I've written twice before about
suicide, and a new 'advice
column' in Salon.com has provoked me to write about it again. The
gist of my earlier articles:
- Depression
is a 'natural' consequence of stress, and, as the illustration
above shows, it is somewhat self-reinforcing: our DNA programs us, in situations of intense or chronic stress, to
flight or flee, and if neither of those works, to shut down, withdraw,
give up -- and suicide is one manifestation of shutting down and giving
up;
- If you haven't lived
with the Noonday Demon, you can't possibly know what it's like, and
you can't possibly know how it can lead someone to take their own life;
and
- Moral
judgement of those who commit suicide is repugnant -- no one has
the right to tell another human being that their personal decision to
terminate their own life is 'cowardly', 'irresponsible', 'lazy',
"petulant', 'immature', 'self-pitying' 'self-indulgent', 'murderous',
or 'cynical and cruel'. To call someone who commits suicide a 'self-murderer' is
indistinguishable from and as morally reprehensible and outrageous as
calling a woman who terminates an unwanted pregnancy a 'baby murderer'.
So you will probably not be surprised to learn that I was horrified to
hear Salon 'advice columnist' Cary Tennis encourage a survivor of a friend's suicide to hate and blame the one who took his own
anguished life. Hate-mongering offends me at the best of times, and to
see it espoused against those suffering a dreadful and incapacitating
illness is disturbing. Here are two especially offensive excerpts:
Sentimentalizing
suicide only encourages others who, weak-minded, pained, lacking the
ability to see how foolish and wrong it is, might succeed all too well
in their feeble attempts.
When they go by suicide, they leave us in an insult of dust.
What fucking gall, Mr. Tennis -- and
such cruel and inflammatory language. Those who commit suicide are not
weak-minded, and if this 'advice columnist' had the faintest inkling
what it is like to live with suicidal depression he would know better.
And who the hell does he think he is to judge the actions of someone he
has never met as 'foolish and wrong'?
Mr. Tennis should also know that suicide is almost never an 'insult' to
anyone. It is an act of desperation, usually after years of
unimaginable suffering, to escape a living hell that the victim -- yes,
victim -- can no longer bear. It usually has nothing to do with anyone else, so the last thing it is is an insult to others.
To counsel people, especially people in pain after an unexpected and
shocking loss, to hate and blame the deceased is an affront to human
dignity, an abuse of trust, and an offense to the memory of someone who
was a victim, not a 'murderer'.
There is a perverse character flaw in some people to always assuage
grief by transferring it to anger and blame. Grief is internal, and it
can eat you alive. Anger and blame are externally focused. They are
much easier emotions to handle. And in some cases -- like rechanneling
the grief over 9/11 into anger at Osama bin Ladin -- such transferance
is quite rational. But although the exploitative 'vengeance' religions
would have you believe otherwise, when people suffer and die there is
often no one to blame, no one to get angry at. And reaching closure,
like dealing with grief, is an internal process. It is about personally
coming to grips with loss, with the realization that the toxic 'what
might have been' is irrelevant, a fiction, closed.
It is a slow, painful healing process. And it is a process best
undertaken honestly. Using some cheap trick like transferring the pain
to anger and blame of a phony straw man merely perverts and delays the
process, and stirs up inappropriate emotions that can only confuse and
inflame, not heal.
Some advice, we're better off without.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
