You've been disgraced... why suicide is not the answer
This is a difficult topic for me but I cannot write about getting publicly shamed without the very real instinct to find a permanent escape to the pain.
As previously mentioned, we are social creatures who, for better and worse, derive most of our value in one way or another from our social status. We need to have a place in the social order and we would prefer it to be stable and relatively high in that order but for a lot of us this is not the case.
We feel at our worst socially in two scenarios, first, when we are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, or at least we perceive ourselves to be, and second, when our position takes a dramatic fall. Even if we fall from the top percentile to a mid-ranged, otherwise respectable position, the fall shocks our nervous system as if we were physically falling off a cliff.
The anxiety of a social death, or the threat thereof, makes us feel like we are painted into a corner with only one window open. This is not suicidal ideation due to depression, it is a panic induced pressure to avoid the accumulating doom. Things have become so bad and they seem to continue to get worse. Your imagination spins about what might happen next and it all seems unbearable.
You might have fallen into financial troubles in addition to your disgrace. Perhaps you have been fired or your business has been destroyed. Maybe you have been sued. You become tempted to read the fine print of your life insurance policy to see if there is any way that in death you can provide for your loved ones. You see know viable path to repaying your debt and living a regular life. Yet another monster haunting you incessantly.
Maybe you are in trouble with the law and are facing time in prison. You are terrified of living out your sentence in custody but it is the concept of living the rest of your life as a convict that leaves you believing that there is no hope for you at all. You think that you will never be truly free and you want so badly to find the courage to end it. Or maybe you are not in trouble with the law but your anxiety spins a narrative that keeps you second guessing if your public infraction is going to be interpreted in such a way that police interference will always be possible.
It’s not necessarily death that you seek but it seems impossible to erase what has happened and its consequences. Suicide seems like the only way to quiet the noise. You think that if you kill yourself you will kill the story.
Here is why this is not the case.
First, suicide makes your story a much bigger deal. Everyone will hear about your death and wonder what happened. Everyone you know and hundreds, maybe thousands of others will research your name and find out about the very mistakes that you think you are escaping. Your heart may not be beating but your story continues and there will be ten time as much light shone on it than before. From a sheer public relations strategy, do not highlight the worst things about your life with suicide.
Some of you reading will be worried that this would encourage suicidal people who are looking to die with infamy but in this situation, people who are experiencing public shame do not want to be famous or infamous, they want to be left alone. If I could promise you that one day soon people will leave you alone wouldn’t that reduce a lot of the desire to end things prematurely now?
Your shame seems like a big deal right now, and it probably is. Being targeted by a social media mob or portrayed unkindly in the news is dreadful but at the very least you can be assured that online mobs move on and news cycles shift. Keep your head down and you will be able to live a simple, quiet life, away from the haters.
But dying by suicide is the opposite strategy. It turns your entire life story into your shame. You will forever be known as the person who killed themselves over X, which in time most people agree was not that big of a deal.
For the sake of not contributing to further public shaming, my examples will not include names but they are entirely real. There was a mayor of a small town who was discovered to have a secret habit of cross dressing. He also wrote erotic stories under a pseudonym with themes that some people would find disturbing. When a news outlet continually hounded him about his secret habits, despite his family knowing about it and expressing that they still accepted him, he decided to take his life.
Then there was a the preacher whose information was found on a data leak from an online escort service website. He had never accessed the services, just signed up to see what it was about. Having this information made public by online vigilantes led him to panic and kill himself.
Then there was the teenage girl who decided to share sexual pictures of herself with a man who then extorted her for more, leading her to panic and kill herself.
We would have never heard of any of these stories if the people involved hadn’t died because of it. One guy crossdresses and has to explain it to his loved ones, maybe steps down from his position as mayor if he’s really ashamed, and then finds another way to provide for his family, all while continuing to occasionally crossdress with little consequence. Another preacher admits to repressed feelings that led to his curiosity going somewhere he wished it wouldn’t have, maybe takes a break from the ministry for a bit and patches things up with his wife. He recommits to her and puts blocks on his phone to keep his curiosity from pulling him towards a bad habit. Another teenager makes a stupid mistake but then finds peace in a less online environment, maybe even brining her would be extorter to justice. That’s how those stories would have continued instead of ending with the tragic and violent end of people who were loved and respected by many and whose faults would have been forgiven and forgotten by virtually everyone in their lives.
Secondly, it all seems really bad now but it will not always be so.
The suicide rate in correctional facilities are almost 10x higher than that of the general public and 50% of those happen within the first day of incarceration.
People, when facing their social demise want out immediately but they fail to see that in time their great shame will be, at worst, a footnote in a life story filled with all sorts of successes and failures.
As tempting as it is to put an end to it now, right around the corner is a life that will be relatively free of it all if you can just wait for it. People get rehabilitated. The system seeks and enacts justice and then it is over. You might have limitations moving forward but there is still a lot of life to live and people to associate with. The height of your shame and anxiety is exactly that. It is the peak of awful and will dissipate.
There are people who have committed terrible crimes or who have been shamed in front of millions of viewers. There are people whose most embarrassing moments have become memes shared virally. All of whom are living peaceful lives with some people who love them, in relative obscurity and decent prosperity.
When you are publicly shamed there is a version of you that, in all senses but physical, will die. As this part of your soul withers and rots away it feels like your body and mind should go with it. This is not the end. It is an excruciating, spiritual surgery that violently and crudely removes parts of yourself from the whole but it is not the end.
Remember the power of the near miss. When Nazis dropped bombs on London to create chaos and discourage the public into submission they miscalculated the power of the near miss. Yes they did carnage. Yes they created fear. But every night, after a few dozen buildings were hit and the casualties counted, the rest of Britain gained strength and resolve. They were almost hit, but not quite and this awoke a fighting spirit to make sure that the Germans would not be given the satisfaction of victory.
Your disgrace has ALMOST obliterated you. The shock is truly awful. The anxiety is crippling .It ALMOST got you. In time you will see that this near miss can generate a new sense of energy you may have never considered. You can survive.
If you don’t believe me. Please reach out.