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Many people experience passing thoughts of suicide, and some people act on them. The thoughts and fantasies of self-imposed death may come from a normal protective Guardian personality subself. It is dedicated to reducing or ending ex-treme inner pain - first to all Inner Children, and then to other subselves and the host person.. Lower levels of stress and despair usually don't activate this subself. When active, it proposes the ultimate release from unbearable agony and hopeless-ness, when all other options seem worthless. Most (all?) other subselves want to live, and will act to block or discount this subself's behaviors. A common manifes-tation of this primal inner conflict is suicide attempts that "fail." Usually some other subselves like the Catastrophizer, Shamed Child, Guilty Child, Inner Critic, Perfectionist, Saboteur, and Pessimist promote the perception that there are no other viable alternatives. An exception is when the host person has an incurable, progressive, fatal disease and nothing to hope for. Because the urge to reduce extreme current physical and/or emotional agony is visceral, not rational, trying to "reason" with a person controlled by the Suicidal subself is often disrespectful and pointless. A useful option is to seek the help of non-profit organizations like Compassion and Choices, and/or a local suicide hot line." Another is to compassionately explore the probable real impacts of suicide on people the host person cares the most about. Project 1 in this non-profit Web site offers effective ways to meet and harmonize personality subselves. more detail / slides / Project-1 guidebook & links / skeptical? / Q&A / close |
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