Posts by Kracklite
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Kerry, I am very sorry. My sympathies - as well as I can express them...
Even in the 'cry for help' incidents, it's not impossible to feel sympathy (of course that's the point, but...). A person I have known for some years had made three attempts so far and caused a lot of pain, but nonetheless, I can see what sort of place that they're in, with a terrible personal history. I'm torn between outrage at the suffering that they propagate and my regard and sympathy for them, because they have also, in other people's crises, been devotedly supportive and strong. I can't make a 'choice' between these two sides or feelings - life is just not that simple. One has to steer a course for them, somehow...
Another person, an immediate family member, tried at least two times also and now has a wonderful life.
One let go, one refuses, but then the first has been treated for their whole life with such injustice, they simply haven't learned how to deal with any other kind of situation. I think one day they will succeed.
I've also had to deal with a number of students who have been in the 'overwhelmed' category. One had dyslexia and described themself as having two aspects: one was confident, fluent, talented, and the other, who struggled to put together a coherent phrase on paper was 'stupid' and made the first aspect seem like a sham. They'd have been told by their friends 'No, you're OK, you've no reason to worry, your fears aren't real' because they were so outwardly talented, but they'd take the reassurance sceptically because it implied an incomprehension of anxieties that were overwhelming, and which therefore couldn't be communicated or taken seriously by others.
(We seem to get a lot of people with dyslexia at art, design and architecture schools, because they have visual and social skills, but apart from studio papers, I teach history, where they have to write essays. History being a core course in most such institutions, they have to pass or they don't get their degree or their life's ambition. That's where they come to grief.)
I could have sent this student to a counsellor and washed my hands of the matter and they did see a counsellor, but people like that need understanding teachers too, otherwise the internal division continues. Often too they are very reluctant to see a counsellor in any case as it means opening themselves up too much to too many strangers and appeal directly to the person who gives them the tangible grades.
In that person's case, fully moderated, they went from D to B+. They live.
Sometimes, perhaps, someone who seems just a bit too happy when at other times they had spoken of their sense of fundamental self-doubt a while back before clamming up on the subject is one to watch more closely than the one who has a complete Joy Division collection.
I think I can see where your nephew was coming from, maybe. Perhaps he felt that he had let himself down as well.
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Sorry, Giovanni, but the 'appears to me' is honest reserve on my part.
The counsellors I've dealt with in the past have been careful to use phrases such as '__presents__ the symptoms of -' and so on. It's not copping out, it's taking care to be open to alternative interpretations and deferring to professional psychiatrists.
You are right in that I was going too far in discussing Veitch in particular and I can only guess what he is going through.
However, I have to say that suicide is a matter I am very passionate about and I really do need to find ways of understanding and helping people who might be at risk. The questions then are 'what are the warning signs?' and 'what to do next?' Some sincere attempts to help only make matters worse if they are uniformed by others' experience of similar cases. I think that that transcends moral fastidiousness.
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Human beings have complex minds which cannot be reduced to a few uninformed platitudes;
As I pointed out, I am not uninformed or inexperienced in such matters. My disclaimers are there for legal purposes, but I assure you that I have been very close to similar cases for a long time and I haven't had the luxury of being able to turn my nose up the issues as being unfit for a gentleman. I've had to watch, closely, and to deal with the ramifications in depth.
It's necessary for us to discuss share experience on such matters as they may pertain to us and people near us who may be vulnerable.
Sanctimony is a cop-out. -
It seems to be genuine depression characterised by a very teenaged view of the world and how it relates to the sufferer.
If only he'd just painted his bedroom black...
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What has happened instead is a disaster, and I really think that there should have been people around him who could stop him doing it to himself.
Rampant speculation follows, mitigated somewhat by close personal experience of more than one person who's tried...
The impression apparently intended to be given by the media campaign is one of a man who is genuinely remorseful and hurt, but it's ended up looking histrionic, over-presented and dishonest, worsening Veitch's image. we have a media fostered myth of catharsis and closure, the assumption that suddenly there will be a revelation and everything will click into place and Veitch's handlers have been playing on this.
Unfortunately, like many emotionally fragile people without any self-awareness, he's veering about, unable to make sense of or play along with the narrative presented to it, so he screws it up.
A person I know who repeatedly indulges in 'look at me, it's all your fault' suicide attempts does a lot of damage to themselves and to people around them and their strategically-directed notes and texts. These sort of people refuse to examine themselves, show a lack of self-awareness (at least at a conscious level) and instead try to construct complicated narratives of self-justification. Anyone standing nearby - especially those who would be capable of sympathy - become targets for emotional blackmail, because they're the only ones who can be made to visibly suffer. If they don't offer the demanded support or signs of pain, then the anger and emotional assaults intensify, because they've just 'proven' that they're unsympathetic bastards and thus can be justifiably made to suffer more.
