What drives people to want to think of committing suicide?

Hello friends,

hope all is well at your end. Things are finally stabilising here at www.tdenchpatel.com with regards to the website working smoothly, we’re still trying to help the loading speed of the blog posts and this will be ongoing work for us, other than that everything is now back to normal here.

You know if you haven’t read yesterday’s article, this was going to be my next topic. This topic is really very close to my heart. The topic has its focus here and here. I’ve also written some articles about suicide which you can refer to below.

Drawing from my own experience of suicidal thoughts; some on and off phases that followed me throughout my life and there have even been a few years I’ve thought about how crazy I was to think of ending an awesome life, this awesome gift. It’s only when the first major economic crisis hit that I felt the wave coming on strong; in 2009 and ever since some years felt depressing and some years felt like this was going to be something I was going to live with forever. Luckily I am strong enough, in the sense that I just don’t enter or entertain certain compartments of the dark side of suicidal thoughts long enough (I don’t know, willpower, self-control to shut it off after the initial feeling), being an optimist certainly plays a role in this. Today, while I hardly think of suicide, I have learnt a lot about it over the last year. I get to look at it from the inside and outside now and pick its brain. I have only got this recent key information in the last few times I thought about suicide (the year 2019 has been the least times I’ve thought about suicide compared to 2014 and all the way through to 2018).

Read on, if you’ve been struggling with this, if you know someone who is struggling with this or depression. Beware, you might not like what I have to say, you might not like what I feel it points to and I don’t expect you to agree, but this is my perspective especially if the thoughts have reduced considerably from April 2019 – present. This might help you a lot, I mean a lot and the answer to you thinking about suicide less is free, yes absolutely free and this is because your lifestyle, wherever you are in the world, the nature of the culture you were raised in, family etc. plays a massive role. You know what, we all play a role in this, sadly.

What I am about to write is really going to change the angle; why us all in this world should be more compassionate, kind, generous, helpful and most of all encourage and motivate people. Love people yes love people. Looking at life in South Africa, and having been raised here I’ve seen hardship of lives on the street, had some of my own accounts, and you know what? Now while I’m researching it’s still is apparent that this is a global issue. Rich or poor the issue is mindset, but before mindset, it has something to do with each and every one of us. Why? The mind can become twisted if it’s being told the same thing and has to manage toxic environments/words more hours in a day, day in day out. With more negativity overpowering it than positivity it chooses the negative action. Mindset comes into play depending on the threshold of tolerance of a person and by simply not budging in.

Just take a second. Re-read the last paragraph with the below points and just sit with this for at least four minutes. If you want to re-read it, go ahead and just sit with it for four minutes before you continue reading.

Kenyan schoolgirl takes her own life after “period shaming”.
12-year-old commits suicide after in-person and cyberbullying.
Scared matric teen commits suicide after losing her new phone
Teen commits suicide “over Christmas present”.
This one isn’t in the news “teenage girl in Africa kills herself after dropping the water “bucket” along the way back to the village.” By the way, 62% of girls do “low-status jobs” like fetching water in Sub-Saharan Africa.
31-year-old woman commits suicide after defamation in Naples, Italy.
20-year-old girl commits suicide after the arrange marriage agreed by both her parents and the groom to be parents broke off after six months
A manager (47-year-old) at the Population Immigration and Border Authority committed suicide on May 23 after being accused of racism on Facebook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_in_the_21st_century – A-list people who committed suicide.

Some of the people that committed suicide was a shock. It came out of the blue and was a complete surprise to their friends and family.

In my book The South African: Roamer (book based on a true story) read this part in the chapter titled It is a surprise, full of surprises!

“Seeing things like this on numerous occasions has become a norm now. You go and shower and after you’re dressed you wait for Vivek to return so you can ask him what happened. Abhay returns instead. You have no idea how Abhay can be so switched on. He’s always one of the first people to arrive when something happens to someone on the street if he’s around. He said he was one of the first ones to arrive at Pitu’s house. “What happened at Pitu’s house?” you ask. “Dev committed suicide,” says Abhay sadly. “What!” you shout out in shock as you run your left hand over your eyes. “He didn’t seem like that type of a person to do such a thing to himself,” you wonder as sadness washes over you completely. “He showered, got dressed in a suit and then hung himself in the backyard early in the morning. His mother went outside and found him hanging. She started to scream and that’s when I went there,” says Abhay while trying to keep his voice in check. Abhay and Dev went to the same school growing up and were in the same standard as well. You miss Dev already, yet you’ve never spoken to him ever. When your mum finds out she’s silently sad and when Vivek finally returns he says, “Dev’s girlfriend broke up with him and he committed suicide.” “Life is so harsh to this family; I think Dev was just trying to keep his head above the water with everything that was going on with his family day in and day out and then the girlfriend leaves him. Why couldn’t he think about the pain his mother is going to have to live with?” you wonder. Pitu is not even close to finishing his studies. Vivek sticks really close to Pitu after what happened, and you’re pleased about that. Vivek has a stronger friendship with Pitu now but you still feel so heartsore for Pitu and his family. It’s the first time suicide has hit your home this close; where you saw someone day in and day out and knew them well because of the connection Vivek has with Pitu. Knowing Pitu through Vivek made you get to know Pitu and his family too. Suicide has now become a real thing whereas once it just existed as it happening to someone else who you didn’t know really well.”

