Yesterday was Suicide Awareness Day. Across social media, in articles, and through deeply personal stories, I saw a wave of honesty, courage, and vulnerability. I found myself pausing often taking in the weight of what people were sharing and reflecting on my own perspective, both as a therapist and as little ol’ me.
The truth is that suicide remains one of the most complex and difficult aspects of the human condition. It occupies a strange and often binary position in society: socially it has been silenced, whispered about, or pushed to the margins; religiously it has been condemned, judged as a sin, or framed as the ultimate rejection of life itself. Yet behind these categories are real people carrying unbearable pain; souls who are seeking release, or perhaps a way back into life.
Silence Harms
Historically, suicide was rarely spoken about openly. Families hid it, communities avoided it, and shame wrapped itself around grief like a second skin. While this silence was often protective, it has also caused deep harm. When someone feels that even voicing their despair is taboo, isolation intensifies, and suffering becomes heavier.
In the days since Suicide Awareness Day, I’ve been thinking about how much of the healing begins when the silence is broken, when despair can be spoken aloud and met with presence rather than shame.
Exploring the Depths
I know how frightening it can be — for both client and therapist, to walk directly into the terrain of suicidal thoughts. Yet this is often where transformation begins. The longing for death is rarely only about ending life; it can also be about seeking change, release, or meaning.
James Hillman, in his book Suicide and the Soul, wrote with extraordinary clarity about the need to take these desires seriously. He suggested that the contemplation of death can awaken a deeper engagement with life; that by facing the possibility of ending it, we may discover what we most yearn to live for.
I have witnessed this paradox in my own work. Sometimes, to know we want to live, we must first feel the depth of wanting to die.
Viktor Frankl spoke of the human ability to find meaning in the darkest circumstances. Rollo May wrote about the courage it takes to face despair honestly, without collapsing into it. And relational therapists today remind us that the path through suicidal ideation often begins in connection — having another human being willing to sit with you in the not knowing.
A Rising Crisis — Especially for Men
The statistics remain stark. Suicide is increasing, particularly among men. Cultural expectations around masculinity still make it harder for men to express emotional pain or vulnerability. The result is often silence, withdrawal, and an unbearable sense of disconnection from self and others.
From a relational and soul perspective, what is needed is not more judgment or more silence, but spaces where despair can be expressed freely, where men, and all people, can bring their whole selves, even the parts that long for death, and be met with compassion.
Holding Complexity
What I want to emphasise most in this reflection is the importance of holding complexity. Supporting someone with suicidal thoughts is not about offering easy hope or insisting that everything will get better. It is about saying: I can bear to sit here with you. I won’t turn away. I can hold your desire to die and still see you as fully human.
Paradoxically, it is often when people feel their despair can be spoken and still held that they begin to imagine life differently. Life does not suddenly become free of suffering, but it can take on new meaning, new connection, and new hope.
My Suicide Ideation
At times, I have had my own struggles with contemplating suicide. As a young openly gay person in the early 1980s, I was carrying the deep wounding of a traumatic childhood while also watching the gay community, my community, be decimated by the HIV and AIDS crisis. Life and death were not abstract concepts; they were immediate, present, and unavoidable. Each day carried its own reckoning.
Through my own therapy, and by facing the depth of my own shadow, I discovered something vital: that even in the hardest, most painful times, life can still be full of wonder. The wonder doesn’t erase the suffering, but it coexists alongside it. That paradox, of pain and beauty, despair and meaning, is, I believe, at the heart of what it means to be alive.
Moving Beyond Awareness Day
Now that Suicide Awareness Day has passed, I find myself wondering: how do we carry its spirit forward into the everyday?
It cannot be only one day of reflection each year. Suicide awareness needs to become a way of being — a readiness to listen, to sit with pain, and to recognise that despair is part of the human condition. To those struggling, I would say: your thoughts do not make you broken, they make you human. To those supporting others: your presence is enough. And to all of us: the more we are able to hold the paradox of life and death, the more we can help each other find meaning in living.
Because sometimes, to truly know we want to live, we must first walk close enough to death to feel its shadow and discover that our longing, ultimately, is for life itself.
UK Helplines
- CALM, https://www.thecalmzone.net tel: 0800 58 58 58
- Papyrus, https://www.papyrus-uk.org tel: 0800 068 41 41
- Samaritans, https://www.samaritans.org tel: 116 123
- Shout, https://giveusashout.org text: 85258
- Suicide Prevention UK, https://spuk.org.uk tel: 0800 587 0800
Sean Kelly, MBACP — integrative psychotherapist and counsellor working in London W1, Hastings & St Leonards, and online. Registered member of the BACP.