something inside me shifted.

Pain fluctuates.

I’ve had some bad days where I’m nearly incapacitated and I feel like a monster. But I also have good days where my pain subsides. 

What this tells me is our bodies are always in motion.

Being sick today doesn’t necessarily mean your body will continue to deteriorate or hang onto pain—unfortunately, a lot of chronically ill people believe they’re stuck in their health conditions. They’re bonded to the pain. Both the physical pain and the mental anguish surrounding it become insurmountable obstacles.

We may not be able to change our pain, but we can shift our thinking about it.

Regardless of my current state, I believe I’ll achieve great health again. Not through willpower or faith alone. But because I was able to make a complete recovery in 2011. I have proof it’s possible. I also read The Pain Chronicles by Melanie Thernstrom which gave me some powerful insights into how to re-see my pain.

Our bodies aren’t static.

Life is motion. Blood flows. Cells change.

And so, my thoughts around suicide have changed, too.

There have been times when I’ve fully identified with the need to kill myself.

I know what it’s like to spend years in devastating pain. I’m talking chronic kidney stones and a weight around my neck that feels like I’m being strangled by my thyroid. These were all symptoms of an autoimmune condition. I’ve been told that I may be inching closer to Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hashimoto’s, Sjogren’s Syndrome, and Lupus. Conditions most people believe you can never overcome.

The icing on the cake? Being told by doctors that they couldn’t fully diagnose me with any one condition despite my extreme physical symptoms. 

Simply put I was a medical conundrum.

Can you see how these ingredients can set up suicidal ideations?

This is only physical pain. Let’s not forget mental anguish, too.

You’re probably thinking this is the least festive thing to talk about during the holiday season. But I disagree.

There’s a myth that the holidays are when suicides happen most. I’ve read conflicting reports on this statistic but regardless, suicide happens. Why not bring the myth up during the holidays as a subject of debate? It’ll get the topic out on the table.

Often writers are the people who need to address this subject the most. Don’t make me do the suicidal writers’ roll call. The list is too long.

It’s vital we not only have this conversation right now, but we start to participate in a paradigm shift around it.

Suicidal feelings are powerfully real. But they aren’t forever. And they aren’t actions. When those thoughts grab me today, I say, “okay some big part of my life is about to change. What do I need to kill off so I can move forward?”

It may mean I need to change jobs, split from a friendship, or stop forcing myself to do something I hate but think I must do. Read about tackling endings in my latest blog post This is the End.

My recent Jonathon Young and Anne Bach class was a perfect mirror for this paradigm shift. It’s A Wonderful Life: Suicide and the Soul—a title borrowed from a classic James Hillman book—was a vehicle for seeing suicidal thoughts as a tool for transformation.

This continuing education course analyzed the classic film and satisfied the suicide prevention hours for practicing therapists. It was also the only time I’ve ever heard anyone echo my sentiments about using suicide as a metaphorical concept. Little did I know, James Hillman has long identified suicidal ideations as a symbolic death.

Thinking about suicide in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. The impulse of suicide can help you more closely examine identity transitions—how you move out of one phase of life and into another.  

These days when that death impulse wells up in me, I don’t think of it as anything that will become a physical manifestation. Instead, I know I’m heading for a turning point in my life. 

I become curious instead of paralyzed by fear.

True suicide is an overly literal view of a powerful psychological concept.

Someone thinks of suicide, and they assume they are mentally ill. They don’t talk about their thoughts. Instead, they isolate themselves. And dig further into their thinking.

We assume we are the only ones.

And we get stuck in the metaphors we create.

Jung had a way of dealing with these suicidal ideations in what he called “death training” or participating in smaller deaths (not literal) that lead us towards a rebirth—or a new manifestation of ourselves.

Start as small as you can. What little deaths do you encounter throughout your day?

Drinking up the last of the coffee.

Completing a chapter in your latest book—reading or writing.

Finishing your workday.

Going to bed.

Can you open yourself up to the metaphorical idea of death in each of these small scenarios?

Flex your creative muscle when it comes to thinking about death. Consider each end before you move on to the next new thing in life.

As Jonathan Young described in our class, “only rigid thinking will get you closer to suicide as an actual option.” 

If you believe life hinges on two real and static choices, you’re going to be in trouble. When you open life up to a third option or even a 4th or a 5th, rigid thinking starts to go away, and life becomes more manageable.

Give yourself choices. Lots of them.

