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Kansas City Chiefs players stand arm-in-arm during a moment of silence following murder-suicide involving one of their teammates. The Chiefs had a quiet victory over the Carolina Panthers at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. (AP photo)

Seattle therapist's theory on suicide based on 16,000 cases

December 2, 2012 @ 1:25 pm (Updated: 6:57 pm - 12/2/12 )

"It's tough when certain circumstances happen that you can't undo," says Romeo Crennel, head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs football team.

Chiefs' linebacker Jovan Belcher shot himself in the head, killing himself at the team's practice facility. Minutes before that, Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend after an argument.

The Cleveland Browns also confirm that a member of the team's groundskeeping crew committed suicide at the team's Ohio training facility.

Answers are hard to come by for the families involved.

Anyone who has had someone close kill himself or herself is left with a helpless feeling. They wonder "if only" they could have said the "right thing" to prevent the self-inflicted violence.

Obviously, it's not that simple.

James Hayes has been a local mental health therapist for 30 years, and he can't count the number of times he's heard things like this:

"I'm looking for something, but I'm not sure what." "I feel like I have been swallowed by an avalanche." "The real me dissolved into thin air. "I don't know how to get back to myself."

His colleague Fredric Matteson, at Contextual Conceptual Therapy has studied 16,000 suicidal patients. Depression and mental illness are not the main triggers for suicide.

"After I started listening to this many people I started to see a through line. It's a commonality or a trend that speaks to every situation that I find, and it wasn't about them having bi-polar or depression," says Matteson.

The "through line" is that suicidal people don't see themselves the way the world sees them.

"They're in this place, inside this avalanche of emotion, and they can't locate themself," he says the suicidal people he's studied have all managed to create a divide in their personality. He calls it a "bifurcated" state.

There's the person everyone else sees, who generally seems normal and might even appear outgoing and happy. Then there's the true self, the one who deals with all the painful feelings of abandonment, depression, and any other extreme negative thoughts. That's the person they hide from the world.

"The best place to hide something is to not be present," says Matteson. "If I'm not here I can't be hurt, but if I'm not here I can't be in love either. I can't be in a relationship. I can't have true success. I can't sustain success. I'm this split place here."

People who are suicidal try to cut themselves off from their emotions. They're really in a "lost place" where they are trying to get out of their pain without understanding where the pain comes from.

Mental health therapist Jason Moran says someone who says they're suicidal is actually closer to a breakthrough than anyone realizes.

"It's not that something's wrong with me, something is trying to be right with me here, and I need to uncover what that is. What is this phenomenon that's keeping them from seeing who they really are?" says Moran. "Once they understand that and can begin to see what you see, the suicidal feelings drop."

The take away from their years of research is this: We need to talk about suicide more, not less. That's the beginning of helping people deal with the disconnect between who they think they are and the person the world sees.

By LINDA THOMAS

This story was first published in May after Junior Seau's suicide stunned sports fans and former teammates who recalled the former NFL star's ferocious tackles and habit of calling everyone around him "Buddy."

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

More from Linda Thomas

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Comments (8)


  • Add A Comment

  • cdbtx wrote...
    It's called
    December 3, 2012 2:55 am
    Extreme selfishness and being self-centered. We've become a society of "Me".

    When you look at the big picture - do these people for one second consider the pain that they will cause others?

    Their thoughts are always focused on "Me".

    Sounds cold - on the outside they may appear to be generous, kind people.. but on the inside it's about serving "Me".. "Money nor anything else can't buy you love"..

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  • loulu wrote...
    cdbtx
    December 3, 2012 10:19 am
    You have no idea how ignorant you are and how far from the truth you are. Severe treatment-resistant depression requires daily sacrifice to live through excruciating pain every day -- all for the sake of others. To require an individual to suffer this constant hell for YOUR sake is whats truly selfish. Have some compassion, you thoughtless twit.
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  • pdawkins wrote...
    @cdbtx
    December 3, 2012 10:33 am
    Apparently you've never had someone close to you take their own life. My brother took his own life two months after my mother passed away. I was just 19 years old. How could we know what this person was thinking, cause we didn't know what my brother was going thru. Despite the fact that he was with us about every day after my mom passed, never said a word. But as the doctor said, he didn't see himself as we did. He was the oldest child of six and we needed him emotionally as well as physically. His demons were greater then the forces within and the demons won the battle. MS E-6 in the US ARMY, commendations, awards brnad new father of two, and still missed to this day.
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  • cg5611 wrote...
    glad cdbtx isn't a
    December 3, 2012 8:56 am
    therapist. The atitutude expressed by this post is far more self-centered than a suicidal person's. Or maybe a lack of compassion - put your self in someone else's shoes. How would you cope if your parents abandoned you at the age of 4? If you're raised in a wonderfully loving home with parents that don't drink or beat up on each other but instead help you thru your formative years can you even imagine a different life outcome?
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  • messiah101 wrote...
    Whoa Junior Seau's suicide was likely caused by
    December 3, 2012 11:16 am
    Many years of head trauma playing linebacker in the NFL.His suicide was strange also in that I believe his death was caused by a shot to his chest
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  • Harry O wrote...
    Incorrect about Seau
    December 3, 2012 2:12 pm
    They examined his brain, no trauma
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  • Bubba wrote...
    cdbtx....
    December 3, 2012 11:58 am
    ...so what if a person who commits suicide is selfish? Maybe they were sick and tired of being self-LESS. I, too, for a real long time was of the opinion that those who commit suicide are selfish, but after talking with someone whose attempt to commit suicide failed, I've began to see the "other side", so to speak. Bottom line: generalizations are dangerous.
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  • The Dude Abides wrote...
    Selfish Arse
    December 3, 2012 12:18 pm
    I get why some people feel the need to commit suicide, even if I don't agree with it, and I don't feel that I have the right to deny them if that's what they truly want. However, this idiot deserves no sympathy or compassion. This "man" shot his girlfriend NINE times, then put his coaches through the severe mental anguish of watching him kill himself. On top of all that, he single-handedly orphaned his own little girl. How any human being can do that, to me, is unfathomable. His name should be wiped off the map as if he never existed. The world will be a better place for that, his daughter included.
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