Softness of Suicide

Suicide is a topic that I’ve been discussing more in the last few weeks and months. As soon as people hear that I’m a mental health professional they automatically assume that I’m proficient in knowing everyone’s mental health challenges. Nevertheless, the people that tend to ask the question are usually millennials and Gen X’ers (my assumption is because younger generations are quite aware of the “why” that the others are questioning). More and more people are asking “why do you think we are having so much more suicides and attempts than there used to be?”

Quite frankly, most of the people ask not to hear your honest opinion but to assert that they know the answer. The answer-for EVERYONE that I have spoken to is the same- the youth these days are “soft.” And to that I say yes…but why is that a bad thing?

You see what I’ve come to understand is that unless something gets so bad that the stats cannot deny it - we tend to gloss over it. Mental health and mental illness were not things that we spoke about often before, we didn’t have the words, the terms, the research or the resources because it just wasn’t needed. We, for the most part, would “man up”, “toughen up”, “suck it up” and keep it moving. Abuse was talked about more as I was growing up than in prior generations because where Grammy and great grandparents would poison their spouses (yes that is correct- older generations did not talk about abuse, they killed their spouses) or stay in the abuse, the stories became too frequent and too loud to ignore. Rape started to get its spotlight and sexual abuse in general (we know what we did with rapists on the island).

Now as an adult, we are coming up on an age where anxiety, depression, trauma and other disorders are coming to light. We’ve just gotten around to talking about growing up with undiagnosed ADHD and Autism and destigmatizing schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. Because we are adults and the damage is done, we reclaim what we can and move on (for the most part). But what has also come to our attention is that the value of a dollar from childhood to now has drastically decreased. Hard work has become backbreaking and forces a level of sacrifice that is nearly impossible to make or maintain. We work harder and longer for less and are unable to accomplish even half the things our parents and grandparents did.

And now this generation is growing up in that. They aren’t making a transition to it - they were born in it. They were born in a time where social connections are paired by Bluetooth, where dopamine is attained through a screen, where parental involvement is limited and controlled by locks on the remote or digital devices. Parents are either too present because they’re so woke with the mental health that they forget struggling builds character too - or they’re too absent because they have to work excessively to provide even a semblance of a decent lifestyle. And these kids come out into the world that is actively burning and run by people who don’t care as long as their pockets are lined and with no community or support system because they never really learned how to not live in isolation…and are expected to “toughen up.”

The truth is, no matter what reason you put to it, maybe it needs to be that way. Now keep in mind, I AM NOT advocating for suicide. What I’m saying is that we wouldn’t look at mental health as much if this wasn’t happening. Maybe we wouldn’t be working with churches about how they’ve hurt people if more people didn’t speak up. We wouldn’t be going down on the price of therapy sessions if we only had a niche audience. We wouldn’t be addressing or talking about suicide if no one was committing suicide. We wouldn’t see the value of a human life if we didn’t lose one. Their death is not in vain because it is forcing you to open your eyes to a problem you pretended to be blind to.

Maybe we were too hard, too tough, too manly and THAT was the problem. Maybe being tough is what caused mental health to be on the back burner for so long.

Maybe they need to be soft. If being soft is what makes you pay attention then by all means let them be soft. Being soft and fragile makes us treat things as precious, valued and looked on with respect and esteem. Human life is soft. Life is precious. Life should be held in esteem. Maybe if we started breaking under the pressure then we would change the environment, change the way we treat each other, value each other. Maybe they need to be soft so that we learn that soft doesn’t mean weak. Soft doesn’t mean lacking value. Being soft doesn’t mean that being hard is the answer.

I hope we all live a soft life. Not that we jump off a cliff, but that we are handled with care, looked at with respect, protected, and supported in all the ways we need it. And for those who have lost their lives because the pain and pressures of this life were unbearable - may we honor your life and your pain by holding your memories in the softness you deserved.

Love,

Dat Bahamian Borderline

IG: bahamian_borderline

Site: https://navigatingbpd.com