Your Body Will Scream if You Try to Kill Yourself

When your mind shouts, “Kill me!” your body screams, “Stop!”

It can seem to you like you have no real option this minute but to kill yourself. Does your body fully agree with your impulse?

Consider the assertions of your life form itself:

Your body has many cells that grow anew in a very short time. The prime example is that you have new skin about every 27 days.

·         You still see your tattoos and other scars, that tissue does not regenerate, and the hairs grow and shed differently.

·         But all the other cells of the seven skin layers do completely change, and do so briskly.

This is an evocative metaphor for what will happen to your mind—but with real velocity! You just need to hold on and not carry out, for just a short while, your impulse to harm yourself.

You, like all human beings, are built in every cell with energy machines called mitochondria that are a force to maintain and enhance your life as an organism, for their own survival which they urge.

And your gut is composed of cells that are “a second brain.” Given “half a moment” if you were to take action against yourself, your GI tract will rebel and wrench you back into trying to maintain life. Listen!

Every single moment of life, should you permit it to continue, presents you with novel perceptions, thoughts, dreams, feelings, activities—and, yes, pain. The agony could be the worst that you are able to recall having gone through before. BUT!–Your brain’s centers are continuing to send their various messaging interactions internally, to your central nervous system, the other nerves, and throughout your glands. Your body seeks equilibrium, and something will change, right quick!

Even in the ultimate circumstance of your being moribund, of being quite unlikely to survive—you might still live. You never know. So many people have been shot through the neck and thrown into mass graves after genocidal group executions, yet some victims have been able to claw their way out later. And sometimes, “cures” occur in hospitals that seem miraculous.

You don’t need to have anything to happen that dramatic. All you need to do is to count out loud slowly, like you were counting sheep on a restless night, until you have completely tired yourself out. Then ask yourself, “Do I still feel PRECISELY as driven to harm myself? Or, has the pause (to use the 1929 Coca-Cola slogan) refreshed me enough to make it a little easier to talk over with someone how I have been feeling?” I’m not saying that waiting is easy to do. Actually, waiting is probably the hardest activity you have ever done, developing the courage that is patience.

After that short wait, you will still recall the former degree of your agony, but you will have knowledge of it, not current experience of it.

You can’t simultaneously be aware of how you are feeling a sensation AND capture it in words; you are always referring to the past. The instant has gone and you can move on to venting. Call your local hotline to talk. The US national number is given below.

© Copyright Deborahmichelle Sanders 2018. All rights reserved.

The US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (Veterans, phone 1-800-273-8255 and choose Option 1 at the prompt.) is ready for your call. That’s 24-7-365.