And see some of your rigid and harsh thinking soften up.

Try this writing exercise:

List 5 alternatives for where you could be in life right now.

Get creative. This game doesn’t hinge on reality. Allow yourself to be as imaginative as possible. Play with the idea that you have choices. Alternatives to what is happening in your life.

After you’ve written down all five, re-read them and mentally try them on for size. Do your feelings shift when you picture yourself in a different place? Could you make any minor steps right now that could get you closer to a more enjoyable future? Think in terms of baby steps. Any time you act, you prove to yourself that you have the power to change your circumstances.

Another glaring issue around suicide is the lack of community. 

“Do you feel regularly punished for helping others?”

What became so clear to me in class as we studied our It’s a Wonderful Life suicidal star George Bailey was how he was regularly punished for helping others.

Ever feel like this?

We try to do the right thing but life bites us on the butt every single time.  

Hey, George Bailey—this is your life:

Your kid brother falls into icy waters, and you save him from drowning—here’s deafness in your right ear as a thank you.

Mr. Gower, the pharmacist’s son, dies and is so distraught that he nearly sends out a poisoned prescription to a child. George intervenes and halts the delivery—here’s to getting slapped across the face for saving someone.

You fall in love with and marry a beautiful woman and want to take a fabulous honeymoon after saving all your money—here’s the Great Depression and a run on the banks. Cough up your last cent, George!

In this film, people keep making mistakes and George Bailey keeps rescuing them. And for his commitment to humankind, he’s continually beaten down. Are we shocked he’s on a bridge contemplating ending it all when his uncle loses $8,000 of his business’s money and he’s being investigated for fraud?

Nope.

But stories are blueprints. Look at them like maps with symbolic clues.

Not everything you see and hear in life should be taken literally. What do the clues reveal?

In George Bailey’s case, he keeps falling into the waters of his unconscious. He falls into the frozen pond to save his brother. He falls into the school’s swimming pool while dancing with Mary. And he gets soaked on his way home after giving all his money away during the bank run. 

Why?

Because the dude keeps missing the point!

The universe is telling him, “Stop trying to play the hero, George. You’re on a self-congratulatory, control trip. Life isn’t just about you doing heroic things. It’s about others, too.”

Until you get that concept, life’s gonna feel all washed up.

Your life is a collaborative action. You need people.

I had to figure out this lesson, too.

At 42, I started attending Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families.

I also had to question my chronic pain and ask myself if it was some sort of rejection of motherhood due to my childhood.

This is some deep stuff that won’t be worked out in a blog post.

But it is a conversation I’m starting to have with myself and with others. And having that kind of curiosity gives my brain something to analyze. It doesn’t just stew.

While I don’t feel suicidal right now—not even metaphorically, I do think there is a welling up of anger and hurt that I’ve never fully addressed. And I can see those emotions as archetypes that want to kill off certain parts of myself. The rebellious parts.

It may feel contradictory, but we must turn toward our emotions if we ever want to figure out how to accurately use them in our lives. Something significant happens when we decide to move toward the pain and see it as a useful tool.

Think about those who write sad poetry or sing the blues. These creative endeavors have been shown to benefit depressed people, not make them more depressed.

The only way out is the way through.

That doesn’t mean moving towards a literal suicide. 

It means identifying the death metaphor in your life and working your way towards creatively being reborn. Through writing or other imaginative art forms. Or for some of us, it means joining a community where others will depend upon us.

Don’t be alone for the holidays.

Go out into the world.

Be curious.

Talk about your horrible thoughts. Write them down.

Seek out professional help or a mental health support group.

Make art.

Sign up for a service commitment and help others.

Ask yourself what parts of your life need to end.

Turn your suicidal ideations into something useful. You can put them to work for you.

I’m not immune to these feelings. Pain has made me vulnerable, too. But my willingness to see pain and suicide as metaphors for my bigger life transitions has been instrumental in allowing me to deal with my chronic illness differently.

We must all revise how we interact with our suicidal feelings.

Don’t want to talk about politics at your holiday gathering. Start the suicide conversation instead.

Ask “Do you think more people consider suicide during the holidays? Have you ever felt suicidal? How can you see suicide as a metaphor? How do you experience little deaths each day? Can you picture moving through those little deaths toward a more hopeful future?”

Uncle Morty may spit out his soup, but at least it won’t be a boring dinner. And he may just benefit from the conversation whether he wants to admit it or not.