abnormal psychology, depression, life, mental abuse, mental health, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, suicude

Is Suicide a Selfish Act ?….People who post opinions on the internet about suicide,… who have no idea what they are talking about

Suicide is a last resort. It is not a selfish act designed to inflict guilt or punishment upon others. It is not a selfish act in the way that I have seen it talked about online many times.

I don’t know how many times I have seen people write things similar to “They were so selfish. Didn’t they think about the effect this would have on their loved ones? How could they just think of themselves and no one else?”

This is about as backwards of a statement as I have even seen about any topic. It completely lacks any understanding of what goes on in the mind of a suicidal person. Clearly the people writing statements such as these have never had a conversation with a suicidal person and obviously have never suffered from severe depression themselves.

It bothers me that the people that are making these statements, as if they are bringing enlightenment to suicidal people. They seem like they are trying to bring  comfort to the survivors of suicide. They have never been the survivor of a suicide and do not know how the loved ones feel.

Should they be making statements about the situation in a judgemental way? Will this make the survivors of their loved one’s suicide feel better?

No, let’s consider the sources of these words that the people so felt they had to post on the internet for all to see. All of the people that I have seen write words like these had nothing to do with suicide or depression. They have never had a loved one commit suicide. They have never taken the time to listen to and comfort a suicidal friend. 

They are detached from suicide and depression all together.

Then why? Why do they feel the need to post their opinions about suicide at all?

It makes them look good. It makes them look sane. It makes them look like they have it all together for their friends to see. 

It is the act of pointing a finger at someone else and thus showing how much better they are than the others. They are so much better than “those people” who are so selfish as to commit suicide and “do that” to their poor loved ones.

These people do not have any sympathy for the loved ones either.

Tell me ….what comfort is it to a loved one to read the following…”I can’t believe that person was so self centered. They never considered the feelings of the family. They did not care what their actions would do to the lives of their family.”

Would that be comforting to you, if your sister had just killed themselves? Would those words make you feel better…vindicated…able to place the blame on you son…who had just hung himself in your home?


These people are posting these words, as if they know more than the suicide victim, in order to comfort the family. They are not posting them in order to keep other suicidal people from committing suicide.

Tell me..

If you were suicidal, would these words make you not want to commit suicide?….”People who commit suicide are selfish. They should think about their families and what impact their death would have on their family”


Why would these words not keep you from going through with it? More importantly….why would these words make you feel more certain that suicide was the right decision?

Because while these people are writing “Think about what your death will do to your loved ones”

...the suicidal person is thinking “My loved ones are suffering because of me. My loved ones would be better off without me.”

You see? 

The suicidal person has lost any feelings of worthiness and value. While these people are writing “It is so selfish to take your own life and cause suffering to your loved ones” ….they are also being very arrogant. 

Their arrogance is in the 
Your family will suffer so terribly without you in their lives” 

These people are sure that their own loved ones and family would suffer terribly without the presence of their amazing person in the lives of the family. 

They are essentially talking about themselves and how valuable they are. In saying that “I would never commit suicide. I would not do that to my loved ones”….they are advertising how great they are and how much of a loss the world as we know it, would have, if they were to no longer be in it.

They are using the suffering of some person who was on the evening news, in order to make themselves look good on facebook.

So, I see no compassion, nor wisdom in these posts on facebook by people who have never been any closer to suicide or depression than watching in on the evening news.

They  have no business posting their opinions about how the family must feel….they have no idea. 

They have no business posting comments on facebook about how the suicide victim felt….again they have no idea.

The suicide victim was not thinking of hurting the family. On the contrary, in their mind they were a burden, an inconvenience, a problem, a curse, ,,,not worthy of having been born.

You cannot make comments about how selfish the suicidal victim was, when you have no idea what was going on in their head…for a long….long ..time, before the suicide. 

There are many thoughts that go through the mind of the suicidal person. These thoughts go through their mind , on a regular basis, for a long, long time. Most suicide victims have thought about suicide and tried to talk themselves out of it for months or years.

Imagine having this voice in your head… “Everyone would be better off without you. You are not wanted. You are a burden. You should not have been born”

… this voice playing in your head… for years…..

