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Don’t Believe What Your Brain is Telling You

When your mind is telling you that you should end your life, chemical imbalances inside your brain have created a distorted view of your present and future circumstances. This distorted view of life means that you are likely to see yourself, your experiences, and your future in a negative way. Comedian Lily Tomlin echoed this mindset when she said, “Things will get worse before they get worse.”  

Just as an underweight person with an eating disorder may look in the mirror and see themselves as obese, those who are in the grips of suicidal despair cannot see themselves or their circumstances clearly.

When I was suicidal, my therapist told me, “Douglas, don’t believe what your brain is telling you. Your brain is under the influence of a ‘drug’ called despair, which is distorting its view of reality. As a result, your feelings of hopelessness do not accurately reflect your true potential for recovery.” 

Psychologists call these distorted perceptions “cognitive distortions.” I’ve listed some common ones below to help you see how they can take hold in your thinking. If you identify with any of these beliefs, it is important that you challenge them and replace them with realistic beliefs. To help you see how your distorted perceptions can be changed, I have placed an empowering belief after each distorted perception.

Distorted perception #1:

“I Am Trapped And There Is No Way Out. Ending My Life Is The Only Way To End My Suffering.”

When I was suicidal, I felt as if I was in a tunnel with both exits sealed off. If you feel trapped and see no way of getting out of your pain, you may conclude that suicide is the only way out. In this case, it may seem that taking your life would be not an act of self-destruction, but an act of self-love. 

New Belief:

“Whatever I Am Feeling Right Now Won’t Last Forever. I Have Other Options Besides Dying By Suicide.”

Even though you may feel trapped, everything in life is subject to change, including suicidal states. Thus, what you are going through is not going to last forever. Circumstances can shift more quickly than you might imagine. If you can keep yourself alive, unexpected good will come into your life.

Distorted perception #2:

“ I Am A Burden To Others.”

It is true that having a mental illness can affect friends and family. As a result, you may feel like you are a burden to others. For example, your distress may prevent you from earning money, and you may be financially dependent on others. 

New Belief:

“I Deserve To Be Cared For.”

When people struggling with suicide have told me that they were a burden to others, they have not realized that people who were supporting them were doing so because they cared. Another way to release your sense of burden may be to imagine you had a physical illness such as diabetes or cancer. Caring for someone with mental illness is no different than caring for someone with a physical illness. 

Distorted perception #3:

“The World Would Be Better Off Without Me.”

To better understand this perception, I spoke with a friend who came very close to jumping from a bridge in 2014. I asked her why she thought the world would be better without her, and this is what she shared: 

“I feel useless to others.”

“I am taking up space and air that someone else could use.” 

“Other people would be better off because they wouldn’t worry about me.”

“Hearing about my pain is bringing them down.“

“When I die, my friends and family would move on.”

New Belief:

“I Have Value.”

You may conclude that the world would be better off without you. But is this true? The fact is that there is nobody quite like you, and therefore no one can take your place. You are special and unique as an individual.

You may think that you are just taking up space. However, you may be having a positive impact on others that you are not even aware of. When I attended the funeral of my friend, Scott, who died by suicide, over a hundred people attended. These were all people whose lives Scott had touched. Clearly, he was making a difference.

You may feel useless right now, but that is because your suicidal pain is distorting your sense of worth. Don’t underestimate your value to the world.

Distorted perception #4:

“I Have No Future. I See Nothing To Look Forward To.”

When people are suicidal, they see no prospects for their future. This is why my therapist once told me that suicidal thinking is “a failure of the imagination.”

New Belief:

“There Is A Better Future For Me; I Just Can’t See It Yet.”

In 1997, I wanted to die because I thought I was washed up as a writer. To my surprise, after I came out of my suicidal episode, my inspiration returned and I wrote a memoir about my experience: “When Going Through Hell… Don’t Stop.” In addition to writing my memoir, I was inspired to create a website on depression recovery; something I had never considered before.

The fact is that when people emerge from their suicidal episodes, all kinds of opportunities open up that they would not have imagined.

