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Yesterday, I discovered that awful article and talked about it. I made a point to talk about what I saw, and what I was made to feel, by all the other people discussing it and writing about it because those words affected me much more than the words of some silly mumper who many are now referring to as a sociopath.
After I posted yesterday's entry, I found out that a couple of people reached out via phone (here and here) because they didn't want to take what she said at face value. They wanted to find out if there was some missing context that was not apparent from the writer given that her writing style is meant to be provoking - that's how she makes her money after all. Overall, her response in those interviews, although she seems to be making some attempt to explain what she was trying to say (and failed to do, as we can all attest) and the feelings she wished to convey to the reader, seemed to vibrate an "it's still all about ME" intensity that had me squinting my eyes. She's really not coming across as a sociopath, she's displaying narcissism, maybe, cluelessness and self-centeredness, definitely.
What got me up out of bed this morning -I'd gotten back in for an early morning nap after having gorge-watching the entire 8-episode first season of that new show Humans on Amazon until 1am and having just taken the dogs out for their early morning stroll; this made me deny myself that nap just after I got comfortable- were the thoughts about how some of my friends were impacted SO much by the original article and some extreme levels of negativity that they'd been encountering recently that they were having that viral message pumping through their brains "The World Would Be Better Off Without Me."
First off. Suicidal ideation is no joke. Although this is my own ramble of a thought experiment about how I'm perceiving the spread of suicidal ideation and suicide itself through a community... I really do believe it's a brain worm of the first order that can tunnel in and warp every sensory input and thought/feeling output into a twisted dark mirror-world presentation. It reminds me of those caterpillars who are forced by parasitoid wasps to carb load to strengthen the parasitoid and weaken the host, until the parasitoid consumes the host in full. Or those other poor caterpillars that are forced by a virus to climb trees so that they die, liquefy, and aerosolize a release millions of infective virus particles thereby allowing the virus to get on with the next phase of its own life cycle.
In humans, suicidal ideation could be in some ways like a cold sore virus. There would be an initial infection (typically by exposure to trauma that may involve witnessing another person's suicide in some way) that may or may not result in an immediate display of symptoms - which would be that newly infected person beginning to have active suicidal ideation. What it otherwise could result in is an infection that sits dormant in a person's system waiting for its initializing signal. That signal is significant stress or trauma, which may or may not be concommitant to depression and anxiety, though the latter work to amplify that signal to such a degree that the ideation is easier to take hold and influence a person.
What I'm trying to say is that, maybe there's a reason why we see a single suicide having a domino effect in a community, which, depending on how far the viral news has spread, could be contained within a small town, a large city, a country, or the whole world. And that effect isn't just limited to teens - though it may be seen at higher rates there because of the incomplete control mechanisms and higher lack of impulse control that are typically seen in teens coupled with the volatility of their hormonal drives - it is something that occurs with adults, too. I know this because there were people out there who were triggered by this article and who had "bad thoughts" initialized. Some fought against it and declared "NOT ME!" while going to great lengths to describe why not, and some went through a downward spiral that (I hope) was diverted by the outpouring of love and support to those most vulnerable people. There have been studies of this supposedly contagious behavior. In today's interconnected world, suicide has the ability to reach epidemic proportions. When millions of people watch a youtube video of someone's spiral into ideation, that the viewer knows resulted in a successful completion, those millions put themselves and their loved ones at risk.
The biggest and most disruptive thought, especially given the context of that original article and the selfish perspective of the writer of that article, that started this whole string of ideas in my head... The thought was that when people are saying "The World Is Better Off Without Me" they are actually in so much pain, in such a state of confusion and misery, that they are using that phrase to disguise to themselves that what they are really saying is "I WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF IT WOULD ALL JUST END NOW BECAUSE THIS SHIT LIFE IS MISERABLE AND I DON'T FEEL LIKE I HAVE THE STRENGTH TO DEAL WITH IT ANY MORE."
First, I don't think it is the case that a person would be better off. For all the usual laundry list of reasons that are spouted. Further, unless someone has isolated themselves so much that they have excluded all human contact, there are many, many people who would be affected by a successful suicide, and it always, always results in their surrounding community of friends/family/coworkers (of the people who they don't even know that they are affecting every time they interact with them in daily life) being worse off for having experienced the aftermath of a person's decision to suicide.
