A Rock… An Island… Alone…

I have just seen the most recent statistics for suicide: 6,233 in 2013.  17 people each day who have decided that death is better than living.

I can only wonder at how someone may be feeling who finally arrives at that point.  Perhaps feelings of hopelessness (research suggests that we cannot survive for more than a day without hope), isolation, worthlessness?

People in that position in my experience may feel that they are utterly without worth to anyone else: that no-one would care enough about them for it to matter whether they are dead or alive.

My understanding is that people who arrive at this point do not believe that they have any worth.  My belief is that this stems from an absence of relationship in the past and perpetuated consequentially in the present like an insidious cancer.

We can all make a difference and we may never know when.  A smile from an unexpected source may make all the difference to those who suffer from the consequences of relational abuse.  It may even be the beginning of re-creating a belief in life.

The quality of relational experience determines the quality of a life.  If that relational experience in early, very early, life is absent, that life will be unable to trust that they have worth and value to others. Such is the potency of the beliefs formed from the experience of early life that will perpetuate into adulthood and become the potential suicides of tomorrow.

Neuroscience tells us that relational trust can be repaired based on a consistently different experience.  Counselling is based precisely on that premise.

See my website for more information: www.cheltenhamcounsellor.co.uk.