"Manipulative" ~ WARNING: Strongly candid posts within

It's funny (funny peculiar, not haha) but I think the suicide one depends largely on how you first came to know and discuss the whole concept of suicide. When I was a young teenager, and discussing suicide with my mother (I think somebody local had killed himself) her belief was very strongly that if someone was determined enough to do it they would do it anyway, no matter what anyone else did or said. She was trying to get it clear in my head to never stay with a man just because he said he was suicidal - she saw a fair bit of that in her work. My default position then, a few times when friends have come to me really worried about someone, has been to alert family members or police, but to step back from the situation. That it isn't their fault even if it happens. Because nobody really has that sort of power over another. It might feel that way, but really, it is up to the person who is contemplating suicide.

My own near misses with suicide last year felt totally my own decision - I wasn't even thinking about anyone else. Certainly not trying to manipulate anyone apart from myself - trying to manoevere into a better, more bearable place.

The media and guidelines from charities, etc mean that when suicidal we get told a confusing message - on one hand we are told to reach out and tell somebody how low we feel (look at social media after Robin Williams died, for example) and then the result of this is people receiving chaotic messages that frighten them, about their loved one being suicidal, that they as laypeople don't know how to deal with. If the person doesn't actually do anything, or makes an attempt but survives, I can see anger as a defence against the pain and confusion as a pretty reasonable response from the person feeling manipulated.

Especially if you have never been suicidal - I don't think you can realise that one moment you can feel absolutely like you are about to step over the edge, and then maybe a few hours later, you are more ok again.

I think even therapists and doctors should step back from someone saying they are suicidal and let them be. You really can't stop someone from doing it if they are that determined.

I have dealt with people who threatened suicide and I didn't allow it affect me.

Kind of off topic, but I wish we would allow people to be assisted by doctors or someone to end their lives if they struggle with severe mental illness. I don't see anything wrong with it at all.

I also feel for someone who is so desperate to communicate they think the only way is to threaten suicide. It's sad they haven't been listened to in their lives and they feel they have to resort to those types of threats. It's messed up, but really tragic.

I have dealt with a person threatening suicide as a way to keep me close, and they were manipulative tactics that affected me badly.

Congratulations to those who are unaffected by such things.

I think for me it did affect me as a very young child, but I just became immune to it as I got older. Numb I guess.

Yes, it is, and that coping skill has to be changed. In my husband's case, he had a horrible childhood and had huge abandonment issues. i get that, and I got that at the time but it didn't make it any easier. I'm a strong woman, but not that strong and at the time I wasn't nearly as able to set boundaries on that kind of behavior as I am now. He needed to learn better communication skills, and did through therapy. He no longer engages in that kind of emotional manipulation. Therapy helped him manage his emotions in a more healthy way, communicate his needs clearly without manipulation, and quite honestly, saved our marriage. So much negative talk about therapy around here, but I, my husband, my children, my family have benefitted greatly from therapy.

I'm sorry to hear of that. I never told people to do x or I would kill myself. My husband used to do that. I said, do it in the shower so I don't have to clean up the mess.

What I meant was that my own suicidal thoughts and attempts were when I really didn't care to try anymore, too much emotional pain and I wanted to die. Everyday. So I guess it's hard for people to work out which is which. I didn't do it in front of anyone, I went off on my own quietly.

After telling my husband to do it in the shower so that I wouldn't have to clean up the mess, he stopped threatening suicide. Mean, but it worked.

My husband did more than threaten. He carried out his plan; we are fortunate police were able to get to him in time. So telling him to go ahead and kill himself would not have helped. He wasn't merely threatening, and I knew that.

That's awful was he actually depressed?

Yes, he was quite depressed. He also has a degenerative neurological pain disorder that piles on more challenges as if his upbringing didn't create enough on its own.

Pain disorder will never go away in extremely serious, but he's mentally in a very good place now that he has a better handle on his issues from his childhood. Again, therapy saved him; it saved all of us.

Geez poor guy. Do you think he was being manipulative or if he really did want an end to his pain? I'm sorry I'm just trying to understand if I read it right.

Oh, definitely both.

My T tried to manipulate me and it nearly destroyed me. The truth would have been a better way to deal with things. He never trusted me after seeing me and lying to me for years. He never trusted me. How sad is that?

I think for me, the reason I am not manipulated by suicide threats is that I believe a person has the right to die. Who am I to demand someone not die? I have had two bery close friends succeed- I am sad they are gone, but I would not have chosen to intervene. I fully understand the desire and I know I would choose it if certain things were happening to me. And I would not be doing it anyone else but because I had decided death was better. I have never believed death is the worst thing that can happen.

