|
mock-possum wrote: ...but it’s so hard for me to get past the thought, “why don’t they just stop being that way, and start making friends who they can open up to?” Past a certain point it’s indicative of pathology, and not necessarily one they brought on themselves. Looking at the CDC data on suicide (while it’s still available) it says the suicide rate among males in 2022 was approximately four times higher than the rate among females. Males make up 50% of the population but nearly 80% of suicides: https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html I was fortunate to grow up in a family and a section of society in which being connected was natural for men and women. I benefited from it, but I did not create it. So I get no credit for it. I don’t know how mock-possum grew up, but if you grew up as I did your current healthy state is certainly good for you, but you had a head start. Like my head start of growing up in a big stone house full of books, with lovely educated and academic parents who read to me. I didn’t create that situation. I just showed up. I inherited that emotional and intellectual wealth. I did not earn it. And men who grew up being beaten, literally, for emoting, and frankly for not being brutal, did not create their own situations either. They do, unfairly, have to do the work to get themselves out of what they did not get themselves into. But it requires more than to “just stop being that way, and start making friends you can open up to.” Obviously not everybody is suicidal, but at the extreme you’re saying to certain people “instead of wanting to kill yourself, why don’t you stop feeling that way? Don’t despair, don’t feel suicidal, just cheer up instead!” |