I spent years believing that most people, at the point where they would attempt to take their own lives, if they were stopped but not offered more than that, would continue trying. I’d bet many of you thought that was common knowledge.
But what if it’s not true? What if an act that prevented it- a disruption- would turn out to also be a turning point?
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As Whitney says, and I agree, the real work is in the complexities. That goes for our own mental health issues, healing from abuse, and social issues regarding these topics. We aren’t going to solve the mental health crisis by getting people to exercise more. It might help some people, but that one explanation will not work for everyone. We are all much more complex than that simple “fix” would lead us to believe, but believing it reduces the cognitive load of figuring out how to help millions of individuals.
It is true that there are people with plenty of social skills and social contacts who are still lonely. As a survivor, I recognize this in things like the small number of people we can talk to comfortably about our abuse, our healing, etc. At various times in my life, I’ve had a lot of friends and was very social. I was still lonely. Because no one saw all of me. No one sat with me in my pain. I kept it hidden from everyone. That’s lonely.
I love the idea that healing can be messy. Most truly human things worth doing are messy and chaotic. We weren’t made to only do easy things, but we are made to grow and heal.
