Q&A: ‘Find your reasons for living’ to counter suicidal thoughts during the holidays
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Key takeaways:
- Feelings of inadequacy can be remedied by setting realistic, achievable goals, according to an expert.
- It is important to validate the feelings of someone who experiences feelings of hopelessness or suicidality.
Results of a decades-long study recently published in BMJ found that suicide risk increased on New Year’s Day in most countries, while the risk varied by country on Christmas.
Healio spoke with Jonathan B. Singer, PhD, LCSW, professor in the School of Social Work at Loyola University Chicago, for his insight on these findings as well as recommendations to overcome feelings of suicidality as the end-of-year holidays approach.
Healio: What is your assessment of the “broken-promise effect theory” referenced in the study, which states that people may postpone suicide in hopes of a new beginning but also may feel more vulnerable at the start of a new cycle such as Mondays or New Year’s Day?
Singer: To my knowledge, it has not been empirically validated, but that does not discount its usefulness. The theory has been offered as an explanation for holiday variations in suicide deaths since at least the late 1990s.
Another explanation could be that people who are suicidal see themselves as burdens to others and recognize that their deaths during a major holiday would add to people’s burdens, so they postpone their suicide deaths until after the holidays. A third explanation is that people who are feeling despondent and like life is not worth living have a brief reprieve during the holidays, but then have a rebound of suffering and despair after the holidays.
This suffering is compounded because it is not shared by most of the people around them, making their sense of being alone in their suffering that much more acute.
Healio: What can one do to address feelings of inadequacy or hopelessness that may arise ahead of the holiday season?
Singer: Inadequacy and hopelessness are often linked to a sense of failure. One solution is to set achievable goals.
For example, an achievable goal might be to get out of bed in the morning. One way to trick the body into doing that is to set an alarm on your phone and put it across the room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. If you don’t need to set an alarm, put your phone across the room anyway, so that you will be motivated to get up and grab it. When you have the phone, keep moving.
If you are feeling stressed out about being around harsh and critical relatives, find a support partner with whom you can share via text or phone call. Instead of being surprised that people are saying or doing things that are unkind, harsh, critical or dismissive, make a game out of it. You and your support partner can come up with the number of times a certain person says or does something every day, or how many times during a visit something will come up. Whoever wins gets a prize.
This turns an unpleasant experience into a game that, in the best-case scenario, turns into something you look forward to experiencing to win whatever prize you want to win.
Healio: What steps do you recommend for those who may experience suicidality around the start of the new year?
Singer: Research suggests that even for those who experience chronic suicidal thoughts, an active suicidal crisis will last only a few weeks. Those few weeks feel like an eternity but knowing that the crisis will be over can give you a timeframe within which to take extraordinary measures to keep yourself alive.
Find your reasons for living. Our reasons for living don’t have to be noble and socially acceptable; they just have to work long enough to get us through our suicidal crisis. At that point, it will be easier to recognize reasons for living, such as “I wouldn’t want my niece to grow up without me,” or “I love seeing the sunrise on a warm summer’s day.”
Healio: What can family members, friends and caregivers do to help those who may feel suicidal?
Singer: The first thing to do is to be realistic about your ability to support your loved one who might be struggling with suicidal thoughts or behaviors. The holidays are as stressful as they are wonderful. If your loved one is feeling suicidal in part because they feel like they are a burden, and you are too stressed out to let them know that they are not a burden, you could inadvertently contribute to their sense of burdensomeness by being impatient, dismissive or making their pain about you.
If you are not in a good place to support them, your task is to help find another outlet. This might be a therapist, another family member or services like the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For transgender and nonbinary loved ones, the Trans Lifeline, which is not a part of the 988 system, can help.
If you are in a place where you can provide the love and support that would be needed, family members and friends can practice asking some difficult questions.
A common reaction when people are talking about how difficult their lives are is to be dismissive — often out of a place of love — but dismissive nevertheless. Validation might be as simple as saying, “It sounds really stressful and hopeless right now. I’m so glad you shared that with me.”
Loved ones should expect to change their schedules, make compromises and be present in ways they might not typically need to, especially for adults, in order to support someone through a suicidal crisis.
On occasion, loved ones can feel angry or resentful, or feel like the person struggling with suicidal thoughts is being manipulative. In her book, “Loving Someone With Suicidal Thoughts,” Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, reminds us that we can feel like we’re being manipulated even if our loved one is not actually manipulating us. The distinction is important because it reminds us that we can attribute malintent to actions in which there is none.
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For more information:
Jonathan B. Singer, PhD, LCSW, is a professor in the School of Social Work at Loyola University Chicago and founder and host of “The Social Work Podcast.” He can be reached at jsinger1@luc.edu; Facebook: @swpodcast; X (Twitter): @socworkpodcast; and Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/jbsinger.bsky.social.