🔒 Challenging the Stigma of Suicide: Cultivating Compassion and Understanding

Transcript

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Hi there.

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First of all, I want to thank you for being one of the people that supports me financially.

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It means a great deal to me.

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It not only helps to put out the podcast, but it helps me know that you find the content to be worthwhile, so I appreciate that very much.

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I want to talk today about suicide, and this comes from someone who went to Vermein Anonymous, but she said she wanted me to address suicide and beliefs and stigmas associated with it.

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Where did they come from?

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How do we make people understand that suicide is a disease, not a sin that results in punishment?

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And this actually breaks my heart.

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It's bad enough when we lose a loved one to go through the grief that we go through.

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We often, especially if we're a parent we go through guilt.

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We find ways to blame ourselves, but suicide seems to carry a special stigma that's put on us by society.

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I'm going to talk about where that comes from and how we can break it.

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So, as I said, it's very, very important to address this topic because I've seen it really rip at families, rip at parents who have lost loved ones and people who have lost spouses and other people to suicide.

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When it even comes to suicide.

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Think about the language that we use.

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A lot of us grew up with the language that someone committed suicide, committing as in committing a crime or committing a sin.

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So even that language gives stigma to suicide.

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So one of the things I want to say language is very important and I think it's very important that we move away from that language and we say that someone died from suicide.

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We can say someone took their life, took their own life, but we don't want to use the word committed, because suicide should never be considered a sin or a crime.

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And I looked it up a little bit earlier and suicide is still a crime in some places in the world, which is really interesting that it's a crime to take your own life.

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Assisted suicide is even a crime still in most places in the US.

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So let's talk about some of the myths about suicide and the type of people who take their own lives.

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One of the things is sometimes people think that people who take their own lives are weak, that they're cowards, that they've taken the cowardly way out.

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That's a real oversimplification of suicide.

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The thing is, often when people commit suicide there I go commit suicide.

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Often when people take their lives, it's for a myriad of reasons.

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It's for a number of reasons.

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It can be for mental illness.

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Sometimes they even get to the point where they feel like the world would be better off without them and it's actually an act of bravery to say I'm going to sacrifice my life so other people will be happier.

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Now, of course, this is not a realistic thing that people think, but that's often the way people think when they take their lives.

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Often it's a momentary thing, it's an in the moment type of thing, and we've had people that have come through in medium readings and said I didn't really mean it, I was just in the moment and I did something to take my own life, and they actually regret it almost right away.

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So we want to understand that suicide is not a cowardly thing, it's not a selfish thing, it's not a matter of someone not thinking about other people around them.

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Often they really are thinking about other people, maybe even more than you think.

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So the thing about suicide is that it has a ripple effect.

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Of course, the person who takes their own life.

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Oftentimes we stigmatize that person in the ways I talked about before, but also it can give stigma to the family, and that comes about for a number of reasons.

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Again, people, sometimes in the family, will think, well, I should have recognized this, I should have seen it coming.

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And even we can have an unspoken thing to say you know, why didn't you know that this person was so desperate?

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Well, none of us is responsible for anyone else's actions.

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First of all, we need to really understand that, that we can't prevent other people from taking actions themselves, especially people who are grown, but even children living in our homes.

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I mean, when a child is very young, we can control their actions by putting them on time out or physically restraining them.

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But it quickly comes to the point where people are going to do what they want and we can't control them and we shouldn't have to take responsibility for that.

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So there's also what comes about with suicide.

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As I mentioned earlier, there was some legal things around suicide and we use that language.

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But let's talk about the religious beliefs that add to the stigma of suicide the belief that suicide is the unforgivable sin, the sin that once someone commits, someone can never repent of.

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Therefore, they're immediately and eternally damned, and that's a belief that some people still hold to this day.

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Now I'm glad to say that many religions are moving away from this.

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My understanding is that even the Catholic Church has started to move away from this, and I think that's really important.

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Let's think about this from the perspective of a loving and caring God.

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When someone takes their life, it's because they feel like the pain is too great.

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It's because they feel like maybe they're getting out of the way.

