SUICIDE

With a national epidemic of Americans taking their own lives, especially among soldiers and teenagers, this is a subject that needs visiting with some relatively degree of a different insight. Here's what I have to offer: I recently attended a Memorial Service--church packed. Overwhelming sadness at the loss of a vibrant teenager.  I don't want to say typical Catholic service but mostly so.  Lasted almost three hours that I would have cut down to 45 minutes. Songs, good music and a choir from the youngster's High School. The priest gave a sermonette where we basically learned how much the young victim and her family had been involved in the Parish. Then her Dad, long time gone from the family, I think, gave some comments. Then a family friend detailed lots of activity with the yoingster, barely sixteen.   The last speaker told a moving story about how he had had an older sister who had died when he was very young. His family erased her memory. No pictures or anything anywhere to be found. And, as a sixty year old man with his parents gone, he decided that he wanted to get to know his sister. After much research, he found her grave in a sea of tombstones, unattended and uncared for. He righted that, of course. His point was that we need to keep  memories alive and remember the total person's life and just not this ending. (With her taking her life) 

There are those who think Catholics glorify the afterlife so teenagers think of it as a way out.  I don't think so and believe my own theory is probably closer to being correct: a kid does a rash and crazy/stupid thing (momentarily goes crazy). I think more than anything else, it is personality. 

Don't want to be giving psychology 101 but on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, I would guess for the youngster, her personality type is ESFJ (lots of research on this) who are basically extraverts, sensing (hands on) feeling and judging--these are Jungian terms. Jung basically said that we are born with a particular personality and there really is nothing to do about it. It doesn't mean we can't change but it means that understanding personality enables us to effect change if need be. 

From what I observed and happened at the service, I think she had this type of personality: servant, doing for others.  ESFJs are hurt by indifference to their efforts, however and the perceived hurt is greater than for most. ESFJs pay way too much attention to what people think, especially about social skills. As the late Albert Ellis and whom I called my mentor use to say, "nothing is worse that living your life by "shoulds." You should do this. You shouldn't that. 

I do think that what makes suicide so tragic is that if parents can get kids who might be prone to such desperation, past it, they will be OK. Unfortunately, if a kid attempts and is successful, there is no chaning their minds. It is a kind of temporary thing (being crazy) which becomes permanent. If a parent can recognize this great tendency to please, the need to be liked, pressures that are internalized, maybe they can be there. Unfortunately, the greatest parent, the one on top of everything, often simply can't prevent it. 

In a service like the Memorial, I always asked myself, is this helpful? To me, not really but to others, maybe. Few tell the truth or relate their real feelings in such a tragedy, plus there is such a range of emotion. Part of it has to be anger which in my experience usually goes unexpressed.  

God bless us all.