A new approach to preventing suicide

The anatomy of depression & suicide, Part 1 of 2: analysis.

Welcome to Emotional Alignment’s insights into what drives depression and suicidal ideation. Feel free to give us feedback. Ok, let’s get right into it.

The 4 social emotions

If you want to understand any mental health issue, you have to understand the four social emotions; guilt, shame, fear and worry. We learn them in our youth and, as adults, they make sure we do the right thing and don’t do the wrong thing… when development goes well of course.

Misalignment

The problem is we are seldom taught emotions in balance. As a result, when we become adults we will under or over experience them, meaning we will feel them when we shouldn’t, or not feel them when we should.

Btw, Not surprisingly, when we under experience a social emotion our behavior tends to be a problem for others. On the other hand, when we over experience them, our behavior tends to be a problem for us. That’s a good segue to depression or what EA refers to as self-esteem issues.

Depression

fear and worry have to do with how we look at the future so they’re not an issue here. The problem lies with guilt and shame which determine How we look at the past to perceive the present, aka the self-esteem process. Let’s look at guilt first.

"Functioning"

We talk about high functioning and low functioning depression although EA refers to them as self-esteem issues either way. The difference between the two types revolves around guilt, which has to do with how we value others

High functioning

high functioning depression under experiences guilt which means they under value others. This is marked by being judgmental, angry and generally blaming others for things. As far as ideation is concerned, it’s usually not associated with under guilt, but can be.

Low functioning

Low Functioning, on the other hand, over experiences guilt. That means they overvalue others. They tend to idolize them, feel needy or codependent, and often improperly blame themselves, the opposite of under guilt. Now let’s look at shame.

Over shame

whether high or low functioning, People who are depressed over experience shame. They feel it when they shouldn’t. They under value themselves, so you can start to see why this leads to depression. When we undervalue ourselves we don’t do for ourselves - including affirmation - although we need to. As a result, when we over experience shame we operate in deficit each day. There’s one more critical element.

When We undervalue ourselves we also undervalue our view of reality, so when that comes into question, like someone else says something negative about us, we tend to dismiss our perception of reality and accept theirs. Also, we may just not be at ease with our imperfections. Regardless, scrutiny from others can be painful.

You should be able to see why suicidal ideation comes into play with low functioning depression. They not only regularly feel undervalued and don’t do enough for themselves, but they are also deferring to the reality of those around them. They’re elevating others while lowering and blaming themselves. it becomes a doom loop where they constantly feel bad and worthless.

What to do

How to overcome this cycle will be in part 2; resolving conflict - an intro to exiting the doom loop.

The short story is if you are in the loop, you need to acknowledge that your body misleads you at times and you over experience shame and guilt, then learn how to question that skew constructively.

If you know someone in the loop, you should be aware of how you impact their skew and also how you can potentially help them by collaborating on their questioning, if they allow of course.

Thanks for listening. Feel free to let us know what you think.