September is Suicide Prevention month.
September is Suicide Prevention month, and every day is suicide prevention day
Recently in September 2015 I at the request of a Facebook friend copied the statement below to my Facebook page.
If I don’t see your name, I’ll understand. May I ask my family and friends wherever you might be, to kindly copy and paste this status for one hour to give a moment of support to all of those who have family problems, health struggles, job issues, worries of any kind and just needs to know that someone cares? Do it for all of us, for nobody is immune. I hope to see this on the walls of all my family and friends just for moral support. I know some will!!! I did it for a friend and you can too. You have to copy and paste this one, NO sharing! I’ll post it in a comment so you can copy and share it from there!
That post elicited some likes, some shares and a disparaging in my eyes comment that I personally found hurtful and discourteous and it was that comment that decided me to write this post. Now I am not going to repeat the comment to you here, it has served its purpose for whatever reason and as I have said in the past and will again ‘If people do not want to read what I personally post on Facebook then they can either scroll past it or delete me as a friend’.
Prof. Ella Arensman, President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) inaugurated the 13th World Suicide Prevention Day 2015 with a positive message of reaching out and saving lives to prevent suicide across the globe. You can listen to her message below on the link to the IASP website
So why is suicide prevention important in my life?
To me there differing reasons as to why someone may contemplate suicide, or taking / ending their life: they may feel that there isn’t any other option, they may be overwhelmed with thoughts feelings and emotions not their own, or it may be a cry for help, that there is something wrong in their lives that ‘they cannot’ fix .
To share my story with you, I not only contemplated suicide 42 years ago I actively took steps to make it happen. Why? What was so bad in my life as a 23 year old mother of 4 that I would consider taking my own life?
My logic in the violent schizophrenic abusive relationship I was in was if I ‘wasn’t around’ then my parents would need to step in and take care of my children, obviously I didn’t succeed and I was ‘signed out’ of hospital by my children’s father when questions began to be asked about the bruises and scars I wore. A second attempt some 6 months later was not planned and was the result of my standing swallowing one pain killer after another to ease my physical pain after another in the seemingly never ending round of physical mental and emotional abuse.
A quick thinking ‘friend’ asked ‘how many of those has she had and another trip to hospital ensued, Again as soon as questions were asked I was rapidly ‘signed out’ of the hospital system and we ‘moved from the area.
I have never contemplated doing so again and yet I have been surrounded by suicides and suicide attempts for the last 40 years.
Dear friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and family including a much loved cousin and more recently a grandson have all been lost to suicide.
In other instances suicide attempts, a suicide watch in a goal cell, visits to psychiatric units to a partner and an adopted sister, conversations with young people who felt that the world as we know it wanted too much from them and that they didn’t have it to give.
Working as a psychic medium for much of my life the ‘souls’ who came through with messages for loved ones asking me to tell them ‘ that is wasn’t my fault, the voices in my head made me do it’ and the decimation here in Australia of so many young people in the Aboriginal communities to suicide also.
So for me every day is Suicide Prevention day, every day the smile that you share with a friend or a stranger may be the reason that they live for another day, every day reaching out your hand to someone with anxiety or depression may be the one thing that gives them the strength to remain.
I will look at Anxiety and Depression as different subjects however I will leave you with a thought that may assist you or someone that you love.
As a Holistic energy practitioner I have had an awareness of the many clients and friends I have seen with ‘anxiety’ in many forms. Susan and I will be releasing a ‘be free from anxiety’ program called The 7 Steps to Freedom shortly which contains some unique ‘ spiritual and metaphysical’ tools to assist people to release their anxieties easily and effortlessly.
In support of this I have started a FB Community called Anxiety Need Not Be A Life Sentence at the link below. If this resonates with you I would invite you to please join us or to share the information with those to whom it may be of assistance
https://www.facebook.com/groups/anxietyneednotbealifesentence/
(IASP) www.facebook.com/IASPinfo