As survivor researcher Julius Siegal wrote:

“In a remarkable number of cases, those who have suffered and prevail find that after their ordeal they begin to operate at a higher level than ever before…. The terrible experiences of our lives, despite the pain they bring, may become our redemption.”

Notice Moments of Grace

Whenever people ask me what being suicidal feels like, I reply, “It’s like being in hell.” By using the word “hell,” I mean a state of ongoing, agonizing pain that seems to always be with you.

During a suicidal episode, I asked my therapist Pat what she thought of this metaphor for describing suicidal pain. She replied, “Douglas, I know that your pain feels relentless, but if you pay attention, you will notice a very important fact about the nature of pain—pain comes in waves!”

Upon hearing these words, I remembered the grief I felt after my divorce. There were times when I was so overwhelmed by sorrow and loss that I could barely function. After a period of time, however, the pain and the longing would sometimes let up, perhaps for a day or two, until the heartache returned and the cycle began all over again. 

“This is the body-mind’s built-in protective mechanism,” Pat explained. “If our pain were truly nonstop, we wouldn’t survive. And so we are granted a few gaps in between the intense sensations to stop and catch our breath.”

I call these unexpected periods of emotional pain relief “moments of grace.” Noticing and appreciating such moments of grace can be very powerful in helping you through times of suicidal crisis. Let me give you two examples.

Musical Transcendence

During my second suicidal episode, in an attempt to get myself out of the house, I spent an evening attending a church service that featured the celestial chants of the Taize monks, founders of an intentional spiritual community in the south of France. I was particularly moved by the refrain: “Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away…” As my voice merged with the voices of others in the church, I was momentarily catapulted into ecstasy. Like a trapeze artist balanced on the high wire, I stood suspended above the abyss of my suicidal thoughts, safe from harm. 

Having moments like this was akin to making deposits into an “emotional bank account.” Later, when I sank back into my depression, I would draw upon my stored memories of such positive moments and affirm that life could still be beautiful, even if only for an instant.

Joy in Melbourne

While suffering from severe, nonstop depression, my friend Russell was driving with friends up the eastern coast of Australia en route to Melbourne. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and he was sitting in the back of a convertible, feeling the wind blowing through his hair and the spray of the ocean on his face. Suddenly, Russell started to feel joyful–something he had not experienced in nine months. The combination of being with friends and experiencing the ecstasy of nature lifted him out of his suicidal depression. 

Over the next year, Russell would recall that memory any time he began to feel despair. Doing so kept him afloat until he finally emerged from his depressive ordeal.

The Moments of Grace Diary

After Russell told me about his experience, I suggested he keep  what I dubbed a “Moments of Grace Diary.” I asked him to notice when he had any relief from his suicidal thoughts and then jot down the experience in his diary. I also asked him to write down the time of day the respite occurred and how long the relief lasted. 

After he did this for a week, Russell had an astounding insight—that even though he had been reporting that his pain was occurring non-stop, it really wasn’t. Writing and reading these entries gave Russell an alternate story to the one that he had been telling himself. And because every thought has a neurochemical equivalent, the act of writing and reading over his “Moments of Grace Diary” literally rewired Russell’s brain in a way that allowed him to survive the most difficult parts of his episode.

Growth Through Pain

One day many years ago I was thinking about how difficult my life had been. I was thirty-seven years old and had failed at a number of relationships. I still couldn’t support myself. And I’d had two severe depressive episodes, each one leading to hospitalizations. It looked like my life was going nowhere.

Then, one day I heard the story of the butterfly. A man was working in his garden one day when he happened upon a chrysalis, also known as a cocoon. He knew inside the cocoon was a butterfly trying to become a butterfly.  Eager to watch the butterfly spread its wings and take its first flight the man took a small set of shears from his pocket and cut a slit the entire length of the cocoon so that the little butterfly could easily slip through.

However, when the butterfly eventually crawled out of the cocoon, it was crumpled up with shriveled wings that could not be used for flying. What the well-meaning gardener had failed to realize was that the butterfly needed the struggle to escape the cocoon in order to experience its transformation. The moral: some things can only be gained through struggle.  

