Posted by toojane on February 7, 2007, at 13:48:17
In reply to Re: Survivors of suicide **triggers***************, posted by cubic_me on February 7, 2007, at 12:19:09
I wanted to make a point about calling people who commit suicide selfish...
It is impossible to measure pain. But what if the pain a survivor feels is but a fraction of the pain the suicidal person does. Try to imagine the suicidal person is in ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more pain.
Sit with that thought for a minute.
This agony goes on relentlessly and they believe it is endless. You may believe pain is temporary but they don’t. That is not their experience.
(Some believe that despair will end if you only wait and/or get treatment but that is not always the case. There is no way to know when or even if a person's pain will end. If you truly think that ALL pain is fleeting, then you must also think that your own pain as a survivor is only temporary).
Do you expect them to endure this pain X 1000 they believe, and experience, as lasting forever in order to spare you one tenth of the pain, pain you believe will end?
If your answer is yes, I ask you to look very hard at who you are calling selfish.
(Of course, the converse could be true. The survivor’s pain could be greater. There is no way to measure pain and because it is not possible to know whose pain is worse, you cannot even hope to imagine the depths of despair the suicidal person finds themselves unable to bear).
poster:toojane
thread:730369
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070203/msgs/730809.html