If you cannot imagine this or relate to this, then you cannot speak for the intentions of the people who commit suicide

You battle against it, but it just keeps talking to you. Eventually people give in to the voice. They believe that the world will not miss them, mourn them,,and in fact will be better without them.

The people that are calling suicide a selfish act have no idea what they are talking about.

They do not know the suffering of feeling like you are worthless, a burden, in the way. They do not know what it is like to carry toxic shame from physical or sexual abuse from their childhood.

They do not know what some people have to carry as a constant burden on their soul. People carry memories about all kind of abuse from their childhoods. They go to therapy to try to get rid of their demons. 

The demons follow them and sometimes therapy is not enough. You cannot speak about how someone feels and that they were selfish, when they ended their lived in order to silence the voices, turn off the movies playing in their heads ,,,of horrors that most people will never ever know.

The judgemental people about suicide, cannot speak for people who have endured horrors that are unspeakable. They do not know what kind of abuse was occurring in the home of the suicide victim. How can you know whether or not the “Poor family” of the victim was abusing them behind closed doors. How do you know?

When you see the report if suicide on the tv, there are so many things about the family that you will never know. Why do these people assume the person’s family would miss them? How do you know?

All families do not love their children or teeangers. All families do not love their adult children. All husbands do not love their wives. Some of them subject their wives to all manner of mental torment and sometimes physical abuse.

You cannot judge someone that you do not know about their suicide. You do not know if it is a loss for their family. Maybe they were escaping their family in the only way they knew how.

Maybe they really felt that their mental illness was a burden on the family and that they were doing their family a favor by making this decision.

Every person is an individual. We all have unique ways of looking at things. Each suicide victim has their own story and voices playing in their heads.

Unless you know what the reality was of the individual person….Unless you know and can relate to the mental torment they had suffered…and for how long they had been suffering…..

Unless you are really aware of of  how the person was treated by their family…what kind of abuse they had endured during their childhood…and what monsters were following them in the shadows of their nightmares…..

then please keep your judgement of individual people , who you do not understand, yourselves, 

please keep general sweeping comments like “all people who commit suicide are selfish” to yourselves and do not post them where suicidal people can see them

People who commit suicide think about it for a long…long …time

They consider themselves a possible suicide victim long before they do anything about it.

They are reading your words….and thinking that they are now selfish to be considering suicide…on top of all the other pain that they are carrying…here is one more thing to carry…

how do we know that this is not “one more thing” too many?

24 thoughts on “Is Suicide a Selfish Act ?….People who post opinions on the internet about suicide,… who have no idea what they are talking about”

  1. I have had so many people in real life say this to me and it blows my mind. I can’t even fathom why people feel the need to spout off about things they don’t understand.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment. There are people that want to appear compassionate but they are not really compassionate. Those that follow them have a picture of them that is different than they really are.

      The people that are scolding the suicide victims are making it seem that they have compassion for the families. If they have never had any experiences like this in their lives then they have no idea what the families would need as far as support. I do not think it is helpful to the family to hear someone say that their loved one was selfish and should have thought about their feelings. It would make me feel worse , not better.


      Liked by 1 person

  2. Hi Annie, this is the kindest most insightful piece I have read on suicide.Your words are full of pure compassion. For someone who struggles with the desire for suicide, the repetitive thoughts, the guilty feelings, it meant a lot for me to read your take on the misguided idea of selfishness of suicide victims. It really is a twisted thought for someone to call a victim selfish. There are more supportive ways to show someone you care and that they have someone to live for. Thanks for your words! Peace. ” Z”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I am glad there was some comfort in the words for you. I am glad you are writing your blog and I hope it is helping you. Keeping everything inside is a bad thing for us, but also getting hurtful responses from other people , when you say you have thought or are thinking of suicide can be equally painful and dangerous to us.

      People do not threaten suicide in order to hurt their loved ones unless they have malignant narcissistic personality disorder. That is an entire other subject.

      Keep writing and seeking support from people who have empathy in general and compassion for you. Everyone does not have compassion, as you know and I can see in your posts about your past, so we learn to be careful the sources we go to for comfort. It is a shame that there are so many people in the world that cannot have compassion or understand that someone may ne seeing the world from a different perspective than they are.


