The Enemy

You may want to consider what you would do in a suicide crisis situation. Like all life-or-death situations in general, and violence-defensive situations in particular, it probably won’t happen to you, but preparation is time certainly well spent nonetheless.

In the case of a suicide crisis, all of the lines of defense before you have fallen, and this person is on the verge of commiting the suicidal act. It is not your fault what happens to this person; it’ll never, ever be your fault. But if you take a moment to reflect now, you might notice that you’d do anything, anything to prevent that suicidal act from occurring. It is a moral imperative that is ingrained into human nature.

So what do you do?

Well, the first thing you do, provided it is a logistically feasible demand, is say, “Show me your face. Look me in the eyes.”

This might take you by surprise--it’s a far cry from the orthodox “don’t do it, you have so much to live for, there are people who care about you” script. What I’m proposing is a paradigm shift, a total reframing of the suicide crisis situation.

The paradigm shift is founded upon the acknowledgement that there is no such thing as a suicidal person. This is a deadly imprecision of language. Suicidality cannot begin to cohere to the self just as surely as I’ll never grow wings and take flight. It is not in our nature. Many see photos of smiling vacationers and family members mere days before taking their own lives and wonder, “How can a suicidal person put on a happy face right until the end?” In asking questions of this form, they construct a false narrative from observation. This person’s body is inflicted, possessed by suicidal tendencies. Suicidality is a foreign, malicious entity. This person does not want to kill himself; rather, suicide intends to kill him.

With this reframing in mind, the tactics of crisis intervention necessarily depart from persuasion or appeal to the person and center on purgation, destruction of the foreign entity. You aim to kill the suicidality. Like all controlled acts of violence, this is best done by exploiting the enemy’s weaknesses. Luckily, suicidality has several.

First, suicidality is cowardly. While it might have gotten the upper hand through manipulation in the solitude and confines of the mind, it will shrink back upon direct confrontation from an outside entity. It’s afraid it doesn’t have the guts, and you are tasked with proving it right. That’s the motive for move #1 up there--bring its evil nature into the light, force it to admit to you what it intends to do, and in displaying your lack of fear, it is suddenly very aware of how very afraid it is. I know what you’re doing. If you’re going to do it, look me in the eyes and do it. Face me.

Second, suicidality is a terrible planner. Really, the main pitfall of the orthodox intervention script is that it’s the *only* script that it’s prepared for. How many stories are there of suicide attempts being averted by some inconsequential but out of the ordinary event occuring along the way? Once you throw off the sequence even just a little bit, the enemy will freeze. It might try to salvage the situation, but that’s more time gained, and more chance it has to fold out of cowardice.

Third, suicidality is nonviolent, in the strictly physical sense of the word. A suicide is not a murder. It does not get to relish in the carnage. In fact, the act itself will sever its connection to the body. It doesn’t want to commit the violent act, but the violent act is the only means to its ends. That is to say, it seeks to inflict damage to the psyche in its totality, in one final act of not self-destruction, but self-destruction. The good thing is, it’s not too picky with its target: Suicidality at the point of crisis is a starving predator. Offer yourself as a target, and it will try to attack you. But in its weakened state, it is not much of a threat. It doesn’t know you well enough, either. Aggrandize yourself, lure it out, make yourself the target of its dwindling energies, and once it’s exhausted and exposed, strike it down.

Now, at the very moment you’ve gained the upper hand, you must be prepared to kill. Behave as though you have opened an opportunity in a hostage situation, and thrash, bite, kick, break, tear, anything and everything you can do to *oppressively* neutralize the threat, with the same maximal level of intensity that you would muster for the hypothetical, physical one. Be relentless, vicious, do not let this evil thing survive. You are not talking the person off the ledge, you are ripping the enemy limb from limb and tossing the bits into a pit of fire.

Of course, the nature of this desperate struggle entails completely different, non-physical methods, but unfortunately, the employment of those methods, at what time, in what form, is just as varied as it is in the physical intervention. If you don’t know what to do, make something up and keep the pressure on until you come up with something else. Whatever comes to mind immediately is a far more potent weapon than landing on the “right” answer a few seconds later. Do not stop. DO NOT STOP.

Once the crisis is averted, you will probably feel an immediate and tremendous sense of guilt. It will not go away any time soon, and it will be very painful. This is natural. You have blood on your hands. It was a just, righteous killing, of an evil entity, but a killing nonetheless. Worse yet, you did so when there were few options, very little time, dire stakes, and under extreme emotional duress. You will come up with countless alternatives to every action you took, you will agonize over every moment of it, and you will live in constant fear that you didn’t finish the job, or even made things worse. Anything to make something, something about all of this your fault.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Look right into your own eyes. Tough it out. You’ll be alright.