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if you feel suicidal right now, you might not be in a place to do the things i’ve written about so far. so here are some of the things that are helpful to me when i am actively suicidal:

• first: set a deadline. tell yourself that if you don’t feel better by a particular time, then you can act on the feelings, and agree not to act on the feelings before that time. set this as far in the future as you can possibly manage. sometimes, for me, that’s just an hour. sometimes, it’s a year. it’s not going to change how you feel, but it will give you some time to work with. because the fact is, if you’ve read this far, there is some small part of you that does want to be alive. otherwise, you would have already acted on the feelings, or you’d have gone on to a website that tells you how to kill yourself effectively.
• second: give yourself permission to do whatever it takes to feel better. whatever. it. takes. any problem is easier to solve when you are alive than when you are dead.
• third: don’t expect that wanting to feel better is going to make it happen immediately. just because you decided not to kill yourself right now doesn’t mean everything is better. it just means you aren’t killing yourself at this moment. that is ok. you don’t have to feel better right away. the goal, if you are actively suicidal, is just to feel a little less bad.
• fourth: if you have made a safety plan, take a look at it. see if you are able to do anything on the list. even if it won’t make you feel much better, still, give it a try. call someone or read a book or watch a movie or go for a walk. find a copy of hello, cruel world and try some of the suggestions there.
• fifth: ask for help. keep asking for help until you get it.

you deserve to feel better than you are feeling right now. it is even possible that you will feel better than you are feeling right now.

what you don’t deserve is to be told that your problems aren’t “that bad,” or that the solution is to just “decide to have a more positive attitude.” maybe that works for some people. i haven’t met them. i have never met someone who was genuinely feeling suicidal who got better just because someone told them to. i haven’t met many people who were suicidal who stopped feeling suicidal when someone gave them a list of all the things they had to live for. maybe it worked for george bailey, but it doesn’t work for me.

even if someone outside of you doesn’t think your problems are overwhelming, or “worth” killing yourself… it’s how you feel. acknowledge that.

but just because you feel suicidal doesn’t mean you have to act on it. and it doesn’t mean you have to keep on feeling like that. just because a feeling abates doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. times when you feel better don’t take away from the times when you feel worse. and times when you feel bad don’t negate the times when you felt better.

feelings are temporary. being suicidal is a feeling. therefore, feeling suicidal is temporary. that feeling will go away. give yourself time for that to happen.

one way to help the feeling to go away is to do your best to be honest about how you are feeling. it might seem like–and some people might even tell you–that talking about suicidal feelings will only make them stronger. i haven’t found this to be true. when i tell understanding people about how i’m feeling, the feelings ease up. what doesn’t help is trying to act like i’m ok. doing that makes me feel even more trapped and alone in the feelings. i don’t necessarily tell people i am suicidal, but i do tell people i feel scared, or panicky, or overwhelmed, or sad, or whatever the other emotions are. and i do have some people i can tell… it’s worth a try. if you have a therapist or a partner or friend who hasn’t given you clear reasons not to trust them, you might want to try talking to them.

i’ll add more to this page later, but i hope it’s helpful so far!