Over the past forty years,  I have discovered this universal truth. Everything I have learned about overcoming depression has resulted from my struggles to overcome the hellish depressive episodes I have endured. In Chapter 3 of my memoir When Going Through Hell… Don’t Stop!  I introduced my survival plan for going through hell. How did this survival plan come about? It came about because day after day, as I was on the verge of taking my life, I was forced to develop coping strategies to keep me alive.

Of course, this truth of growth through pain does only apply to me. Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, started AA as a way to heal his own alcoholism. Joe Dispensa, who teaches mind-body healing internationally, started his work because he was forced to find a way to heal from a broken back. Nelson Mandela, the first president of South Africa to be elected in a multi-racial election, used his twenty-seven years in prison to develop compassion to be able to relate to all South Africans. After he was released he said,“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

Think about how a pearl grows inside an oyster. A grain of sand causes irritation and in response, the oyster produces a pearl. If it were not for the irritation, there would be no beautiful pearl. The same is true for us. If we want to build physical muscle we continually challenge the muscles to deal with higher levels of resistance or weight, causing them to sustain damage or injury. When the body repairs the muscles their mass and their size increase. 

Similarly, in the process of going through our trials and tribulations, we are more likely to grow new emotional or spiritual muscles. As the philosopher Nietzsche famously said, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

Of course, growing through pain is never easy. It is almost always in hindsight that we can see the teaching or the lesson in a challenge. During the pain, it is normal to ask “Why is this happening to me?”  When I was going through my hell, I would ask again and again, “What purpose could this horrible suffering have? My normally positive mind has been destroyed by this depression; I cannot hold a positive thought about myself or my future.” Little did I know that what I learned from overcoming this challenge would eventually lead me down a new path of writing and teaching that I never could have imagined.  

Therefore, looking back from the present moment, if I could go back in time and speak to the Douglas who was struggling, I would tell him,” Have faith, hold on. You can make it. When the time is right, the purpose and meaning of this test will be revealed to you.” And, as it turned out, this is exactly what occurred.

If You Find Yourself in Hell, Learn to Tread Fire

In many of my works, I have described the experience of undergoing a depressive episode as living in hell. Hence the title of my memoir is When Going Through Hell Don’t Stop!

I recently read a powerful description of this depressive hell, written by David Foster Wallace, one of the most talented writers of my lifetime. A literary genius who struggled with depression and suicidal ideation, Foster Wallace described the suicidal state as being tapped in a burning high-rise. He writes:

“Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s the terror of the flames.”

The first time I read this, I said to myself, “Wow!  What an amazing and accurate description. The suicidal person is stuck between a rock and a hard place.” But upon further thought, I realized that perhaps Foster Wallace was not totally accurate in his comparison. If you are in a burning building, you are going to die no matter what you do. Whether you stay put or jump out, either way your life will end. 

However, the suicidal pain that Foster Wallace refers to with his metaphor of the flames, in and of itself, is not fatal. The pain may feel unbearable, but it is not going to kill you. Even though the pain itself cannot kill you, it can become so intense and so unrelenting that death is viewed as the only means of escape. 

So what can you do if you are trapped in that burning building? You need to learn to tread fire. What do I mean by treading fire? Just as treading water means keeping your head above water until you can get to shore or be rescued, treading fire means keeping your head above the flames of suicidal pain by finding ways to dial back the pain to make it bearable. Sometimes just a five percent reduction can be enough to catch your breath and live to see another day. 

Like anything else, treading fire can be a learned skill. Here’s an example of a technique I used during my episode of agitated depression whenever I would catastrophize about the future during my anxiety attacks. My mind would jump ahead into the future, and see only more suffering without end. “If this is what I have to look forward to,” I would tell myself,  “I might as well end my life right now. “

Wherever I  noticed that I was catastrophizing, I would say out loud “CANCEL CANCEL”. I would then take a deep breath, feel my feet on the ground, and look around at the objects in my room to ground myself in the present.  I would then replace my thoughts of fear with positive self-talk and constructive action. For example, I might replace the statement “I’ll never get better” with “This too shall pass” and then distract myself by calling a friend, taking a brisk walk around the block, or listening to music.