      Liked by 1 person

  3. I am a suicide survivor and I see what it did to my family. It tore them up. They were heartbroken I do not agree with what you said. I/they were selfish in not considering what my attempted suicide and subsequent hospitalization did to my family. What it still does to my family. Heaven forbid I don’t answer the phone or come downstairs to they can see that I am still alive. I know the feeling of not caring for what others thought, but seeing my kids torn apart was not fun. It hurt me to see what I did to them and will not do again no matter how bad I feel. Suicide hurts the family, it is therefore selfish. AND THIS IS MY “BEEN THROUGH IT OPINION.” AND THEY DIDN’T KNOW IT WASN’T’ MY FIRST TRY. iT WAS THE FIRST ONE THEY KNEW ABOUT.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Yes, I do agree that suicide of a family member or friend is a traumatic thing that can cause long term psychological damage to the survivors.

      Anyone who has had a family member commit suicide should have the right to post anything they feel or think on Facebook or anywhere else they want to.

      People who have attempted suicide and know what it feels like to be in so much pain that they cannot go on, should also be able to post their thoughts and feelings anywhere they want to about their experience or to be supportive of other people who may be having similar struggles.

      But people who hear about a suicide on the news and do not know anything about the person’s life, do not know if that particular family will be traumatized by it…or if the family was abusive and that is what caused the person to feel so worthless.

      It is good that your family loves you and their lives would not be as good without you in them.

      Sadly this is not always the case. Some people actually drive their spouse or child to suicide.

      Some narcissists would act as if they were grieving in public but behind closed doors they were abusive and had no empathic for their spouse who they drove to suicide.

      Some families do not care about certain children in the least. They are not loving and supportive.

      I think that people like to post things calling suicide atempters cowards and selfish because it makes them look good.

      They have no knowledge of the family, of psychology, depression or suicide. It is not for them to speak in condemnation of the person who felt that life was so painful that they could no longer bare to live.

      But I am very glad to know that your family has concern and love for you.

      You deserve to have loving people in your life like that. It might be one of the reasons why you did not eventually succeed at committing suicide.

      If other people had families like that, it might have helped, but not in all cases.

      There are people from loving families that commit suicide because of voices in their heads, confusion about reality or due to some severe trauma that they cannot continue to carry with them.

      You are very special and I respect your feelings about this topic. Thank you for sending them to me so that II could post them here.
      Annie ❤


      1. Thank you for understanding Annie. I can see what you are talking about and I guess the whole thing is not a one answer is the correct one for every situation.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. It is good to have the discussion in the comments section. That way everyone has a right to voice their opinion and feelings . That is one of the things I like about wordpress. People can learn from each other and see things from a different point of view. I see that people are already replying to your comment which is very good.


    2. It’s very comforting to see someone who actually understands what it did to their family. I am sorry you hit rock bottom and got so depressed you felt there was no way out Tessa. I have also been there, with suicidal thoughts after being abandoned yet again.

      Luckily at the time, I was seeing a counselor which got me through it. My narcissistic father attempted suicide nearly 2 months ago now and still doesn’t understand what he put everyone through. He says he wishes he had never done it or wishes he had died.

      Before his suicide attempt he was telling me and his friends that his wife was threatening to divorce him and take all his money. So we advised him to leave the family home & get help. Now he is using his suicide as a way to get sympathy from his wife.He has now turned against his own daughter (me) because I took some of his money from our shared account and moved it to a separate account to protect him from his self destructiveness and his gold digging wife.

      I told him I did this to protect him and he has now discarded me as If I am nothing. All the trauma and pain I went through seeing him lying in intensive care after what he did to himself was just awful. All the support & advice I gave him before his suicide attempt wasn’t easy either. I booked flights to go and see him but didn’t get there in time.

      Now I am in pain, as from the most loved person in his life I am now discarded because i did something he wasn’t happy with. Suicidal ideation is a horrible, awful place to be…and I never wish it on anyone..I believe it is an aggressive or selfish act, if it is done to punish a partner who is trying to leave you, which is what my Dad did.

