What are some anti-suicide platitudes that really grind your gears.

[Drwhat]

We've all heard them, "its a permanent solution to a temporary problem", "suicide doesnt take away the pain it just transfers it to someone else", Im curious what other phrases you've heard from others, and which ones you find the most frustrating.

 

[Prism]

Statements like "depression is all in your head" when there are external factors that influence it which cannot be gotten rid of with a simple change in mindset.

 

[Namelesa]

"Suicide is selfish!" - you are selfish too for wanting me to stay here and suffer
"Suicide is the easy way out!" - how about you do it and see how "easy" it is
"Life is beautiful!" - that's your opinion of it and I am allowed to have a different one to it

 

[SilentSadness]

The worst platitude for me is when people say a lot of positive stuff and then leave you to decay, as if you are a ghost. After all, the purpose of all the platitudes is to avoid issues, avoid those suffering, and trample over them to get back to their own life. People just don't care about others, they never have. As such, the true platitude is the indifference and apathy underneath their hollow words.

 

[yaa]

We've all heard them, "its a permanent solution to a temporary problem", "suicide doesnt take away the pain it just transfers it to someone else", Im curious what other phrases you've heard from others, and which ones you find the most frustrating.

Life definitely is a temporary problem we didn't ask for. They'll also say stuff like," you're going to hell" or they used to "feel the same way but then they got over it so why can't we?" Baloney, it's like just because you have shitty standards and can accept them doesn't mean you can force others to do the same..

 

[ShatteredSerenity]

"There is hope" - I've lived through too much shit for hope, hope is dead to me.

"You are not alone" - No, I AM alone in the ways that matter to me, and chatting with a stranger won't change that.

 

[Pluto]

 

[Overwhelmed52]

"It will get better." Yeah, well it's bad now. I want to be able to have a peaceful option in case it gets unbearable. And I want to be trusted to know my own feelings.

 

[RainyDaysGrapefruit]

"But death is more horrible than torture!!" (Or similar variants) are the sort of common theme I hear a lot. People either haven't experienced these things, or perhaps just believe suffering is better than dying because "It'll all work out in the end". What kind of fairytale world do these people live in? If they cared that much about me living, maybe they shouldn't have left me as a mentally rotting corpse.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

All of them. Basically all of them.

 

[HenryHenriksen_6E]

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" is always a funny one, because I could just counter with: "Suicide is a permanent solution to a permanent barrage of temporary problems."

 

[dust-in-the-wind]

So many have it worse than you.
Stop being so self centered.

 

[areyousafe??]

"When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind"

 

[divinemistress36]

"Pain might follow you into the afterlife" um no pain is caused by the brain

 

[mysideofthemountain]

This isn't a platitude so much as a tactic I guess? I have a history of being abused and the concomitant trauma. I also am just, generally, a giant failure. This is despite the fact that I have tried really hard to be successful. I just fail.

And so whenever I'm feeling suicidal because of my failures people will tell me I'm setting unreasonable goals for myself or it's just trauma coming back. I don't like that. It feels really dismissive

 

[Jon Arbuckle]

"you should always have hope that things can/will get better!" go fuck yourself.

 

[Alexei_Kirillov]

"You are loved" and its variants. First of all, if someone does feel unloved, just stating the contrary has absolutely no effect, especially when it's from a stranger. Secondly, even if that were true, it has little bearing on the question of whether it's in an individual's best interest to live or to die. I personally lean towards negative utilitarianism so when I love someone, my priority is to reduce their suffering, and if CTB is the best (or only) way to achieve that, then I respect that.

 

[Regen]

Suicide is cowardly.

You don't kill yourself because of money/love/your job (well, the trauma behind it is deeper).

He killed himself, but yesterday he was so happy, how can that be?

Suicide is easy.

There were no signs before (but in 9/10 cases there were, but no one reacted to them).

There is always another solution.

 

[ScaredOfMachines]

"But you'll end up in hell! " "Suicide is just taking the easy way out!" Are ones I could go without hearing ever again. Especially the first one, thanks to growing up Catholic. The second's just people showing they have no idea how much thought and effort really goes into something like this.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

"Suicide is easy to do" and "those who really want to die will find a way to die, otherwise they want to live". These two anti suicide sentiments really piss me off because they assume that suicide is so easy to do whilst they all go out of their way to ensure that suicide is incredibly difficult to do. We all have to kill ourselves alone (because assisting somebody in suicide is a crime) whilst the backs of the security guards (which is basically everybody) is turned and, on top of that, we have to deal with SI caused by the attempt in the first place. Also, these people who say shit like this are the same ones who advocate for banning peaceful methods like nembutal or the sacro pod. Maybe suicide would be easy to do if we were allowed access to nembutal but this isn't the case in reality. Due to all of these factors, I'd argue that suicide is actually the most difficult thing to do. It gets even more difficult for certain individuals who are hindered to ctb either due to their body restricting them (such as being paraplegic) or their personal circumstances restricting them (such as living under strict and controlling parents) or both.

