Thinking about Suicide and Teens
1) By C M (USA)  January 2007

My teenager抯 best friend recently attempted to commit suicide. Our family, especially our teen, was instrumental in this teen抯 survival. This has involved contact with the 搈ental health?system. I continue to be involved in a long-term strategy to prevent future suicide attempts by this teen, as well as the by teens in our child抯 circle of friends. This strategy includes systematic discharge on my own teen years and suicide attempt, thinking well about these particular teens, and reaching out to their families to build a support network for both the teens and their families.

For the past year Diane Shisk has been leading two classes, one for teens and one for parents and allies of teens in the Pacific Northwest, and recently she has led a couple of classes on suicide and self-harm. I am discovering, as I speak to parents, teachers and friends inside and outside of RC about these issues, that there is a great deal of confusion about teenagers in general, as well as about teen suicide and self-harm. In this article I will outline what I am learning about these subjects.

Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States for all people, but for the young, it is the 3rd leading cause. Approximately every two hours, a young person (ages 15-24) succeeds in killing themselves through suicide. For every completed suicide by a young person, it is estimated that there are 100-200 attempts that are not 揷ompleted.?(Adults are successful at a rate of approximately 25 to 1.) Further, research is showing that the most significant risk factor for teen suicidal thoughts or attempts is having a friend who committed or attempted suicide.

Harvey Jackins says in The List that 揳lmost every tendency, urge, or pull in the direction of a person taking his or her own life will turn out to be a distress pattern.? A person contemplating suicide will often put it to themselves or others in terms of their 揹ecision?to take their own life. This might fool them or us into believing that there is some level of thinking going on. In fact, as Diane Shisk told us in teen class, a person who has decided to take their life has always stopped thinking. The person is in the grip of a distress recording, or pattern. The only exception to this might be a person who is going to die anyway of a very painful condition. Harvey still thought that the decision to live is the most rational stance, summed up in his phrase: 揑t is far better to be alive, if only for one instant and that instant spent in agony, than never to be alive at all.?This extreme condition is not the situation for the vast majority of teen suicide attempts. There
 fore,
we can assume that for teens in particular, any 揹ecision?to take their life is distress.

Our experience in counseling people with this distress recording indicates that there is almost always an early incident where the individual received some version of the message to die. For example, a young person might have been told, by someone else in the grip of a distress recording: 揑t would be better if you were dead,?or, 揑 could just kill you for that.?

What can we do if a young person has a recording to die?

First of all, we have to counsel on all our memories connected with suicide in any way. This includes friends or family who attempted or completed suicide, and our own thoughts about or attempts at suicide. These memories have to be thoroughly discharged.

We can also give young people information about distress recordings, and refuse to respect the feeling that a person has the 搑ight?to 揹ecide?to die. If we are relaxed and confident about the fact that a thinking person would never choose to die, we can be a good counselor to a young person who is working on powerlessness and oppression, as well as on early recordings that they die.

In the teen class, Diane worked with several people in powerful demonstrations that taught me a lot about how to counsel both adults and teens. She worked with a young person who had been instrumental in a friend not completing suicide. She had the teen tell the whole story of what happened, and take pride in their success in supporting the friend to stay alive. She worked with me on my attempt to commit suicide as a teenager. She asked for details I could remember. I also worked on the decision I had made several years ago to completely discharge my recordings about killing myself, to give up every form of self-destructive behavior. This meant facing some terrible feelings and deciding to live fully, and not have an 揺scape clause.?Diane wanted details on how I did this梥ystematically deciding for several years to work directly on this recording until it was cleaned up梥o the young people could hear the story of what a person must actually do as a client to free themselves completely from a distress.

Diane worked with another adult who still had the distress recording and had them promise in that session to never try and kill themselves again, including engaging in self-mutilation (cutting). After this demonstration Diane talked about if she could not get a person to promise that they would not ever again try to kill themselves, then she gets them to promise that they will call her first, and let her come over to their house to say a personal goodbye, even if that means they have to wait until she is back in the country. She said no one who has agreed to this has killed themselves. The contact with her, even in their minds, seems to be enough contradiction.

During another demonstration with a young person on cutting, Diane talked about the effects of addictive behaviors. Each time the behavior is repeated梖or example, each time a person cuts themselves梐nother layer of hurt is added to the recording, making it that much more entrenched. Similarly, each time a person attempts suicide, the recording to die becomes reinforced and is further complicated by messages of shame and blame, compulsions towards secrecy and internalizing anger and other feelings. This is reflected in suicide statistics by the fact that adults are four to eight time more 搒uccessful?at completing suicide than young people.

All young people are continually the target of oppression as they are being conditioned to stop thinking and accept the roles of oppressors when they are older. As part of the conditioning, they are not allowed to express their anger, terror and grief about oppression. This is particularly hard on young people of color, females and other targeted groups, although it is terrible for all young people. Diane pointed out that Jews and Native people are both groups that have been targeted by genocide, and those recordings (passed on generation to generation) of the attempts to wipe out those populations can manifest today as suicide recordings. She worked with several young people on their fury and thoughts they have of doing violent things to themselves or others. She encouraged them to externalize this anger in the direction of a safe parent or counselor who can remain unconfused. After this my own child was able to come home and have a big session on fury, directing anger towards objects and me. I was able to remain unconfused and to be a good ally in this situation, and to help other family members understand what was going on. I was also able to talk with him about how the friend is still at risk, as much as everyone would like to think it抯 all 搊ver.?
In Co-counseling, we tend to work early and recent, and many of us have avoided working systematically on our teen years. This makes it difficult for any of us to think clearly and flexibly about teens. It is important to make an on-going decision to work on these years. For nearly all of us, they tend to be filled with isolation and painful memories. Many of us were left alone with our struggles around relationships and sex, alcohol and other substances. We抎 rather not stir up those feelings, yet it is necessary to re-evaluate every bit of these important years. Our lives and the lives of our precious young ones will improve rapidly as we decide to take this on.


