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I've been going through a bit of suicidal ideation as of late, and I think I can give my take on the issue.
I'd say that we tend to oversimplify the concept of "status" around here. We speak of it as though it were a conscious decision to conform to the, mostly, arbitrary ideas of society at large. I believe that a person can live in a culture that declares an action to be cowardly or otherwise sinful, and yet intuitively believe the action to be honorable under certain situations.
In my experience, the core motivation behind wanting to die (or live) is emotional, not logical. The issues that bother you in depression only seem relevant because of your mood. Happiness in such a situation comes, not from solving those problems, but from deciding they're not that important, which is something that is almost impossible when in the grip of depression. The reason I want to die when I'm depressed one instant is usually not the reason I want to die when I'm depressed the next.
That said, the motivation usually boils down to one of these things: self loathing, shame, insecurity, fear,discomfort, disappointment, a general feeling of wrongness, weariness, a sense of obligation, or existential angst.
Occasionally there won't even be an attempt to justify the incentive at all. I'll just think to myself "Oh, I notice that I want to die and any of the reasons I can think of for wanting that seem kind of arbitrary. On the other hand, the reasons I have for wanting to be alive seem just as arbitrary, so I may as well go with what I feel right now. In any case I'll be more consistent with my arbitrary preferences if I'm dead."
So, as you can see, there's no one impulse driving your thought process towards self destruction. That said, I can definitely say that something akin to status-seeking is often at work when I feel like offing myself. It's internalized to the point that neither I nor society can touch it. It's an ingrained sense of honor that can overrule logic, compassion, and conscious duty. It's not a Machiavellian attempt to manipulate what others think about you, but an inner drive pushing you to salvage what you can of the perceived justification people can have for saying things. It's not what they say that counts, but what they can say.
Earlier today, in fact, I got the distinct feeling that I was not "worthy" of trying to live like other people (total nonsense from a logical standpoint, but that didn't seem to bother me at the time), and that the right thing to do would be to die to make up for my audacity. The fact that I had no consequential reason to care about "worthiness" or the fact that I would only hurt all the people who actually gave enough of a damn to judge the way I live my life made absolutely NO difference to me. It wasn't that I didn't think of these consequences, because I did, but I judged them to be NONIMPORTANT!
The only thing that mattered to me was that people could plausibly reach certain conclusions upon learning of my actions and the expression of these conclusions would be socially permissible. I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like internalizing concern over status to me.
All fair points.
having the admins escalate to looking up IP addresses and contacting locals
How much can you narrow down my identity from a comment, I really have no idea? That'd probably only cause trouble for me, by the way.
trolled, attacked, or drama queened (anyone can say that they have contributions under another account)
There's really no reason someone couldn't do those things even if they did have contributions under another account. And I'm curious, what do you mean by "attack" other than trolling?
LWers attempting to follow up on his posted suicide note apparently did not solve the problem.
There is a difference between a suicide note by someone determined to kill himself and a plea for advice from someone who doesn't particularly want to die but might kill himself all the same. Your point about attempts to help plausibly backfiring still stands, though.
It changed the way I thought about everything. I had to reanalyze every belief I held and was far too busy doing that to be particularly sad.
More importantly though, it gave me hope. The general air of optimism and confidence and defiance made me feel proud to be a part of it. Before finding this place, the thing that bothered me most about life was that it was absolutely certain to end. After reading the Methods of Rationality, I realized that I didn't have to go down without a fight so long as I had even a chance of winning.
Besides all that, Lesswrong gave me a sense of belonging. People here seem so similar to me, which is a pretty rare thing. Some of them seem atypical in almost exactly the way I'm atypical. Their quirks are basically my quirks. And the way they act, you'd get the idea that they think those things actually make them better people. It's a pretty powerful emotion when you come across it for the first time.
Well, hugs do make everything better. Reciprocated.
So... this is a really personal issue and I'm not sure I have any business bringing it up here, but I'm going to anyway:
I've been on and off suicidal for the past 8 or so years (I'm 18, btw), but I've been especially depressed for the last couple of months. My exact emotions are pretty complicated and the motivations behind my death wish differ from moment to moment. 2 days ago I decided to commit to killing myself and I've spent the time between then and now readying myself for suicide. In the past 10 minutes I've had a change of heart brought on by guilt.
Help.
I imagine the wise thing to do would be to seek professional assistance, but I don't want to for various reasons. I've told several friends that I want to die, but they don't really believe me because of the casual way I bring it up and my disposition towards seeking attention. There was a case of suicide by someone in this community awhile ago and I believe some of the commenters on that thread offered to talk to anyone who was feeling self destructive, but that was some time ago, so I'd like to inquire as to whether the offer still stands.
I think I'm likely to have more in common with the average Lesswronger than with any volunteer I could talk to, which is why I'm leaving this post on this site. My depression all but disappeared for over 2 years after finding this place, so naturally it's the first place I turn to. I'm not exactly sure if I have anything to say about my problems or if talking will even help, but I need to do something to fend off the desire to kill myself, and this is my way of committing. I'd appreciate anything anyone here has to offer in the way of advice.
Again, I'm truly sorry if this issue is inappropriate here and I swear I'm not trolling. I normally use a different account here, but I didn't want to associate anything rationality-based I have to say in the future with this problem, so I re-registered under this name.
Thank you.