PSYCHOLOGICAL PAIN & SUICIDE
“The author of suicide is pain.”
One of the most important suicide researchers – Edwin Shneidman – described pain as the author of suicide.
This is a view echoed by most leading psychological theories.
While each theory often focuses on different experiences – such as feeling trapped, hopeless, lonely or like a burden – they share an important idea: that suicide is often driven by overwhelming psychological pain.
Indeed, research consistently shows a strong relationship between psychological pain and suicide risk.
What is psychological pain — and how can it help us understand suicide?
Psychological pain is an umbrella term for any emotion that we experience as painful to feel.
It can include loneliness, shame, grief, fear, humiliation, guilt, hopelessness, rejection, failure or feeling that we do not matter.
Just as we are naturally motivated to move away from physical pain, we are also motivated to reduce or escape psychological pain. We do not want to remain in states that hurt.
Pain creates a drive for relief
When something hurts, our attention is drawn towards it.
We want the pain to stop.
Usually, this is useful. Pain motivates us to do something that restores safety or balance.
- If we are lonely, we may seek connection.
- If a relationship is harming us, we may try to change it or leave.
- If we feel overwhelmed, we may talk to somebody, rest, exercise, distract ourselves, seek professional support or use other ways of coping.
Sometimes we may rely on coping strategies that provide temporary relief but in the long term may increase the pain we are feeling.
In our research, many men describe using drink, drugs, gambling, self-harm, sex, food or reckless behaviour to try to cope with their pain – but find that these strategies can ultimately make life harder.
"I turned to drugs and alcohol at an early age for escape and solace, which massively inhibited my development and my ability to complete qualifications (…)”
When pain begins to feel inescapable
Pain becomes particularly dangerous when it is accompanied by a belief that there is no way out.
A person may feel:
- I cannot change what is happening.
- Nothing I do makes this better.
- I cannot continue living like this.
- There is no way for this pain to stop.
We describe this as distress entrapment: experiencing overwhelming pain while also feeling unable to escape from it.
In such a state, a person’s world may narrow.
Possible solutions become harder to see. It may become harder to think clearly, imagine alternatives or see possible ways forward. Sources of support may feel unavailable or ineffective.
When someone desperately wants the pain to stop but can no longer see another way out, suicide may begin to appear to them as a possible escape from that pain.
"When my pain is so painful and I don’t know what to do with my feelings I think okay I will take my life now."
This does not mean that psychological pain automatically leads to suicide. Most people experience psychological pain without becoming suicidal.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PAIN CAN CHANGE
Feeling overwhelmed by psychological pain does not mean someone will always feel that way.
Just as pain can build, it can also reduce. People can develop better tools to help them recognise and manage the pain in their lives.
What helps each person will be different.
For some men, it might include talking, therapy, and peer support, for others it might be exercise, rest, solitude, creativity, faith, time in nature, meaningful activity, playing music, volunteering, medication – or simply finding ways to get safely through a difficult hour or day.
Learning to live with and regulate painful feelings can take time. And some of the circumstances creating distress may take much longer to change. An abusive workplace, a custody battle or insecure housing, for example, may not have quick solutions.
But pain is not fixed.
With the right support, safer ways of coping and changes in the conditions around them, people can move away from feeling trapped and towards greater safety, connection, control and hope.