      He couldn’t control his wife anymore, he couldn’t continue to abuse her the way he wanted, as she was going to leave him, so he preferred to die and punish her that way. I spoke to 3 psychiatrists about all this, as my gut was telling me there was more to it.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I appreciate your kind, supportive words to Tessa. I am sorry for your situation with your father. There are some times when a narcissist will attempt suicide and it is real. They have to be at rock bottom and have no means for narcissistic supply that they can see or their false self has been exposed in a way that their reputation is ruined.

        There are other times when narcissists will use suicide threats to control the family. My ex used to threaten suicide any time I was not complying with his wishes exactly. It was terrifying and causes shame and guilt on the victim. It is a powerful way that the narcissist can control and manipulate.

        Narcissists see money differently than other people do. It is typical that he would have cut off contact to give you the silent treatment after you did anything that he felt powerless over about his money …or money that he thought was his money…or anything like that

        There are some good videos on youtube by sam vaknin that explain how the narcissist sees money, how they see their immediate loved ones, and how they see people in general. You can search through them and see lots of topics like gaslighting, narcissists family, narcissists hate love, narcissist pathological space, etc

        There are supportive videos for recovering from narcissistic abuse on the Spartan Life Coach channel that I found helpful in the healing process.

        I hope this helps.


      2. Thank you for letting me see other sides to this whole question. I just realized that my ex-husband used suicide as a threat to get me to marry him and then to keep me married to him for 23 years before he found someone else who is using him. So I guess I have been on both sides of this question.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I needed to see what it did to my family. How it would tear them apart. That means that I have to work on me and my feelings. I am medicated now and been stable for 10 weeks. I am sorry you had to go through what you did all for selfishness on his part. I am using my lessons to learn.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Tessa, it is good for us to realize the things they did to manipulate us…although each realization can be retramatizing.

      As we learn the tactics that they use, by comparing our stories with each other, we become more equipped to pass our knowledge onto other women who may be currently falling for these same tactics.

      It used to surprise me how closely other people’s stories resembled mine. But now I see that there is a typical set of tactics that the narcissists use.

      The overt narcissist and the covert narcissist each have there own tactics, in addition to the ones that all narcissists use.

      Your ex sounds like a covert narcissist, and similar to my ex in many ways. If he was “mood disregulated” which I never asked you…then he could have been comorbid with borderline.

      The borderline narcissist is constantly changing moods. Very unpredictable. You feel like you have to walk on egg shells not to upset them and send them either into a rage….or into a seemingly self destructive, or suicidal state….which they blame on your behaviour.

      Is this what you experienced?

      Have you checked out the Better not Broken blog and the Self Care Haven blogs?
      I dont remember if I told you about those. I often recommend them to people.

      The better not broken blogger is also good to talk to. I like talking with her, via the comments.


      1. My ex, I don’t think he had mood disregulations as you put it, but he had deep seated rage that would come out and he would see black and just react. Sometimes he scared me because he almost hurt and/or killed others in his fits. He didn’t hit any of us, but the intense rage he would destroy inanimate objects unless someone did something to say for example his car. He would lose all sense and strke out. He almost ran over a bunch of kids that sat on his car. He scared me with the rage, but it wasn’t turned towards me or the kids.My son got his rage and when he was a teen he broke things. He is still rage-filled, both of them, but not as severe. I will look for those blogs. I may already be following them I am not sure.


  4. Thank you for all the useful information & for sharing your experiences. It really does help to share our stories with each other, as there are usually similarities and also things that will help. I have read so much from Sam Vankin and The Spartan Life Coach already.I am following many blogs about narcissistic abuse and all their tactics.They are all very informative & helped me understand so much about both my parents. I knew my Dad would do what he did and I was prepared emotionally but it’s still so hard to get my head around it. I have grieved a lot already over both my parents and lack of healthy childhood. I have also been able to express anger in therapy. It is a long journey, but I am in a better, more self-aware place than I was a few years ago and I am very grateful for this.
    This is my blog about my journey if you are interested:
    Lots of love & strength to all of you ❤

    Liked by 1 person

  5. No one will ever understand how a suicidal person is feeling unless they have been in their shoes…pretty much like everything else in life…we must walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before we offer any commentary on these sensitive issues

    Liked by 1 person

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