Suidide Prevention & Intervention

This is not my Crisis Intervention & Navigation page. If you are in crisis go here. If you are seeking to learn more about my practice with suicide to better understand my capacity to provide care to you or a loved one, please read on. 

I think suicidality has been my longest running interest in this field. Most providers have this thing where they freak out around this topic and safety plan to the nines. I literally do not understand this topic being stigmatized by day to day people and providers day to day. I have some choice words to share and I hope you might listen. If you only read to here, know this is the least taboo topic in my room. 

I don't need an outside metaphor to talk about suffering. I suffer. I am in pain always. I am uncomfortable always. I have urges I don't want always. I have bodily symptoms of anxiety, panic, disgust, hunger, or whatever else my nervous system throws at me. I have had intense urges to do things that would result in my death. I am still here.

None of that is my focus, though. I am not interested in my tragedy or turning suffering into a grand spiritual hoo-ha. I am a disabled man and I live a disabled life. Pain, unceasing discomfort, and physical friction are simply the baseline conditions I operate within. When you sit across from me drowning in the urge to end your life, I do not recoil, because living beside unendurable friction is not a theoretical concept to me. It is just daily reality.

Suicide is driven by a collection of intense internal urges that reach a tipping point and can no longer be regulated. This is no different than seeing red when you are angry; the body experiences an overwhelming urge to end itself to stop the agony. The theory tells us that thwarted belongingness, feeling like an unbearable burden, and being desensitized to physical pain are the major precursors to suicidal ideation. When you feel like you do not belong and that your existence is purely a weight on the people around you, wanting an exit makes complete sense.

Simply mentioning suicidal thoughts or dark impulses in my room is not going to automatically cause me to make you sign an agreement or report you to the state. Those are merely tools that exist to protect providers from liability, not to hold a human being in pain. 

Suicidal ideation is transient and time-bound. Riding out the storm for an hour in a space that can contain you and not tie you down can be pretty valuable in those moments.

I have formal training in suicidality going back to 2017. I have some odd 40+ hours of formal suicidality trainings, I have written 40+ pages of essays on school suicide prevention, program development and audits, and choice surrounding death globally, and I am competent at crisis and de-escalation work. That said, my formal education sounds like a joke to me when it comes to the real-world application of sitting in a room with a human in agony. Suicide prevention is something I actually practice, not just a pretty line on a calling card. Intervention is its own beast; you certainly do not say you can ride it when you cannot.