I don't believe death is the worst thing that can happen either. Trust me, my faith pulls me far from that kind of thinking. But I also do not believe someone not in their right mind should be allowed to kill themselves.

I've been in that spot many times myself, and I know from personal experience (and my husband would concur from his own experience), that I am extremely grateful that people intervened and pulled me away from that choice. I didn't really want to die; I simply didn't want to be in the kind of emotional pain and void I was in and at the time, death seemed the only way to achieve that because I had lost the ability to reason, to think, to be at all rational.

I am daily grateful that I am still alive. I have also buried several friends and students who weren't helped in time, and I very much wish they had reached out for help. I have absolutely no regrets that I did not succeed in ending my life. I am absolutely blessed to still be here, to still continue to enjoy my family and my friends and my students, to have lived to see the other side and reach a place of mental health and stability, to live with the promise of a future with my family. I would have lost it all. That would have been a tragedy for me, for my family, and for those around me who I know my life impacts even when I can't always see it.

God wasn't done with me then, and he's not done with me yet. No, I have no fear of death, but it will come in His due time.

I understand you and I have very very different beliefs about and approaches to this topic.

lolagrace, just wanted to say that you and your husband have been through so much, it seems to me, and I think you're a very strong person. What most impresses me is your gratefulness, to people who helped you, to therapy that helped your family, cause to be able to be appreciative while it's so easy to be full of anger that overshadows all else.

I appreciate that. I am a strong person, much stronger than I ever gave myself credit for until these last few years. People around me could always see it, but I couldn't feel it and internalize that strength until relatively recently. In my head and heart I was irrepairably broken and doomed, but my life had other plans for me.

My son and I were talking in the car earlier today, and we were reflecting on the last few years. A few years back he went through a terrible time and came dangerously close to losing his life. He said, "That Matt of a few years ago doesn't even seem real to me anymore. To think that I almost didn't let myself find out that I AM capable, I CAN be happy, I CAN succeed. I almost took my chance away." Pretty profound words from the mouth of a 20-year-old. He realizes he survived to discover things about himself that he never saw in himself before.

I guess my message is that this journey IS difficult, it IS wrought with pain and challenge and fear, yet is it also survivable. It IS very possible to get through to the other side. It took me . . . us . . . a LONG time to get to this point. And our lives are far from perfect now . . . very far. But we've learned we can persevere through whatever life throws at us; I can't imagine too much worse, too much more, could happen to us at this point that would actually be all that surprising. That doesn't mean it won't hurt like hell, that we won't struggle and cry and feel overwhelmed, but we also know we've always made it through to the other side and found great rewards awaiting us, usually completely unanticipated.

I am glad I have it arranged so that interference from others in my life would be very difficult. I believe in freedom to choose. But I only ask that others stay away from me. If someone wants to not choose my options or believe in whatever does not try to control me - have at it.

Trigger below: (I have no idea how to do the trigger thing. Moderators are welcome to do it for me.)



I think one of the reasons this topic is so raw with me today is that my oldest son had a pretty traumatic day at work. He works for a major hotel, and this morning he went up to a guest's room to wake him up (the guest had requested that someone come wake him up). My son knocked on the door, and the guest did not answer. My son let himself in to check on the guest and found him dead from a clear suicide. That scene won't leave my son . . . ever I suspect. I'm rather furious at that stranger who chose to change my son's life forever . . . and that was a total stranger. My husband has struggled with this tonight too, because he also works for a major hotel and had almost exact same scenario happen to him about 10 years ago.

I feel you on this one! I have been on receiving end before and I HATE people who are manipulative. It's actually a trigger. That because I was abused by some very manipulative people growing up. One threaten me with suicide ( an ex boyfriend)

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How did we get to talking about suicide? Or is this an extreme form of what you consider manipulation?

The original poster mentioned being called manipulative when struggling with suicidal thoughts as a teenager. I think that is why we started talking about suicide.

'Manipulative' or 'toxic' are single world thought terminating cliches. They're something you call someone when you can't be bothered thinking about their problems any more, or dealing with their issues any more and you want to write them off in a way that will make other people suspicious of them.

As someone more on the staggeringly blunt end of the spectrum, I get different words thrown at me when people want to stop dealing with an issue at hand, but it's the same thing.

Those terms tell you more about the person using them than you. (Assuming, of course, you haven't been engaging in a Machivellian plot to undermine Western civilization or some such thing.)

Therapists use the word as a put down.