I've said that I wanted to kill myself just to get attention

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I think asking someone to seek professional help is often a "polite" way of saying that you really don't like what they're doing, or you think what they're doing is weird, or you think what they're doing is destructive. Sometimes it's also to the effect of, "I shouldn't be dealing with this, professionals should."

I'll just flat-out say it: I don't like what Mw99 is doing, I think it's destructive (it's also weird, but weird alone isn't that much of a problem really), and I think he needs to stop in whatever way is available to him.

Whether he stops due to professional "help" or due to some other thing is entirely up to him, but I won't urge professional "help" over other methods. Just stop doing it, good grief. It doesn't take a professional to tell you that.

Unless of course you're not really doing it and just saying this to get a rise out of us, to see how far you can go before we'll start questioning your veracity, etc. In which case, knock it off and go away, we don't need people here trying to take advantage of our gullibility and good will for a laugh, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

I think we should take a step back here. Mw99's suicide threats may be fake, but in this case the faking in itself is a cry for help.
Look at all those posts about anxiety. The threats take away the crippling anxiety.
I don't think the intention here was to ruin anyone's life. Now he knows that's a crappy way to do it, we've told him about the damage it causes, so let's move on to something more constructive. Fake suicide threats are a horrible way to get attention/relieve the anxiety; maybe the focus should be on helping Mw99 find a better way to cope?

About 20 or 21 years ago I wanted to kill myself. I thought of various methods such as drowning in my bathtub or putting a plastic bag over my head. I wrote a letter to my mother telling her that I wanted to kill myself. Because of her reply in which told me she loved me, I changed my mind.

When I sometimes say to myself that I don't want to live anymore, I don't really mean that I want to kill myself, rather that I want to get away from all the stresses and strains and responsibilities of life.

A person may not necessarily kill themselves because they want to die. Suicide has been used as the ultimate act of political protest, such as the South Vietnamese Buddhist monks in the 1960s who self-immolated as a protest against their government and the war in their country; and Jan Palach, the Czech student who self-immolated in January 1969 as a protest against the Soviet occupation of his country ( http://www.janpalach.com ).

There has been controversy as to whether hunger strikers who starve themselves to death for political reasons are committing suicide or not. Those whose oppose the demands of the hunger strikers usually dismiss their self-starvation as suicide, while those who support their demands often regard it as a brave and self-sacrificing act. The political hunger strike has a long tradition as a political weapon in Irish nationalism with hunger strikers who starved themselves to death being regarded as martyrs.

But a hunger strike, with willingness to die, by a patient in a mental institution as a protest against conditions in that institution would be regarded as part of that patient's mental illness. It would not be taken seriously as a courageous act of political protest.

Suicide bombers kill themselves as a means of killing as many other people as possible with them.

Last edited by Woodpeace on 03 Aug 2008, 11:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Good point.



What should I stop doing? Should I stop creating threads like this one, or should I stop creating threads in other message boards claiming that I'm suicidal? If it's the latter, that's not something that I do on a regular basis, just something that I've done a few times when there was no other way to get people to give me the attention that I desperately needed.

(Yes, I acknowledge that the way I worded the original post was misleading; I've made corrections to accurately convey the reality of the situation.)



anbuend, that's not why I created this thread. Please stop accusing me of doing all those horrible things. I'd never do any of that .

Yeah, you should stop saying you're suicidal when you're not.

(And don't then try to find a way to make yourself suicidal so you'd be telling the truth. That's even worse.)

And you should find another way to get attention. There are always other ways.



I didn't accuse you of doing "all those horrible things". That's what "unless" and "in which case" means. I just said, if this means that you're also doing all the stuff here for the same reasons, then here's what I'd say to you. And it still is -- if that's what you're really doing, then I'd say it again. Note that even a moderator has asked you in private message and on this thread whether you're for real. I don't normally doubt things like that (because I've been doubted the same way), but what you said really made me wonder, and still does (because it does happen).

If you're actually for real, then here's a question I'd put to you: Are you actually saying these things for attention, or for some other reason? Have you been taught that "for attention" is the way to describe something weird you're doing for a reason you don't understand? If so, it might be good to figure out how to say the real reason.

Mw99 asked

Yes you should.
Yes you should.

Befrienders Worldwide listen to people who are in emotional distress, including feeling suicidal, without judging them or telling them what to do. Their website ( http://www.befrienders.org ) has help and support pages including excellent advice about what to do if feeling suicidal. They are volunteers, not professionals.

Mw99 should be taken seriously.

If you absolutely must, which I seriously do not advise, make sure you thank all those people who gave you attention for your threats. At least let them think they did something good. Let them feel like heroes for 'saving' you.
Don't let them know you faked it because they will become disillusioned and stop listening to people who threaten suicide.
Have you tried grounding techniques?
I would start out threads instead with "I'm having a nervous breakdown and really need help and support." Something more honest.