"Life is a gift" is also annoying because I don't see anything beautiful or nice about life. Life itself is run on animals brutally murdering each other for food. How the hell am I supposed to see that as a gift!? I also hate any other sentiment adjacent to this that talks about how beautiful life is.

I basically hate all of them but the ones I hate the most are the ones that talk about how easy suicide is to do or the ones that talk about how beautiful life is.

"You are loved" and its variants. First of all, if someone does feel unloved, just stating the contrary has absolutely no effect, especially when it's from a stranger. Secondly, even if that were true, it has little bearing on the question of whether it's in an individual's best interest to live or to die. I personally lean towards negative utilitarianism so when I love someone, my priority is to reduce their suffering, and if CTB is the best (or only) way to achieve that, then I respect that.

Exactly. A similar sort of logic can be applied to "you matter" or "you are enough". I have never once thought that I want to die because I don't matter, quite the contrary, I want to die earlier because I do matter. My suffering and pain matters to me and that's why I want it to cease as early as possible. I get that the reason why they say this is because most suicidal people hate themselves and don't see themselves as being worthy enough for life but I'm the opposite. I don't hate myself, I hate existence. The part that you wrote about negative utilitarianism is so good. I wish somebody loved me in a negative utilitarian way but of course that's impossible in reality as assisting somebody with suicide is a crime

 

[FuneralCry]

The fact that death is permanent is exactly why it appeals to me, existence for me is the temporary problem because after all everything will be forgotten about in death eventually but this existence can continue for so long with no limit as to how much one can suffer just for them to be tortured by old age which is terrifying to me. Personally I wish for a permanent solution to what I see as the ultimate problem which is existence itself, to me existence just feels like a terrible mistake that just causes so much suffering all for the sake of it, I find it deeply undesirable to exist at all, I'd always prefer to not exist and suicide would be suffering prevention for me, non-existence is the only relief for me but more than anything I wish I never suffered, I wish I was never burdened with this cruel, futile existence.

 

[KillingPain267]

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself" what does "feeling sorry for myself" even mean!!??

 

[AnderDethsky]

"You just don't love yourself" is probably the most disgusting and irritating phrase to me that has ever been spat out by a pro-lifer. If it's relatively easy to come up with a laconic counter-response to something else.

For example:
Pro-life: It's a temporary problem
Counter: Life is really temporary

Then this phrase just... It just terribly amazes me with its stupidity, vagueness and total lack of understanding. Tell me, how the fuck can anyone not love themselves? Someone who spews something like this really believes in the holiness of the very fact of being alive, that depriving oneself of such "pleasure" can only be harmful, and if a person intentionally harms himself, then he doesn't love himself.

Of course, I can guess where the roots of this saying come from. If we assume that some person takes care of himself, has a healthy lifestyle and strives at all costs for self-development, someone on an intuitive level can try to characterize him as someone who loves himself. But a person who drinks, smokes, eats fast food and plays games and watches movies/anime instead of working/studying, then they say he doesn't love himself, continuing this logic

But here's the truth of life, all living things are designed in such a way that they never consciously strive to harm themselves, at least they never think that they are harming themselves. A person who doesn't take care of himself and has bad habits, loves himself just as much as the first one and acts for his own benefit - satisfies his needs and doesn't burden himself with what he doesn't need. And of course it's the same with suicides. No one kills themselves because they want to make things worse for themselves, but just the opposite, they do it because of the relief and unbearability of further life. It's just that some people are not able to think in such categories as "life that is worse than death" for them death will always be worse than any monstrous life, such as my parents, for example, and all of the above is why I recently had a quarrel with them the other day.

 

[lamy2006]

"If they want to die so much, why are they still alive? They must want to live"
- my friend said that to me once, i wanted to strangle him
At the time, I didn't know how to put into words the utter anger that statement caused me to feel.

 

[Drwhat]

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" is always a funny one, because I could just counter with: "Suicide is a permanent solution to a permanent barrage of temporary problems."

honestly thats a really good response, I might have to start using that.

 

[Alexei_Kirillov]

"If they want to die so much, why are they still alive? They must want to live"
- my friend said that to me once, i wanted to strangle him
At the time, I didn't know how to put into words the utter anger that statement caused me to feel.

