“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.”
“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.”
A powerful deterrant to suicide is to find a way to remember the people, things and experiences that matter to you. Another way to say this is to think about the ways that you still appreciate life. This is very powerful because in your struggle with suicide, thinking about one or more reasons to keep on living can strengthen your survival instinct.
To help you get in touch with what is tethering you to life, I encourage you to ask two questions:
I’ve asked members of my peer support group, my friends, and my YouTube viewers these questions, and they found the process to be helpful. Below is a list of reasons for staying alive that I’ve drawn from those groups, as well as answers that Marsha Linehan (creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy) and other researchers at the University of Washington heard as they developed a “Reasons for Living Scale.”
As you read through their answers, if you find a reason for living that you identify with, write them down. You can use a Reasons to Keep on Living Journal page. The act of creating this list will strengthen your “psychological immune system” and help you to persevere.
Keep your list in a place where you can easily find it, and consider it an unfinished document that you can add to as you are reminded of additional reasons to keep on living. You can also write down any reasons to keep living that come to you from within.
Love and connection are fundamental human needs. Therefore, having people in our lives we care about, and who care about us, exerts a powerful pull towards continuing to live and gives us the ability to endure suffering.
There is a line in Proverbs 29:18 that says, “When there is no vision, the people perish.” The converse is also true. When people have a vision, they are more likely to embrace life. The psychiatrist Victor Frankl, while enduring the Auschwitz concentration camp, observed that the people who survived were those who had some purpose or mission they wanted to accomplish after the war.
Over the years, I have seen people bond with their pets as deeply as they do with their children. I have witnessed a number of instances in which people on the brink of suicide have changed their minds at the last minute because they could not bear to abandon their dog, cat, horses, or other animals. If you are deeply bonded with your pet, that is a reason to stay alive. I share stories of how pets can save lives in Your Pets Can Keep You Here.
When I asked one of my group members how he had survived a depressive episode, he said that he planned his life so that he had events to look forward to or things to accomplish. If you have a positive experience that is calling to you from your future, it provides an alternative to believing that things will never get better.
Sometimes, people make it through suicidal episodes based on their will to live and their tenacity to not give up. This survival instinct has been programmed into our biology by nature and evolution. If you have such a strong attachment to life, that bodes well for your future healing.
One day in the middle of my depressive episode I asked my counselor, “If all I am doing is trying to survive from day to day, how do I find any quality to my life?”
“The quality is in the little things,” she replied.
How true! Shortly after her comment, Portland was unexpectedly blessed with a sunny day. I beheld with awe and wonder the magnificent pink and red hues of the sunset. Having moments like these affirms that life could still be beautiful, if only for an instant. I realized that even short-lived daily surprises were a reason to stay alive.
In another instance, a member of my depression support group shared a similar experience. She was in the middle of a suicidal episode.
“Did anything positive happen during the week?” the group asked.
She replied, “Yes, something did happen. One day, I saw two little rainbows. One was brighter than the other. It was amazing. I suppose that’s a reason to stay alive.”
After reading through these reasons to keep on living, I hope you have identified with some of them and/or have thought of a few of your own. You can write them down in a Reasons to Keep on Living Journal page.
If you have read through these lists and do not identify with any of the reasons to continue living, don’t give up. Instead of finding reasons to live, it might be easier for you to find reasons for not wanting to die. These are called “deterrents to suicide.”
An effective way of collecting and making visual your reasons for living is by creating a Hope Kit. Look over the ideas you listed about why you want to stay alive, and consider what items might represent them. This may include photographs, letters, song lyrics, poems, childhood toys, souvenirs, or other mementos. Give yourself some uninterrupted time, and allow yourself to be as creative as possible.
Place them in a scrapbook or container where you can refer to them to remind yourself of reasons for you to live.
The process of putting together your Hope Kit can be self-affirming and lead to finding new reasons to live that you had not yet listed. Consider your Hope Kit a work in progress. You can start with as little as one or two items and return to it as you find items to add.
You can find a downloadable version of this Create a Hope Kit Activity in the Resources page.
The content of this website is for educational purposes only and is not meant to replace diagnosis or treatment by a qualified mental health professional.