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They're not doing it as an act of defiance.

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It's not something to be punished, and I don't believe that people who take their own lives are punished in any way.

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I think, if anything, they might receive extra special care when they cross the other side, because they need that extra special care.

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The religions come to this conclusion that suicide is a mortal sin.

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I believe it's a matter of control.

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What's the ultimate way to control someone is to say if you do something, I'm not going to punish you, I don't have to catch you, but the God is going to punish you.

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God is going to punish you eternally.

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That's the ultimate control over someone.

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So if we want to really convince someone to not take an act, we'd say that if you do this, that God is going to punish you.

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So I believe that this is where this doctrine of eternal hell came from, and I believe as well as doctrine, of if you take your own life, that God is going to send you this eternal hell.

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So that's not a very compassionate view, that's not a compassionate view at all.

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What would a compassionate, loving being do when you cross into the afterlife and you found this world so hard that you've taken your life?

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They would love you, they would comfort you, they would offer you rest and they would offer you peace.

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Now I believe that when we come into this world, that we do have a plan.

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And I think it's really interesting because I've heard many people say that we plan every aspect of our life.

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We plan sicknesses, we plan Drug addiction, we plan divorces, we plan losing a job, we plan all these types of things and if there are no accidents or anything that's unplanned.

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But they'll say the one exception is suicide, and that's how much taboo the word has in our society.

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We never, ever want to encourage someone or give anyone quote permission to take their own life.

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And I don't want to give anyone permission to take their own life and I certainly don't want to encourage anyone to take their own life.

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I just find it's an interesting observation to me.

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The people will say, and I've heard people say this, I've heard Mediums say this, I've heard people that are afterlife experts say this that everything can be planned except for taking one's own life.

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And I just wonder, why would that be an exception?

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Because we plan other things that are tragic to our families, that people go through, that they grow from, and and especially tragic thing is when someone takes their own life, especially tragic for the people who are left behind.

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So I'm not saying that that's never planned and it's something that you'll have to decide whether you think it is or not.

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But that idea of of saying that it's never planned again, I believe was a way of trying to control other people so we can.

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We're suddenly saying if you take your own life, you're breaking the plan.

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Now I don't know if it's ever planned, I know it's not planned for me.

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I can speak for myself and I know that.

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What I do know is that when someone does take their own life, it does have a massive ripple effect.

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It does have an in northern or northern amount of grief and pain and suffering that falls on the family.

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So I would encourage people, if all possible, stick it out.

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We came here for a reason and I think some souls Sometimes bite off more than they can chew.

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I think a lot of us feel that way at some point.

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I think all of us probably feel that way at some point.

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When people start hearing about soul planning, they often say why would I ever plan this?

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I would never, ever plan this.

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So there's, I think, there.

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I know their times have come about where I think almost everybody Universally thinks about like, how do I get out of this place?

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So that's not a it's not an unusual thing to be a human and to feel overwhelmed.

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So I like to say, in terms of what we can do about this, moving past this Sigma, it's first of all, let's reject the dogma from society and from religion that says this is a taboo subject that we can't talk about.

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Let's reject the guilt that's put on the person who has taken their own life and the people who are left behind.

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Let's not blame anybody for it.

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Let's not say that it's a sin or it's a crime.

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Let's have open conversations about Suicide and the causes of suicide and how we can prevent suicide.

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Let's support families of people who have Members of the families who've taken their own lives.

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Let's encourage them to be open and then talk about it and let them feel supportive and not let them make them feel isolated, which often happens to the families as well.

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We can build support networks and I know there are a lot of support networks for Families who are left behind from suicide.

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And again, you know, education, education, I think, is always the key understanding things, understanding the reasons why people take their lives, understanding the mindset they were in and showing compassion for them and for their families.

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So that's what I want to say about suicide today.

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I've talked with many parents who have lost children to suicide and my heart always breaks for them, especially because I know they're carrying a little bit extra burden that we as a society put on them and I want to do as much as I can to remove that burden and to make it lighter for them.

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So thanks for listening.

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If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know and maybe I'll answer my next podcast.

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Have a great day.