　

2）By C M （USA）January 2007

I recently was able to successfully give a session to a teen who had tried to commit suicide. This experience made me realize how important it is to work on our own teen years. In addition I could clearly see that we ourselves will benefit greatly and in unexpected ways from discharging on that difficult period in our lives. Besides being able to think more clearly, we will get close relationships with teens, who are marvelous human beings.

This teen抯 suicide attempt was three weeks ago. She is not my child but I am close to her and was very involved. I have written about this experience on the lists, and I also wrote a powerful prose poem about that night in the hospital with her and about my own suicide attempt as a teenager.

My concern after the immediate crisis had passed was how to be real with her about what had happened. She was in my house nearly every day and I was tremendously restimulated. I had wave after wave of feelings: fury at the world and even her, at her family, terror about my own teen committing suicide, deep grief over my own teen years and new realizations about how poorly my own family had dealt with that. I knew she was still very much at risk and needed to be around our family. But I wished she would go away and stop restimulating me!

I decided to discharge all I could about my own teen years and to not attempt to talk to her until I could clean it up enough. I had a strong pull to 搕alk?to her, but every time I imagined the conversation, it was clearly filled with my own distress. Instead I decided to take the stance of warm welcome towards her and let her set the tone, while I did my own work.

In my two RC classes I had everyone work on suicide, to create some resource for myself. My co-counselors worked on their teen years and on suicide. It was hard work. Lots of hopelessness came up. Some days I was very depressed but I kept deciding to trust the process.

Then yesterday, this teen called me up and asked if she could come and talk to me. I hadn抰 considered that she was waiting until I was in good enough shape! She talked to me for a long time about how she was trying to set up her life so that she wasn抰 so unhappy. She was anxious about a decision to change schools. I listened to her. I noticed she kept looking at me long and beseechingly. She said, 揑 can抰 feel anything, I haven抰 been able to feel anything for years.?

I decided to read her my prose poem. I had done a good job of not blaming anyone, and noticing how good she and the other teens and her family were. I also wrote about my adult self going back to my own teen self and encouraging her to choose fully to live because one day she would be able to be close to this other teen and help her think about choosing to live.

I noticed as I read that she was tearing up (she never cries). When I finished, she put her head on my shoulder. I put my arms around her and she cried very hard for a long time. She said it was the most she had felt in many years. She said she was glad I had survived and that she wanted to figure out how to stay alive too.

I had spoken to her about co-counseling before; I talk about it frequently with the teens who are close to my son. This time, I said, we need to make a safe place for you to be able to feel like this. I gave her some RC literature to read. Then she sat on my bed in my room and did homework for a couple of hours until my son came home, while I worked at my desk. When he came home, they were more relaxed and happy together than I抎 seen in a while, and they stayed in the main part of the house with the rest of the family.

We made an agreement that if she ever wanted to talk to me "special" that she could say, "I need to talk in your room," which is where I counsel. That is now our special code for talking/discharging.

It was one of the happiest afternoons of my life. I learned that if I do my work, and make myself available, teens can tell and will freely come to us. They are very smart about where resource is and long to be close to us.

3)By H H (USA) January 2007

I thought the following might add to the discussion regarding suicide.

I read a number of years ago that there was a segment of the population in a particular country that had an unusually high suicide rate and the public health authorities wanted to determine if there were any causative factors in that group.  They found that  all of those that had committed suicide were born in the same hospital and that the hospital had an unusually high rate of medical interventions with children born there.  All those that committed suicide had had some medical intervention or trauma requiring intervention at birth.  The investigators found that they could predict the method that the individuals used to kill themselves by what happened at birth.  Those that were born anesthetized used drug overdoses,  those with cords around their necks hung themselves,  and those born  using metal forceps cut themselves.

I worked as a crisis intervention counselor for a number of years dealing with suicidal people.  I noted that a common factor in all those that I talked with was that they felt trapped and powerless.  My speculation is that for the people described above that part of the birth distress recording was feeling trapped and powerless, and that when life circumstances restimulated  those feelings,  the early distress forced them into acting out the early recording.

　

4) By K M (USA) January 2007

I have appreciated the discussion on this topic and would like to add a bit of my thinking.

Incidences of cutting and suicide for teens has markedly increased over the past 10 years in the US.
I think what we are seeing is the result of intensive oppressions (our collapsing society) and how it is impacting this particular group of human beings in the US.  I also suspect that what is happening in the US may be quite different than in other places in the world. The disconnection and isolation of teens from their families in the US is quite intense and pronounced during this recent period.

With the heavy mental health oppression that is in operation there is a lot of "blame" directed at the parents of teens showing this kind of distress/behavior . What the mental health system does is puts the blame and responsibility on families (parent oppression) rather than attempting to acknowledge the oppressive systems in operation that promote isolation of teens from their families.

For most teens (and young people in general) I believe their first choice of allies would be their parents even if their parents may not be free of restimulation. I find it valuable to remember that the systematically enforced isolation of teens from their families plays a huge role in how teen seek out help and whom they go to.


5) By B D (USA)  January 2007

I just wanted to add another story. I taught a discharge class for several  years for a group of people in the mental health system. One of the young women  was a "cutter." She cut herself frequently and reported feeling anxious  beforehand and relieved when she cut herself. I went early asking her what her  earliest memories were. It turns out she was an RH negative baby, and her  first post birth experience had been a blood transfusion -- getting rid of the  bad blood. It was a literal recording.