You see, anbuend, my problem is that I'm conscious of my actions. I know that a lot of people would disagree with me, even hate me, because of the stuff I write. I just lack the empathy, or rather, sympathy, to care. I do it mostly for attention.



"For attention" is my way of coping with anxiety. Anxiety is a mental illness, and while I don't understand the exact chemical/psychological foundations for my thought processes, I know that they are caused by the mental illness itself, so all I need to understand about my thought processses is that they are irrational and to a certain extent beyond my control. I accept my mental illness as it is. I can keep my thoughts to myself and not say a thing, but that wouldn't "fix" my mental illness. Yes, putting a gag order on me, hiding my problems from the outside world would make a lot of people's lives more pleasure, just like a lot of NTs would be happier if there was no autism in the world, but I simply don't care. I have to cope with my problems 24x7, and there is no doubt in my mind that sharing my problems with random people on the internet, every now and then, will not make them anywhere near as miserable as I am. Telling the world about my suffering does not cause me remorse. If they don't like what I have to say all they have to do is ignore me and go on with their lives. It's like them telling a cancer patient to cure himself or hide in the woods because they can't cope with the pity/anguish/fear that the knowledge of his illness causes in them. It's ridiculous.

Nobody said not to share your problems on the Internet. You yourself said that being suicidal is not really your problem. So claiming to be suicidal is not the same as sharing your problems. There are other ways to do it, that are less destructive.

When people tell you your actions are destructive, we are not talking about the misery of people you tell. We are talking about the fact that when you tell people this, but don't really mean it, then they are more likely to decide that when someone else who is really suicidal says it, then they don't mean it. This means that every suicidal person they encounter will suffer, because your actions unfortunately confirm a stereotype in people's minds. (As I said before, it's not rational, but it's how the world works.) This in turn causes misery to many severely depressed people who need help of some kind to avoid suicide. And this stereotype does in fact contribute to the deaths of other people.

Lacking empathy doesn't make you any less accountable for your actions. (And the kind of empathy you lack if you just plain don't care what destruction you cause, is not the kind autistic people are said to lack, just so you're aware.) It doesn't make your actions any less destructive to other people. And rationalizing it as that your misery is worse than anyone else's, and worse than any misery you might cause or contribute to, is just plain not accurate, nor does it make your actions any less destructive.

Woodpeace just gave you information of a place you can get attention from people who won't judge you. That's an alternative to getting it by destructive means.

And the reason I asked about the "for attention" thing, is that a long time ago people taught me that was the term to use, when I didn't know why I was doing something and neither did they. So I would say "I did it for attention" if what I had been saying was inaccurate and I didn't know why. When I really said it for other reasons. (And the fact that I learned to say it, did cause harm to other people, and to me, even though I didn't mean it to.) So I had to ask just in case it was the same for you.

I won't bother visiting that website because I am not suicidal, have never been and probably will never be.

But it's not just for people who are feeling suicidal. That's what Woodpeace just said.

Here's what the websites says since you won't bother to read far enough to find out that what they do includes help people with emotional support:

"We work worldwide to provide emotional support, and reduce suicide. We listen to people who are in distress. We don't judge them or tell them what to do - we listen."

Reducing suicide is not the only thing they do. It is one of several things. They also give emotional support and listen to people who are in distress.

Here's another quote:

"Befrienders listen to people who are lonely, despairing or considering suicide."

Note they say OR considering suicide.

They're basically a way you can get attention without resorting to saying you're suicidal. You do want a better means of getting attention, right?

Last edited by anbuend on 03 Aug 2008, 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, no, anxiety isn't a mental illness. It's a normal emotion. Not having the skills to cope with anxiety, so that it causes problems for you, is a mental illness. You will always have anxiety; every human being on the planet has anxiety, and they don't put Valium in the drinking water. Having it constantly and for no real reason, when it impairs your ability to get on with life, is the point at which it becomes a problem.

There must be other ways of getting attention. Lots of people like to have other people pay attention to them--most people, in fact, including most outgoing autistics and some of the introverted ones. It's a legitimate desire... Most people fulfill it by socializing, paying attention to someone else in exchange for having them pay attention to you. There are other ways; if you do something well, you will often get people to notice you. Certain styles of dress or behavior are more eye-catching than others.

So I guess the best thing to do at this point is to find a different way of handling your anxiety, and find a different way of getting attention.

Incidentally, I've done the 'suicide watch' thing. I was highly stressed and had done a lot of self-injury in an attempt to cope, so they figured that I was suicidal. (I was depressed and had been thinking and planning; they weren't far off.) They said "overnight"; I stayed for ten days and got kicked out of college.

