Part of being trauma informed is understanding that trauma survivors often use suicidal thoughts as a coping tool.
If you haven’t noticed, the world sometimes freaks out if we express thoughts of suicide.
Many people reading this have had the experience of expressing such thoughts, and a healthcare provider (or a family member, or a friend) react…poorly.
It’s not necessarily their fault. All they hear is what they hear: that we’re possibly a step closer to ending our own life.
It’s hard to explain to someone not in our head, let alone someone who hasn’t experienced complex trauma, that the role suicidal thoughts play in our journey can be complex.
Do suicidal thoughts mean that there might be a desire to die? Of course.
But can they mean a lot of things other than, or in addition to, that? Yes.
To live with complex trauma is often to live in pain.
That pain is almost always emotional, and not infrequently physical as well.
It’s very frequently pan we can’t just lay down or take a break from. Sometimes it’s not even pain we can adequately distract ourselves from.
Trauma survivors are used to getting told versions of, look, you wouldn’t be in such pain if you weren’t FOCUSING on it all the time.
The problem with that is, trauma survivors aren’t making a “choice” to “focus” on their pain. (If only we HAD such a choice, am I right?)
For many trauma survivors there’s quite often literally NO escape from the emotional and physical pain of post traumatic stress— especially in early recovery.
The pain of our trauma traps us. Corners us. Does not give us an out.
Suicidal thoughts are often that out— mentally and emotionally, anyway.
Some people reading this might be familiar with some diets that recommend discipline on six days a week— but one “cheat day” per week, on which the dieter gets to eat anything they want, particularly the things they denied themselves the rest of the week.
The reason diet “cheat days” often work is, fantasizing about that “cheat day” can provide a dieter with the focus to power through the “discipline” days— with the promise of something sweet ahead, if the dieter just hangs in.
Suicidal ideation can kind of work in the same way for trauma survivors.
We might have a perfectly awful time carrying on day to day, when there is no end to our pain in sight.
When we feel trapped, cornered, forced to carry on, to keep living despite the enormous pain we’re in, we can REALLY go down the rabbit hole of despair.
But if we have a potential “out”— the possibility of suicide— that transforms our “have to” to a “choose to” situation.
We’re no longer being FORCED to endure the pain we’re in— we’re now CHOOSING to stay alive and work toward healing, because we DO have an alternative.
All of this might sound bizarre to someone who has never experienced trauma or suicidal ideation.
I guarantee I’m going to get at least someone yelling at me for this blog, to the tune of, “you’re not discouraging suicide strongly enough.”
To be clear: I would strongly, strongly prefer that everybody reading these words right now stay alive.
I think everybody reading these words right now has realistic reasons to believe that life, and they, will get better. I really do.
But if we’re going to realistically deal with trauma OR suicidal ideation, we need to understand the function that suicidal ideation often plays in the sh*t show that is complex trauma.
At least sometimes— if not often— we don’t fantasize about suicide because we want to die. No entirely, anyway.
Sometimes— maybe often— we fantasize about suicide because it seems to give us OPTIONS— and that freedom might just give us enough wiggle room to keep going today.
Use Your Damn Skills 