How to Keep from Killing Yourself

Very few people really want to kill themselves. Usually, it is a matter of wanting the pain to go away. Sometimes it is difficult to see beyond the pain. In fact, it may seem logical or appropriate to take one’s life. But under other circumstances and at other times this would not be in your thoughts.

Here is a list of suggestions that you can use to help focus back on the mainstream of life. It also includes hope that you will be able to separate yourself from your burden. Your problems are real and so are you! Make them separate in your thoughts. Please try these ideas to keep from killing yourself.

1.  Allow yourself to have a say about things. Learn appropriate ways to voice your opinion and be honest enough to say what you need. If people refuse to hear, it is their loss!
2. Put as many roadblocks between yourself and the opportunity of suicide as you can. Make it difficult for yourself to do it. Be rid of weapons, pills, etc. that you could use when vulnerable. Put distance between you and the act so that you lose interest. Don’t set yourself up.
3. Listen to your own body’s compliance. You may actually be sick, or your body may be a good thermometer of how you are coping with stress and anxiety. Learn biofeedback methods to control body discomfort. People do get sick and you may be reacting quite normally. When your body is telling you that you  are coping well, recognize what you are doing. How has your attitude been so that you can repeat what is working for you. Fear of physical discomfort can help stop suicidal thoughts. It usually is a matter of being afraid of fear than what the facts actually are.
4. Make a discovery. Find out something new about yourself, other people, your environment, or the world in general. Be on the alert and become curious what else there is to learn. Don’t close yourself off from the world. The world can be a wonderful place to live by allowing it to be so in your mind.
5. Give yourself permission to be. Treat yourself at least as good as the way you do other people. You can be your own best friend or worst enemy. Allow yourself to have the same faults, mistakes, opportunities, and efforts that you would tell someone else that they can have. You are neither above nor below other people; you are a person like them. You are a human among humans.
6. Be creative to whatever degree you can and in whatever direction your whims tell you. Do not compare your creativity to other people. It is okay to make this a part of your private life until you feel comfortable sharing your creativity with others. People cannot tell you in what way to be creative. Otherwise, it would not be your own personalized creativity. Try something new and different. Try something you have never given yourself permission or time to try. Don’t think too long about it, you may lose the excitement and adventure. It does not matter if others will admire or appreciate the result. You are beginning to express yourself and that is what matters.
7. Put variety into your life. You may have no means of transportation and very little money, but don’t accept that as a final answer. Break out of your cage. A box of dirt in the window to grow a flower or vine when you have never grown anything can be a form of variety. Ask a question, walk a different direction around the block, notice numbers on houses and memorize them. Look at the world as fascinating and interesting. Notice the shapes of clouds or how trees are formed. Whatever you do let it be different. Then do something else differently, you can’t go around looking at clouds all the time. That would be boring. It is a number of different things you do that is important.
8. Change your pace of living whatever you are presently doing, do the opposite. If you are living too fast, slow down. Sometimes a person gets to the place where it feels impossible to keep up with the world and that everyone is going to get ahead. So what if others leave you in the dust. That may not be as tragic as you think. If your lifestyle is too slow and relaxed, pick it up. Get the lead out. Accomplish something. By being idle you can leave yourself open for strange thoughts. You can also begin to feel you are on the outside looking in. This, of course, could leave you open to paranoid thoughts.
9. Allow suicide to become less attractive to you. This might be a result of re-examining your religious convictions. What do you believe God says about suicide? What eternal consequences might occur if you succeeded? How might your death affect other people? It might be you want to seek revenge through suicide against other people. Give that up! It might be you have not stopped  seriously considering the devastation or  effects on your spouse, children, and others close to you. It could mar them for life. You could come to the conclusion that it will cost you too much personally. For instance, when you are dead, you will never hear your child’s voice or feel his or her hug. You can never wake up to go fishing. You will be in a box under 6 feet of dirt. Is this what you want?
10. Use the present situation for your own betterment, even if the situation is very difficult. Do you want things to stay as they presently are? It will take much courage to make decisions and take the initiative to do something drastic other than dying. You probably will find that one or two major changes in your life will be sufficient to greatly relieve the pressure instead of dying. If you could, what would you have differently in your life? Take steps to make it become reality. In the meantime, if all else fails, put suicide off just one day and then tomorrow put it off another day. And then in three days put it off another day. Then look back and be proud of yourself that you have survived three days. You can survive a week or month or year. Remember you are the only you that you have.  If you are going to throw you away, at least make it for some worthwhile reason. Make your death a heroic one because your life has been heroic.