September 21, 2019 - 8:15 PM

I really don’t like it when speakers mention people that have killed themselves. This evening I was at a church service where the pastor was preaching on worry. Over the course of the sermon he used the word suicide a handful of times - I think it didn’t bother me because A. I was fighting really hard not to focus on it. B. I’m doing well. and C. because it was abstract. Textbook. Theoretical. 

But specifically saying someone did kill them-self is real. Emotion packed hopelessness. Thankfully it didn’t plunge me into the depts of despair. It could very well have. Fighting just to let the word suicide mentioned in a sermon pass me by is nothing compared to trying to overcome the hurdle of a specific person (who I don’t even know) killing them-self. It is a very BIG trigger that can take me to horribly dark places, I can go from happy, normal mood, to suicidal myself.

At another meeting someone did the same thing. They mentioned a specific person who committed suicide - and they shouldn’t have. No one should. Speaking of dying of cancer or murder is completely different than identifying a broken person who in desperation and hopelessness did something that many, many people fantasize about doing.

*Side note: I did like that the pastor said some stat about percentage of people that suffer from mental illness anxiety. So he acknowledged that there is a difference between common worry and the diagnosed kind.