It's classic narcissistic behaviour and its a complex, contradictory and hideous stew of unconscious compulsive actions tied together with absurd self-justifications that keep falling apart and have to be reconstructed again and again.
Veitch appears to me to be a malignant narcissist obsessed with self-justifcation, and this was the driver for his crippling assault and his own interally-directed violence and his continuing obsession with 'getting his side of the story across'.
Of course Kirsten Dunne-Powell has nothing to do with it as far as he's concerned. It's all about him.
And in that context, his media handlers, thinking they're doing what's best for him are simply feeding the process and making it worse.
That's my take, it's speculative and I am not a psychiatrist (I don't even like fava beans but I am partial to chianti).
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Indeed.
The dirty little secret of immortality (which we should not tell anyone) is that it depends on mortals and their persistence across the generations through their tongues.
Mind you, I would still prefer the 'not dying' strategy: it seem so much simpler in theory, but I can't figure out the technical details of actually practicing it!
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Islander, that's the nature of stories... as Roberto Calasso wrote in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony , mortals have only one fate, but immortals in the retelling of their tales have many fates and origins.
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Yup Mrs Skin -you're so right - depression *is* a continium - I'm more familiar with the black hole end, but would hate to belittle anyone's experience whatsoever. And apologise, if I have-
My experience, for what it's worth.
It's not the depression that drives you to extremes, it's the sheer exhaustion of dealing with the depression. Imagine driving a car or riding a bicycle with crooked steering. It will always lead you into the gutter, so you have to compensate, turning the wheel/handlebars to one side. That's fine... but you have to do it all of the time. It's nothing in itself, moment by moment, but the moments add up and if you think that they're never going to end, that nothing will ever change, that nothing will ever make a real difference and you live with the enervation of the fight every day, then one day, without a better future, it's all too much and death looks like a relief.
Er, obviously I'm still here, as are people I know and love. Either or both of two things seem to work: either the real knowledge that something will change or the bloody-minded, 'damnit, there's so much I still want to do, fuck it' feeling.
There's an Arabic tale of a Sultan who asked a wise man to give him something that would make him sad when he was happy and happy when he was sad. The man returned with a ring inscribed with the motto, 'Even this shall pass.'
I have a friend right now who's struggling with a lifetime of atypical depression due, I think, to a genetic disorder resulting in an inability to synthesise certain neurotransmitters, She's very intelligent and working her way through it, finding strategies to cope. It won't pass for her any time soon. I admire her, very much.
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As for intention, there's a basic rule of thumb in mental health circles that if someone is talking positively about plans for the future
Sorry, I disagree profoundly on this specific point.
It is often observed in people about to attempt suicide that they will suddenly, after a period of depression, seem suddenly optimistic or at least relieved. Those about them may think that this means that they have suddenly discovered a reason to keep living when in fact they have come to a state of relief because they have decided that since they are going to die, then there is nothing to worry about.
The warning sign is that someone who has been clearly contemplating suicide suddenly and for no obvious cause suddenly appears to be at peace. When that happens, worry - and get help, fast.
The 'theatrical' suicides may be the actions of fundamentally fragile and shallow individuals who will panic, that is, suddenly try something rash when all their hopes that they had been depending on, suddenly in a new light appear to be worthless.
In short, someone who has been severely depressed and perceiving themselves to be trapped for a long period without hope of relief may be making grocery lists, but nonetheless may suddenly come to a 'aw, fuck it' moment and top themselves.
[Uhhh, Kracklite, I've deleted this paragraph. I can't let a comment about someone's worthiness to live stand here. I know you what you were saying, or trying to, but it didn't read well. Everyone, I'm off to bed. Just be careful -- RB]
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An observation, not a critique:
The 'look at me' suicide attempts can be 'sincere' at a subjective level and not cynically motivated at all insofar as cynicism implies conscious intention. I am acutely aware that people are not always fully cognisant of what actual personal extinction means. Many teenage suicide attempt survivors said that they fantasised of the people at their funeral being sorry and suitably punished thereby, and that they would be, at some level, able to observe and appreciate this. Such feelings were not fully thought through or rationalised, but felt nonetheless, and in any case, many suicide attempts are impulsive and their consequences are not considered... indeed, their very object is to escape all consequences while punishing others.
It does not serve any useful purpose, I think, to over-rationalise on limited terms the intentions and supporting logic of some extreme actions. Much of human behaviour is motivated by complex and even sophisticated but nonetheless unconscious motivations related to the manipulation of others.
Personality disorders, I have observed, serve admirably well, certain specific but limited aims. Whether they are 'nice' or 'logical' or 'rational' (whatever the Hell that means) has nothing to do with it, and finding rational means, justifications, excuses or cause for condemnation seems to me irrelevant.