This strategy is one of the ways that I used to tread fire.  Other strategies include social support, exercise, prayer, and spirituality, treatments for depression, etc. I’ve created some videos that talk about these strategies; you can link to them below. 

Going through a fiery trial can be seen as a process of transformation in which you become a stronger, wiser, and more compassionate person. I am reminded of a verse from the 18th Century Hymn, “How Firm a Foundation”, where author John Rippon refers to dross, the impurities that are separated when a metal such as gold is heated, leaving behind the pure substance. 

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie
My grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply.
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.

So if you find yourself in a fire of hopelessness and despair, you don’t have to jump to escape the flames. You can find ways to tread fire until the flames subside. Remember, the flames surrounding you are not permanent. If you can reach out for support and hold on, like the Phoenix bird, you will rise from the ashes.

Your Pain is Not Forever

“Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.”

Mignon McLaughlin

When a person is deeply depressed or suicidal, they are faced with agonizing, unbearable pain. If you are struggling to cope with this pain, you might be thinking to yourself, “If only I knew when this pain was going to end. Then perhaps I could tolerate it.” 

Psychologically, humans can be much more resilient if they know when a challenging time will end, because they can hold on and focus on that endpoint. For example, if you were diagnosed with a serious medical disease but were told by your doctor that on August 31st your disease would go into remission, you would no doubt start counting down those days. As you moved closer to the endpoint, you would become increasingly relieved, anticipating the end of your anguish.

But when someone is depressed or suicidal,  there is no doctor or therapist who can say with any certainty when their suffering will cease. And without a clear vision of a better future, after months or years of suffering, it is easy to conclude: Perhaps this pain will never end. Perhaps I am stuck inside this hell forever. If that is the case, then it would be better to end my life right now then continue to suffer for an eternity.

You Are In A Season

If you are thinking that your pain is forever, one way to change your outlook is to remember that the only constant in the universe is change—i.e. This too shall pass.” Another perspective that can help you to reduce your suicidal pain is to think of your life as a series of seasons. In the song “Turn, Turn, Turn,“ written by the singer-songwriter Pete Seeger, the chorus goes: “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Right now you are in the season of darkness. You are in a season of hopelessness. But just as spring follows winter, your season of darkness will give way to a season of light and rebirth. 

In the 23rd Psalm of the Bible, King David says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” The keyword in this statement is the word through.  David is walking through the valley. He is not pitching his tent in the valley. He is just passing through. The valley is not his home.

In the same way, your current state of mind is not your permanent home; it is only your temporary residence. Therefore, your best survival strategy is to keep moving forward as best you can. Eventually, this dark season will end. This is why Winston Churchill, who battled with depression, said, “When going through hell, keep going.” 

Tell yourself you are having an episode of depression or suicidal pain

Based on what I have said so far, if you are feeling great despair, I suggest that you begin to view yourself as being in a depressive “episode.” Much like an episode of your favorite TV mini-series, your current episode also has a structure — a beginning, a middle, and an end. When you say to yourself or others, “I am in the middle of a depressive episode,” you are communicating to your subconscious mind that your suffering is finite and that one day it will end. 

Focus on the present, not the future

If you are in the middle of a depressive or suicidal episode, it is natural to wonder, “When and how will I feel better?” If you ask that question, your imbalanced brain will lie to you and say, “Never! You are never going to get better.”

Therefore, rather than worry about what is to come, ask yourself: “What can I do to change the way I feel right now?” In doing so, you shift your attention from the future to the present-moment coping strategies. For example, you could call a friend, take a walk around the block, or listen to some calming music. The more you can direct your mind away from a catastrophic future, the less despair you will feel.

In summary, I want to repeat that your pain is not forever. Like the food that you buy in the grocery store, your pain has an expiration date. Your episode has an endpoint. As a result, you will not always be feeling this way.