Gareth O'Callaghan: A stranger told me he was going to kill himself that day

We need to be comfortable addressing the topic of suicide with people who are distressed

Suicidal ideation is a mindset, not just a bunch of random thoughts. However, with the best intentions, if all we can do is offer reassurances to an individual who doesn’t want to be reassured, then we’ve lost.

Many years ago, shortly after my book A Day Called Hope was published, I was having lunch in a local pub before catching the train for work. 

As I was about to eat my sandwich, I looked up. A stranger was standing directly in front of me. He was mid-40s, wearing a smart suit, and he seemed quite calm.

He stood there, hands in his pockets, and said: “I’m going to kill myself this afternoon.” 

Then he waited; I’m not sure for what, but his words changed not only my plans for the remainder of that day but for weeks to follow. He stood there waiting, silently.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” I replied, grappling with my own frantic thoughts while trying to figure out something to say, words that he might not be expecting to hear. 

Break the chain, I kept thinking, learned from my experience as a therapist.

“I’m not expecting you to say anything,” he replied. “I just want someone to know, and since I think you understand then you’re the obvious choice.”

He smiled, which for some reason didn’t surprise me. What were my choices? I didn’t know anything about this individual. It all came as such a shock, I didn’t know how to react.

I studied him nervously as he watched me. “Why don’t you sit down?” I said to him.

“Because you have to go to work,” he replied. “I know who you are, and you’ll miss your train if you stay.”

The thought occurred that maybe he’d been watching me coming in here. Back then, I always had one of those like-clockwork routines. 

“And what if I’d prefer to stay here, and listen to you. Would that help?” 

Now he seemed confused. “Why would it help? You don’t know anything about me, so why would you want to listen to me?”

Battle of wits

He was putting it up to me, for whatever reason I wasn’t sure. But a bizarre battle of wits was being played out. Each one thinking and contemplating the other’s next move, almost trying to outwit each other.

I’d once been told about suicide chess. Losing a game of chess intentionally is also known as suicide chess, the object being to lose all of your pieces, leaving yourself with nothing left on the board.

“If you’d prefer me to leave, then I’ll go,” I said.

Then came the silence. His eyes were darting frantically, up, down, left, right. He squeezed his hands together. “My name is John,” he said in a subdued voice.

A distressed person may not find it easy to talk to someone about how they are feeling.

I extended my hand. “You know who I am,” I replied with a smile. He avoided my eyes. There was no handshake. Perhaps he thought it might be a sign of surrender.

“Would my hand have been the last hand you held?” I asked him. “Is that why you won’t shake it?”

He stood up. “I have to go.”

I scribbled down my number on a scrap of paper. “Here, take this.” He looked back. He stared down at the piece of paper. 

“I won’t be calling you, you know that,” he said, as he took the page and shoved it in his pocket.

“Maybe I do.”

“Then why did you give it to me?”

“Because it might be the last phone number you look at. Or if you change your mind, then you have it,” I replied. “Or maybe the emergency services will have someone to call when they find you.”

He left the pub. A few seconds later, I followed him out onto the street, but there was no sign of him.

Did that really happen? I would ask myself for days and weeks afterwards.

I thought long and hard about the words I’d used that day, and whether they had been fair; but I wanted him to take away something that he mightn’t have been expecting to hear.

I wanted to remind him that his wasn’t the only voice in the room that day.

By killing himself, he was leaving his family with a shocking legacy that they would carry for the rest of their lives. As would I.

Can the power of listening, and the words we use change a person’s broken mind, particularly someone who feels that cruelty is coming at him from all sides? 

Can we really prevent suicide? I believe we can. All of us can.

Befriending someone who may be suicidal as a counsellor, a psychologist, a parent, teacher, or friend is a delicate procedure.

Suicidal ideation is a mindset, not just a bunch of random thoughts. However, with the best intentions, if all we can do is offer reassurances to an individual who doesn’t want to be reassured, then we’ve lost. It’s difficult to reassure ourselves, so how can we expect to reassure others?

Someone who feels suicidal needs to hear how the invisible pain they feel can be lifted as quickly as possible.

At a suicide prevention conference some years ago, a speaker finished her presentation by saying, “Everything changes, nothing lasts forever.”

I could tell from the reaction of those around me that the cliché was a glib attempt to reassure.

Individuals who are suicidal are no longer capable of believing that their lives can change. 

In the mind of someone who is crushed by crippling hopelessness, change makes no sense. The intensity of the pain eclipses everything, including life, making it impossible to sustain.

Someone struggling with a persecution complex, a deep sense of hopelessness, and a failure to see anything better on the horizon, will almost certainly feel suicidal. Struggling with invisible pain that can overpower us is affecting more and more of us than ever before.

Learning about suicidal behaviour is like learning how to swim. Once you can swim competently, you’re no longer afraid of deep water. When you know more about the human mind, you become more confident and willing to help others to deal with its darker spaces.

Pandemic isolation

During the pandemic, we were forced to isolate, to break physical contact with family and friends. Many people had to deal with gruelling loneliness. 

Social aggression, keeping up appearances, peer pressure, stolen expectations, finding ourselves out of our familiar social circles, a lack of structure, loss of belief in oneself, a sudden absence of the internal values that previously guided our lives — these are all minefields that lead to depression.

However, despite rising levels of depression, there were fewer suicides during the lockdowns than there were following the lifting of restrictions.

Was this because many families were spending more time together? Did we feel protected by the people we had chosen to be in our bubbles, giving us a chance to talk and listen to those we trusted with our health and wellbeing? 

Or did the lockdown provide a safety net for many people from a society that is increasingly intolerant of the problems of others?

The reason why some people kill themselves is that their once familiar worlds become so unrecognisably changed in a short space of time that they no longer feel included or, more importantly, in control.

It can happen as fast as a sinkhole opening up beneath us.

Every one of us faces personal struggles, some overwhelming, at different times in our lives. Some of these struggles can lead to suicidal thoughts.

So why then are we shocked to hear that someone we know has attempted to kill themselves? It’s a contradiction in many ways.

While we might be more comfortable in recent years accepting that suicide is a problem that has touched all of our lives in some way, families are still not in a place where they feel comfortable enough to discuss it at home; but that’s where it needs to be raised openly.

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We need to move to a place in our lives where we are comfortable bringing up the topic of suicide with someone who is distressed.

As one mother said to me recently: “If I don’t, then who else will?” 

One of her four sons was suicidal, she told me, and she would never have known if she hadn’t asked. It turned out to be the son she never thought would self-harm.

The window of hope becomes smaller the more the topic of self-harm is skirted around. Those most hurt and affected by suicide are the people who are left behind picking up the pieces, asking that heartbreaking question: Why?

I often wondered about John during the weeks after he’d stood in front of me 20 years ago and told me he was going to kill himself.

Six months later, on Christmas Eve, I called into the same pub for a drink. One of the barmen took me aside. “A man called John dropped in earlier. He said you knew each other. He left a card for you.” I opened the card. It said: ‘Thank you’.

- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.