I was in my early 20s when this photo was taken. Photos are misleading – like magic, they can be an optical illusion. They say one thing and hide another. What do you see in my eye? What I see, from my vantage point, is deep emotional pain. I was feeling lost, surrounded by many who did not add anything to my life, but instead took away a lot from. I was being taught harsh lessons. Nevertheless, I am grateful for what I have learnt, whilst recognising the price I had to pay. It is hard to recall that my pain was too much to bear, so much so that I would have rather been dead than alive. A few unsuccessful suicide attempts left me with physical and mental scars for life. I ended up in hospital and had a total mental breakdown. The good news is that I survived it all and came out stronger.
One might ask why I would care to share such a story? Why not hide that dark side of me that I am not proud of? It is indeed embarrassing to remember my naivety, my lack of self-worth and self-regard.
But I share it because sharing is liberating and empowering. I believe that when you get to that stage in your life where you are happy to share your vulnerabilities and your truth - that is when you have control over who you are. You accept that you are just human with strengths and weaknesses.
As human beings, we tend to polarise things. From a very young age, we are taught about heroism versus villainy. Most cartoons have good and evil characters. Religions have versions of God and Satan. It seems as if we have been taught to ignore the darkness within and reject the idea that we can be both good and bad.
But, most importantly, who defines goodness and malevolence? Our parents, religion, culture or social norms? What is evident is that good and bad are defined by people. When nobody knows and there is nobody there to judge, then good and bad do not inherently exist. The standards of good or bad are socially constructed.
How correctly Terence said: "I am human and let nothing human be alien to me"
As an interpreter, a lot of my work has been with the NHS. I have worked with various mental health professionals supporting newcomers. It was surprising that most of the sessions with GPs and pain management professionals were actually around mental health and ultimately its impact on individuals’ physical wellbeing. I had many sessions with refugees and asylum seekers who had thoughts of suicide or had even attempted suicide. During those sessions, I often wondered how come one can make such a heroic journey across many lands to safety and then, in a supposedly more protective context, come to want to kill themselves. I started browsing the internet to learn more about the suicide rates in the UK.
Did you know that the latest UK suicide figures show that on average more than 5000 people take their own lives every year. Three-quarters of them are men. Suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 50.
Office for National Statistics publish suicide data for England here.
- 5219 suicides were registered in 2021. This is 307 more than in 2020.
- The overall suicide rate was 10.5 per 100,000, compared to 10.0 per 100,000 in 2020, and 10.8 per 100,000 in 2019.
- The male suicide rate was 15.8 per 100,000, compared to a female suicide rate of 5.5 per 100,000.
- Males aged 50-54 were found to have the highest suicide rate (22.5 per 100,000).
- There is regional variation in the suicide rates. The North East of England once again had the highest suicide rate (14.1. per 100,000), with the North West of England seeing a significant increase in suicide rate in 2021 (12.9 per 100,000), compared to 2020 (10.1 per 100,000).
In reading all the above statistics, I wondered what would help a person to rise above the compulsion to give up life? How does one hold on to hope in the face of pain and agony? What is the purpose of one's life? What factors of one's circumstances can bring meaning to one's life?
“He, who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how.”
Viktor Frankle
Perhaps one psychologist, more than any other, has devoted his life to exploring the implications of needing a meaningful life, and that is Victor Frankl, who even wrote a book entitled ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. Frankl realised that life was not about Freud’s pleasure principle or even abstinence from suffering and one must live ‘not in a tensionless state, but rather a striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him’.
Frankl developed his own practice of psychotherapy, called ‘logotherapy’, and one of its key messages is that the search for meaning becomes a primary motivational force in the adult. It is this striving for some kind of ‘self-actualisation’, as opposed to being driven only by instinctual forces; that is part of what being a human is; it is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. There is a need to fulfil our own potential; utilise what talents we have; pursue what interests us the most.
One of my favourite quotes is by Jean-Paul Sartre: "In a word, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself."
When I encountered my own existential crisis in my twenties. I was suddenly faced with the hazy question of "who am I?" and "what is my purpose?", and as a result, I sought validation from outside myself rather than realizing that self-worth and self-respect should be built up from within. Over time, thanks to therapy and other personal development practices, I came to understand that real empowerment can only come from engaging with the world itself by forcing myself to participate in activities and surrounding myself with others who love me unconditionally. That moment of self-discovery, honestly articulated to myself, was a foundation of genuine empowerment.
Frankl believed that “Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.”
For many of us, our proudest achievements come in the face of the greatest adversity. Our pain often makes us stronger, more resilient, more grounded. Fear, anxiety and sadness are not necessarily always undesirable or unhelpful states of mind; rather, they are often representative of the necessary pain of psychological growth. And to deny that pain is to deny our own potential. Just as one must suffer physical discomfort to build up muscular strength, one must go through emotional discomfort to develop greater emotional resilience, a stronger sense of self, increased compassion, and a generally happier, meaningful life.
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