Don't listen to that inner virus, don't listen to the lies it is telling you. None of us would be better off, ever.
After I posted yesterday's entry, I found out that a couple of people reached out via phone (here and here) because they didn't want to take what she said at face value. They wanted to find out if there was some missing context that was not apparent from the writer given that her writing style is meant to be provoking - that's how she makes her money after all. Overall, her response in those interviews, although she seems to be making some attempt to explain what she was trying to say (and failed to do, as we can all attest) and the feelings she wished to convey to the reader, seemed to vibrate an "it's still all about ME" intensity that had me squinting my eyes. She's really not coming across as a sociopath, she's displaying narcissism, maybe, cluelessness and self-centeredness, definitely.
What got me up out of bed this morning -I'd gotten back in for an early morning nap after having gorge-watching the entire 8-episode first season of that new show Humans on Amazon until 1am and having just taken the dogs out for their early morning stroll; this made me deny myself that nap just after I got comfortable- were the thoughts about how some of my friends were impacted SO much by the original article and some extreme levels of negativity that they'd been encountering recently that they were having that viral message pumping through their brains "The World Would Be Better Off Without Me."
First off. Suicidal ideation is no joke. Although this is my own ramble of a thought experiment about how I'm perceiving the spread of suicidal ideation and suicide itself through a community... I really do believe it's a brain worm of the first order that can tunnel in and warp every sensory input and thought/feeling output into a twisted dark mirror-world presentation. It reminds me of those caterpillars who are forced by parasitoid wasps to carb load to strengthen the parasitoid and weaken the host, until the parasitoid consumes the host in full. Or those other poor caterpillars that are forced by a virus to climb trees so that they die, liquefy, and aerosolize a release millions of infective virus particles thereby allowing the virus to get on with the next phase of its own life cycle.
In humans, suicidal ideation could be in some ways like a cold sore virus. There would be an initial infection (typically by exposure to trauma that may involve witnessing another person's suicide in some way) that may or may not result in an immediate display of symptoms - which would be that newly infected person beginning to have active suicidal ideation. What it otherwise could result in is an infection that sits dormant in a person's system waiting for its initializing signal. That signal is significant stress or trauma, which may or may not be concommitant to depression and anxiety, though the latter work to amplify that signal to such a degree that the ideation is easier to take hold and influence a person.
What I'm trying to say is that, maybe there's a reason why we see a single suicide having a domino effect in a community, which, depending on how far the viral news has spread, could be contained within a small town, a large city, a country, or the whole world. And that effect isn't just limited to teens - though it may be seen at higher rates there because of the incomplete control mechanisms and higher lack of impulse control that are typically seen in teens coupled with the volatility of their hormonal drives - it is something that occurs with adults, too. I know this because there were people out there who were triggered by this article and who had "bad thoughts" initialized. Some fought against it and declared "NOT ME!" while going to great lengths to describe why not, and some went through a downward spiral that (I hope) was diverted by the outpouring of love and support to those most vulnerable people. There have been studies of this supposedly contagious behavior. In today's interconnected world, suicide has the ability to reach epidemic proportions. When millions of people watch a youtube video of someone's spiral into ideation, that the viewer knows resulted in a successful completion, those millions put themselves and their loved ones at risk.
The biggest and most disruptive thought, especially given the context of that original article and the selfish perspective of the writer of that article, that started this whole string of ideas in my head... The thought was that when people are saying "The World Is Better Off Without Me" they are actually in so much pain, in such a state of confusion and misery, that they are using that phrase to disguise to themselves that what they are really saying is "I WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF IT WOULD ALL JUST END NOW BECAUSE THIS SHIT LIFE IS MISERABLE AND I DON'T FEEL LIKE I HAVE THE STRENGTH TO DEAL WITH IT ANY MORE."
First, I don't think it is the case that a person would be better off. For all the usual laundry list of reasons that are spouted. Further, unless someone has isolated themselves so much that they have excluded all human contact, there are many, many people who would be affected by a successful suicide, and it always, always results in their surrounding community of friends/family/coworkers (of the people who they don't even know that they are affecting every time they interact with them in daily life) being worse off for having experienced the aftermath of a person's decision to suicide.
Don't listen to that inner virus, don't listen to the lies it is telling you. None of us would be better off, ever.