This bothers me to no end too. For some reason they can't comprehend that "fear of pain/death" and "desire for life" are two distinct things.

"Suicide is easy to do" and "those who really want to die will find a way to die, otherwise they want to live". These two anti suicide sentiments really piss me off because they assume that suicide is so easy to do whilst they all go out of their way to ensure that suicide is incredibly difficult to do. We all have to kill ourselves alone (because assisting somebody in suicide is a crime) whilst the backs of the security guards (which is basically everybody) is turned and, on top of that, we have to deal with SI caused by the attempt in the first place. Also, these people who say shit like this are the same ones who advocate for banning peaceful methods like nembutal or the sacro pod. Maybe suicide would be easy to do if we were allowed access to nembutal but this isn't the case in reality. Due to all of these factors, I'd argue that suicide is actually the most difficult thing to do. It gets even more difficult for certain individuals who are hindered to ctb either due to their body restricting them (such as being paraplegic) or their personal circumstances restricting them (such as living under strict and controlling parents) or both.

Literally just had a conversation with my older brother where he claimed that there are a "million ways" to kill yourself, including "completely painless" ways, therefore anyone who is still alive is alive because they want to be. I was utterly gobsmacked by his ignorance. But I had to temper myself and give him some grace: before I started seriously considering CTB, I thought it was easy too. You really only come to understand just how difficult it is when you start going through the motions of making it a reality.

 

[Drwhat]

Literally just had a conversation with my older brother where he claimed that there are a "million ways" to kill yourself, including "completely painless" ways, therefore anyone who is still alive is alive because they want to be. I was utterly gobsmacked by his ignorance. But I had to temper myself and give him some grace: before I started seriously considering CTB, I thought it was easy too. You really only come to understand just how difficult it is when you start going through the motions of making it a reality.

Honestly I feel this, I remember my first attempt was pretty hard, the thoughts were overwhelming, I tried to overdoes and I just sat on my bed thinking "fuck this is it", not sure if I had made a mistake of something but the older I've gotten the more I've kind of come to terms with it if that makes sense.

 

[imnotsurewhy]

This whole perception that is impulsive, that sucidal people arent in "good state of mind" to decide also i could do without the world needs you Ok i m great i know i m great doesnt mean the word is

 

[KillingPain267]

"You just don't love yourself" is probably the most disgusting and irritating phrase to me that has ever been spat out by a pro-lifer. If it's relatively easy to come up with a laconic counter-response to something else.

For example:
Pro-life: It's a temporary problem
Counter: Life is really temporary

Then this phrase just... It just terribly amazes me with its stupidity, vagueness and total lack of understanding. Tell me, how the fuck can anyone not love themselves? Someone who spews something like this really believes in the holiness of the very fact of being alive, that depriving oneself of such "pleasure" can only be harmful, and if a person intentionally harms himself, then he doesn't love himself.

Of course, I can guess where the roots of this saying come from. If we assume that some person takes care of himself, has a healthy lifestyle and strives at all costs for self-development, someone on an intuitive level can try to characterize him as someone who loves himself. But a person who drinks, smokes, eats fast food and plays games and watches movies/anime instead of working/studying, then they say he doesn't love himself, continuing this logic

But here's the truth of life, all living things are designed in such a way that they never consciously strive to harm themselves, at least they never think that they are harming themselves. A person who doesn't take care of himself and has bad habits, loves himself just as much as the first one and acts for his own benefit - satisfies his needs and doesn't burden himself with what he doesn't need. And of course it's the same with suicides. No one kills themselves because they want to make things worse for themselves, but just the opposite, they do it because of the relief and unbearability of further life. It's just that some people are not able to think in such categories as "life that is worse than death" for them death will always be worse than any monstrous life, such as my parents, for example, and all of the above is why I recently had a quarrel with them the other day.

Exactly! Good I'm not the only one who gets this. You sir, are smart. Everyone indeed already loves themselves by default. What this world needs is not MORE self-love but more other-love, or loving neighbour.

The person taking care of their health loves themselves, but so does the one eating junk food. Because both are self-serving, one is serving well-being long term, and the other serves short term pleasure. I'd say even the self-harmer loves a part of themselves over another part (psychological well-being versus physical well-being).

A person who truly hates themselves would be revelling when the body and mind suffers, in total schadenfreude.

 

[CinerateX]

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" is always a funny one, because I could just counter with: "Suicide is a permanent solution to a permanent barrage of temporary problems."

This one really bothers me, honestly. Like, there are a number of temporary problems that we deal with with permanent solutions. And it's just, why are we being so specific about this one problem?