Suicide Prevention Quotes

[Daniel E.]

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

― T.H. White, The Once and Future King (1958)

 

[Daniel E.]

“Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.”

“I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.”

― Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

 

[Daniel E.]

“You say you're 'depressed' ― all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective ― it just means you're human.”

“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”

― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

 

[Daniel E.]

"There is no pain quite like that of a broken heart. But a broken heart is an open heart. When we allow ourselves to be broken, a gentle transformation takes place."

~ Douglas Bloch

 

[Daniel E.]

"As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion."

"There is a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable. You see this even in insects and animals and birds. All of us are the same."

~ Pema Chödrön

 

[Daniel E.]

“Not everything that weighs you down is yours to carry.”

~ Anonymous

 

[Daniel E.]

“You don’t have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you.”

~ Dan Millman

 

[Daniel E.]

“The way you tell your story to yourself matters.”

~ Amy Cuddy

 

[Daniel E.]

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”

~ Sydney J. Harris

 

[Daniel E.]

“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world-—not even our troubles.”

~ Charlie Chaplin

 

[Daniel E.]

"Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the most wonderful things that will ever happen to us."

~ Nicole Reed

 

[Daniel E.]

“Anxiety happens when you think you have to figure out everything all at once. Breathe. You’re strong. You got this. Take it day by day.”

~ Karen Salmansohn

 

[Daniel E.]

“Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.”

~ Pema Chödrön, The Places that Scare You

 

[Daniel E.]

“The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move.”

― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

 

[Daniel E.]

I'd called all the hospitals and said "Give me the most suicidal, the person who's tried to kill themselves multiple times and all of that.

They came in, and what I discovered was that these people had so many problems. They were such an ever changing set of problems, so that one day it was one thing, and another day another. If you worked on one problem, another problem was more intolerable. You try to work on that problem and the person says, "Well, I'm going to kill myself, this is all hopeless."

What happened was, I discovered that, if you have a lot of problems, you can't work on all problems simultaneously, so you really have to radically accept some set of problems to work on something out. But I had no technology, I had no way. That was not part of behavior therapy. Acceptance, when I started, was simply not part of the treatment.

~ Interview with Marsha Linehan on DBT

 

[Daniel E.]

"In adult life, people generally tend to relive rather than live, that is, to repeat the patterns of the past...They are afraid that if they really cry out, if they really ask, if they really scream for help, that it won't come, and they'll be in the same panicky frightened state they were in when they were little."

― Robert W. Firestone, The Fantasy Bond: Structure of Psychological Defenses

 

[Daniel E.]

"The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die."

― David Foster Wallace (1962―2008)

 

[Daniel E.]

Suicidal behaviors are a psychiatric emergency. If you or a loved one starts to take any of these steps, seek immediate help from a health care provider or call 911:

- Collecting and saving pills or buying a weapon
- Giving away possessions
- Tying up loose ends, like organizing personal papers or paying off debts
- Saying goodbye to friends and family

If you are unsure, a licensed mental health professional can help assess.

If your friend or family member struggles with suicidal ideation day-to-day, let them know that they can talk with you about what they’re going through. Make sure that you adopt an open and compassionate mindset when they’re talking. Instead of “arguing” or trying to disprove any negative statements they make (“Your life isn’t that bad!”), try active listening techniques such as reflecting their feelings and summarizing their thoughts. This can help your loved one feel heard and validated.

Let them know that mental health professionals are trained to help people understand their feelings and improve mental wellness and resiliency. Psychotherapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy, can help a person with thoughts of suicide recognize ineffective patterns of thinking and behavior, validate their feelings and learn coping skills. Suicidal thoughts are a symptom, just like any other — they can be treated, and they can improve over time.

Suicide is not the answer. There is hope.

-- NAMI

 

[Daniel E.]

Why Your Life Matters: A Note to Suicidal Teens

Stay away from other kids who feel equally hopeless.That includes young people online who feel as bad as you do. Constantly talking about how awful life is may feel good in the moment, but in the end it will only make you all feel worse. People who don’t know how to help themselves won’t know how to help you. If you want to help them, by all means tell them you care and then give them the link to this article.

 

[Daniel E.]

“I wonder if that's how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out. I don't want it to win.”

― Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes