UN/Broken - Day 26
What Drives Suicide?
What drives suicide? What gets inside of a person that leads them to carry out a plan to end their life? What part of the person takes over and pushes for this result?
In my experience, three basic scenarios drive a person toward suicide: loss of purpose, loss of hope, and when one part of the person is trying to prevent another person from harming someone else.
When a person loses their purpose for living, they feel they are no longer needed. Sometimes, they come to believe that they are making things worse for those around them, which drives them to conclude that the world would be a better place if they were gone.
Most of the time when someone is struggling with thoughts of ending their life, they are in severe physical or emotional pain. When they’ve tried everything they know yet nothing eases their pain, they tend to give up. It’s not so much that they desire to be dead; they’ve just lost all hope of ending their pain in any other way.
Sometimes, the individual is convinced that ending their life is the only way to prevent another angry part of themself from harming someone they hate. I’ve seen cases where the person had been horribly wronged by someone, and a part of that person was pushing hard for vengeance. This can trigger another part of the person to push to end their life to prevent the vengeful part from carrying out his vengeance.
So, if we are called to partner with God in preventing those we care about from ending their lives, we need to tune in to their loss of purpose and/or loss of hope and pay attention to their possible desire for vengeance. This will require us to know one another well enough to notice these factors in their lives, and it will need us to care enough to ask the tough questions in a caring way.
JOURNAL:
In my experience, three basic scenarios drive a person toward suicide: loss of purpose, loss of hope, and when one part of the person is trying to prevent another person from harming someone else.
When a person loses their purpose for living, they feel they are no longer needed. Sometimes, they come to believe that they are making things worse for those around them, which drives them to conclude that the world would be a better place if they were gone.
Most of the time when someone is struggling with thoughts of ending their life, they are in severe physical or emotional pain. When they’ve tried everything they know yet nothing eases their pain, they tend to give up. It’s not so much that they desire to be dead; they’ve just lost all hope of ending their pain in any other way.
Sometimes, the individual is convinced that ending their life is the only way to prevent another angry part of themself from harming someone they hate. I’ve seen cases where the person had been horribly wronged by someone, and a part of that person was pushing hard for vengeance. This can trigger another part of the person to push to end their life to prevent the vengeful part from carrying out his vengeance.
So, if we are called to partner with God in preventing those we care about from ending their lives, we need to tune in to their loss of purpose and/or loss of hope and pay attention to their possible desire for vengeance. This will require us to know one another well enough to notice these factors in their lives, and it will need us to care enough to ask the tough questions in a caring way.
JOURNAL:
- Do you have a strong sense of purpose for your life? What would it be if you put your sense of purpose into a one-sentence personal life mission statement?
- What are the three things you most hope for in life? And why is each of them important to you at this point in your life?
- When you think about those things you hope for, what is the foundation for your hope?
By Pastor Paddy McCoy
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