They don't treat you with respect as a mental patient. They never hit me or restrained me (though at one point I had six people ready to do just that if I twitched a muscle rather than just screamed into my pillow). But they did keep me in the dark about diagnosis and medication, they didn't tell me what was going on, and they treated me very much like a small child. I got very little attention from the nurses, actually; they mostly try to make sure you are not killing yourself or anyone else. You generally don't get any more than group therapy in the hospital, either; they will focus on medical management.

If they get the idea that you want attention, they won't give it to you, no matter how much you need it. They will also label you 'Borderline', which doesn't help even if you actually ARE borderline, because it's such a stigmatized diagnosis.

And keep in mind--I was in the ward for the higher-functioning people. If you are actively psychotic or you can't take care of your basic needs, you won't be in a posh place like that.

If you are about to be homeless, saying you are suicidal is actually a workable strategy to stay off the streets. In my case, it wouldn't be a lie; I couldn't survive on the street and would rather have a clean death. To get in, you need to have a highly lethal plan. However, you need to be sure that you have a "normal act" ready to go whenever you want to get out--and that includes socializing with the other patients. Don't stay in your room. If you're a girl, put on make-up; if you're a guy, shave or trim your beard. Smile. Kiss up to the doctors and tell them you want to "recover". Take any pills they give you; if the pills make you too groggy to keep up the normal act, find a way to dispose of them--but remember that the first time you're caught doing this, you will never be able to do it again because they will watch you. This is a desperation strategy; it is what you do if you can't find a homeless shelter that will take you (which is likely enough if you are a guy, because they always take women first) and can't mooch off a friend or find a relatively public place to spend nights (college libraries are a good bet, usually, if you can look like a student).

Incidentally, the medical bills will haunt you for the rest of your life.

To an extent your thinking and feelings are not necessarily, consistently determined by your will, your actions are much more under your control.


Neither does telling lies to complete strangers on the internet, otherwise you'd already be cured.

Your reasoning fallaciously excludes the middle. There are other options besides dishonestly claiming suicidal intent to strangers over the internet, and hiding your problems from the outside world. I do not find it fair or reasonable to equate discouragement of dishonest suicide threats with some alleged desire (on the part of NTs) to rid the world of autism. There are materially significant differences between asking someone to refrain from unnecessarily distressing manipulations employed to garner attention, and wanting to do away with an entire population based on neurological divergence.

I have no doubt in my mind that a multi-millionaire would miss a thousand dollars much less than I would appreciate and benefit from receiving it. This does not justify my imposing myself on the millionaire by stealing said money. You are imposing yourself on people who are not responsible for your hurt. When you choose to interfere with others to benefit yourself, it's not about how much less you harm them than benefit yourself, it's about the non-justifiability of interfering with others to harm them for your own benefit. It's wrong.

You're not sharing your problem, you're making dishonest claims of a suicidal intent. Sharing your problem would be to go on the internet and tell strangers that you are anxious and are suffering as a result.


What's ridiculous is to cry wolf when you know darn well it's the neighbours harmless cocker spaniel.

The behaviour you describe is unnecessary, unfairly causes unnecessary distress to those who least deserve it (ie those who care enough to be upset), and seems to me an at best non-productive way to address your issues, and more likely a counter-productive way to relate to others and yourself. I hope you decide to formulate and enact more productive coping methods.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but you are right and I'm wrong.

You see, anbuend, I never got over the fact that I live in a world full of irrational people, who often make judgements based on stereotypes and preconceived notions, and that I need to make concessions for them. We are all irrational, I grant you that, but some people are a lot more irrational than others and I simply don't feel like I should cater to them. Now, is this the sociopathy that you hinted at when you observed that my lack of empathy is not of the autistic kind? By the way, I've taken several personality disorder tests, professionally administered and internet-based, and I never scored high on antisocial. I tend to score high on Schizoid, Schizotypal and Avoidant.

It's not like you can't learn empathy by using your rational mind. Apparently autistics are pretty good at doing that, if they are good at the sort of logic that lets you look at problems from multiple perspectives.

The reason I said that thing about empathy, is that autistic people don't seem to lack caring about others any more than any other group of people did, and I didn't want to watch another false stereotype go unchallenged in the same thread as so many other false stereotypes are being seemingly confirmed.

There are many reasons not to care about people (despite knowing they are unhappy), not all of them are sociopathy, not all of them even have a medical or pseudo-medical term to describe them, some of them are just plain ordinary self-absorption (i.e. being super-aware of and caring about your own problems but not those of others, often leading to the belief that your problems matter more than anyone's), but autism isn't one of them. It doesn't mean autistic people can't ever fail to care despite knowing, just that being autistic isn't the cause of that.