Now just sit with this for four minutes…

…

See how we are part of this, and we don’t even know it. Why when people say what they’re going through or what they went through we tell them they’re going into victim mode but if a millionaire was to say it, it’s wow! Powerful. Sure, let’s gather and help. When people ask for help and we don’t even know them we judge them. I get it, you can’t help the whole world and you want to know the person you’re helping isn’t just pretending, just acting like a victim or is at least trying to get out of the situation. How do we know if they have already tried several times or not? Who are you or me to know the price they’ve paid thus far in life? Who are you or me to think that everyone has the same tolerance level as you and I? See, in Indian segregated areas, during apartheid, we knew our neighbours, we knew their families and we all pretty much grew up together either with a bunch of older siblings hanging out together and younger siblings hanging out with each other. You were either two, or one standard above or below them or in the same class or standard, yet still, Dev (in this part of the chapter in The South African: Roamer) surprised us all, as we were living in a time where violence and racism were acceptable, so just toughen up was the mentality that was going around.

So, my argument is this. Look, I bet you if we go and create a research or do one where people who came from hardship from the time they were young are the people who are less likely to commit suicide even if they do think about it now and again compared to those who have been sheltered, protected, had a fairly decent or more then decent upbringing but can’t handle the world outside of the world they have grown up in (I think the research would be spot on to what I just stated). It will all point to tolerance level and mindset almost like the survival of the fittest kind of thing. Like, say, for example, Dev’s family was well off, a healthy and happy one which then had some unfortunate turn around of events that the boy being the eldest in the family couldn’t take on all the challenges, this was all new ground to him? Add the element that teenagers and even people in their twenties and older are still learning how to manage their emotions, behaviours, attitude, mindset etc, hence why this area of support really needs to be first class.

You know what just one teenager who was affected by Dev’s suicide was thinking, “God should have given me some kind of powers to help this family before Dev took his own life. Damn, why wasn’t I in the position where I was already working and earning good money so that I could help them?”

You can’t help but feel responsible in some way, where this person told no one how bad things really were in his life and all we’ve been seeing is the smile on his face that he’s doing okay.

Look, not everyone is built that way we all each in our opinions think a person should consist of or be made of. The entrepreneurial mindset is fight, never give up, work hard, don’t play the victim, be composed, be composed, be composed, be composed but you know what…

The world is composed of billions of different people with their own level of tolerance as to how much they can take and grow. When a person comes out of domestic abuse and thinks suicidal thoughts it’s a sensitive place/phase, only some of us got hard skin over time, but the truth is you’ve worked with at least one narcissist in your life, one man/woman who has had domestic violence, one man/woman who is an abuser and you take all their nonsense in the workplace because to get the job done you must survive it. “Need” isn’t? We are surrounded by negative and positive and the way I look at employee behaviours is by looking at who’s running the show, the way I look at kids growing up and their behaviour is through their parents because like most articles out there of the children who committed suicide through bullying the parents said why haven’t the bullies’ parents taken stronger action against their kids, why haven’t teachers taken stronger action against the bullies? Why was it my child that didn’t get full protection against this?

A comparison in 2019 – present compared to the years 2014 to 2018. What were the key components that got me thinking less about suicide?

I’m in a supportive environment
I’m in a safe space
I’m in an environment where I feel supportive energies; love, joy, company, feeling wanted, home, god, a place where I have a tiny piece of entitlement, where tiny is enough to feel deserving or at least feel my birthright.
I’m in an environment where there’s hardly any competition to look better, be better, keep proving, acting like I am enough, keep fighting, striving etc.
I’m in an environment with sunshine and nature
I’m in an environment with a pet as my companion
I’m in an environment where we pray for each other and genuinely care for each other
I’m in an environment of gratitude
I’m in an environment of music
I’m in an environment where there is unconditional love and forward momentum to growing and learning from lessons, arguments in a healthy way, no condemning.
I’m in an environment where positivity overpowers the negativity (all – mind, body, spirit, soul, emotion, mental, physical and through the food I consume and the nature around me)
I’m in an environment where values and morals are in check
I’m in an environment where you can give the true definition and more to what a soul family actually means
I’m in an environment where I don’t need to keep paying to exist or owe someone to exist
I’m in an environment for once where I can say the paper that says I was born here, no one can take from me, it is totally my right

So, I think that people who think of suicide are lacking belonging, love, support, no more toxicity, period. They just want to be and feel a part of something positive all the time and want to belong. We won’t know how deep is their cut and how much more deeper it gets. What they feel inside could simply feel like an escalation from a simple poke; a knife at them and then in them. The self-harm explains it. The next person or experience that hurts them could just about be the twenty-fifth, fiftieth or the nine-hundredth one that gets in deep until there is no level of threshold left to take, no more. Maybe they’ve never felt what true unconditional love, family, belonging really is and having to live in this unknowing space all their lives is causing them to feel this hole in their spirit, simply because they’ve never felt any better and only know this which they see and experience so much of day in and day out. – T. Dench Patel, 21 April 2020, 17:19

What’s your opinion?

This is just my two cents from what I analysed and took stock of.

Yours sincerely,

T. Dench Patel

Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by either purchasing one of my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.

The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.

Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to reevaluate them.