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I’ve noticed something about when I’m suicidal: I’m more accident-prone when I’m suicidal. I know that the word “accident” suggests that nothing would be causing it as it is unintentional – this is true, sort of – but I still find that suicidality affects the presence of accidents.
Of course, being accident-prone just means that you suffer a lot of accidents. Let’s just say that there’s a scale of accident-prone-ness. In your average life you may be a level two accident prone (let’s just say) and this means that you experience two small accidents per week. If you’re suicidal, you might be a level four accident-prone so maybe this means you experience five accidents per week and they are more severe. This is the kind of difference I’ve seen.
For example, I’ve noticed that when I’m suicidal, I’ll hurt myself more when I’m cooking in the kitchen. I’ve received considerably more burns and cuts when suicidal than otherwise. If I’m in other potentially dangerous situations, I also tend to take more risk and just not care about what happens to me as a result.
I want to be clear that this isn’t self-harm. I’m not actively trying to burn myself when I take something out of the oven; it just accidentally happens, like it might to anyone else.
My theory on why I’m accident-prone when suicidal is that I just don’t care about my own wellbeing. It’s simple, I guess, I just couldn’t care less about my own safety. If I want to die, then, surely, I don’t care about what happens before then. If I want to die, then, surely, the small amount of pain from a kitchen accident is irrelevant. If I want to die, then haphazardly ignoring danger surely doesn’t matter.
I know it sounds silly to say that you should be careful for accidents if you’re suicidal. I know how silly it is to say to “watch out for accidents” in general. But, honestly, I know that if I’m suicidal I do actively watch out for accidents. Really. For example, when I go into the kitchen to cut up an apple, I actively tell myself, “Watch out, knives are sharp.” Don’t laugh. I also say that, “The broiler is dangerous and hot – don’t burn yourself.”
I do this because I know that life can always get worse. Being suicidal is terrible, yes, but it’s worse if you’re suicidal with boiling oil spilled down the front of you. It’s considerably worse if you didn’t look both ways before crossing the road and now are in the hospital after being hit by a car. And so on.
It is possible to work through being suicidal. There is an other side to suicidality. Therapy, medications and supports can all help you get past the desire to leave this earth. But once that happens, you’re not going to want to tend to a bunch of injuries, too.
Give yourself a break. Protect yourself from accidents when suicidal even though you likely won’t want to. Trust me, it’s something you will thank yourself for later. Even when it feels like you’re not worth it, you are. Lean on my utter faith on that if you can’t believe it yourself, for now.
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Natasha Tracy is an award-winning writer, speaker, advocate, and consultant from the Pacific Northwest. She has been living with bipolar disorder for 26 years and has written more than 2000 articles on the subject.
Find more of Natasha’s work in her acclaimed book: "Lost Marbles: Insights into My Life with Depression & Bipolar" on Amazon.
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This is a well established fact and the reason behind not allowing driving in th uk if you have severe depression with pervasive suicidality as well as the possibility that you may chose to crash your vehicle.
I am afaird to die and I feel worthless I have been suicidal and I don’t want to go to hell for my lliess
Is there a phone counselling line you can ring to talk your stuff out with, Diana? I hope you are ok.
I think we often under-estimate the power of the subconscious mind, that repository of all those emotions we think we have gotten rid of by pushing them out of consciousness. I think that, very often, accidents are self-punitive, driven by feelings of self-condemnation in the subconscious mind. It is frightening to recognise that our conscious mind is not in full control of our actions, but I think that this is the case.
Given that depression is associated with decreased concentration, inability to multitask, and poor short-term memory, the opportunities for accidents and other inadvertent safety issues (oooohhh… gas stove!) are probably almost endless. People who are suicidal when anxious or manic are also probably dealing with their ‘lizard brain’ running a bit too much of the show, which isn’t going to help planning your actions so as to prevent accidents from happening.
Mark
What about the effects of many of the drugs drugs. Some make you accident prone.
People who are suicidal need help, not to just be expected to ‘cope with it’ and get over it until the next time they feel suicidal. Are there any phone counselling lines in the US that people can talk to(?) – and never forget the power of prayer either. This is distressing news – that anyone could be suicidal and just expect and be expected to ‘get over it’. Please call supportive phones lines in the US, write it down to ‘get it out’ and pray to God for help. There is always a way through – ask God to help you.