Suicide is an attempt to escape self awareness. Six steps stand between feeling normal and suicide.

Find out where you stand. Feel better by fixing steps early in the chain.

Falling Short of Expectations

The path to suicide starts with falling short of expectations. You want something, but it seems out of reach.

Something about life doesn't feel right. You don't see a way to make things better.

Self Blame

You start to blame yourself. What you want isn't reachable, and you feel it's your fault.

"Feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt, inadequacy, or feeling exposed, humiliated and rejected leads suicidal people to dislike themselves in a manner that, essentially, cleaves them off from an idealized humanity. The self is seen as being enduringly undesirable; there is no hope for change and the core self is perceived as being rotten."

High Self Awareness

Self awareness goes into overdrive. You begin focusing on how you fit in the world. You see other people having what you want, but you can't get there.

You blame yourself. The reality you want looks so far away.

The world begins to seem distant. Help feels impossible because everybody else is distant. It's about you, your life, and your problems.

Negative Affect

Negativity becomes what you are. The negative thoughts narrow your mind. You run in circles of negativity and anxiety.

Your anxiety is created by guilt, blame, threats, being excluded, or just worries. The gloom reinforces itself. You think about how something isn't going right and how it's your fault.

Cognitive Deconstruction

Cognitive deconstruction breaks down the world into small and simple parts. Your mind begins breaking down time. Your anguish seems heavier because you feel time is going by slowly.

"Suicidal people have an aversive or anxious awareness of the recent past (and possibly the future too), from which they seek to escape into a narrow, unemotional focus on the present moment."

"Suicidal people resemble acutely bored people: The present seems endless and vaguely unpleasant, and whenever one checks the clock, one is surprised at how little time has actually elapsed."

Narrowing down time causes you to focus focus on a lengthened present, but allows past and future pains to slide away.

Deconstruction creates a very concrete and basic view of the world. Sophisticated thoughts are replaced by very simple thoughts. Using simple concepts allows your brain to focus on something real.

Your concrete thoughts serve to block thoughts. Focusing on immediate, real things allows you to relax from thinking about unreachable expectations and goals.

Disinhibition

Disinhibition happens when you cognitively deconstruct everything. Nothing remains. Your standard defenses are gone. You forget about purpose, suffering, others, and ramifications in favor of a self-focused task to end it all.

Sources

Research paper establishing the six steps: Suicide as escape from self.

Review and walkthrough of research: Suicide for some is an escape from 'the self'

Casual review of research: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself