Teal Swan's Stance on Suicide
There's been a lot of confusion and misconception
about my stance on suicide.
Most specifically, what my stance is,
and why.
For that reason, I'm hoping to make this video
so as to clear up any confusion.
Instead of give you a speech about it,
I'm just gonna highlight some points.
To be crystal clear,
I'm against suicide.
When you're feeling depressed,
when you're feeling panicked when you're feeling powerless,
suicide is not the answer.
My ultimate goal is to help people
who are feeling suicidal, to get back in touch with a feeling
that their life is worth living for.
This is the ultimate reason why
I even did a video addressing the topic of suicide,
trying to help people who are currently feeling suicidal.
Given that this is a very personal subject for me,
meaning this touches me on such a personal level,
I cannot convey my level of caring
for people who feel suicidal
and I cannot convey my level of passion
for helping them actually find
a life worth living for.
Find strategies that helps them to no longer feel suicidal.
The standard mainstream approach
to mental illness and to suicidality,
does not work as well as it needs to
and I'm not the only person saying this.
This is the reason why
every time I hold trainings
I have psychologists and psychiatrists
who are flocking to these trainings of mine,
trying to learn new approaches
for mental illness.
Trying to learn new approaches to suicidality.
The bottom line you guys is that if it worked,
they wouldn't be looking for alternatives.
Just this week,
the head of the University of Pennsylvania Mental Health Services
committed suicide.
This is an epidemic that we need to solve together.
Having been suicidal myself,
having attempted suicide myself,
having worked for years with people who are suicidal,
having the extrasensory perception that I have
that allows me to understand why thoughts and emotions
work the way they do,
uniquely qualifies me to be talking about
a new approach
to dealing with suicidality.
And this is what I can tell you:
The standard approach does not work.
The perspective of somebody who is suicidal
is unfathomable to most people.
Most people have an intense fear of death.
So they approach death
as if it's the worst thing that could ever happen.
This is not the perspective the people who are suicidal hold.
People who are suicidal,
view death as an "escape hatch"
that gets them out of unfathomable
amounts of pain.
It's the only relief that they can find to torture.
Now I'm going to argue with you
that if you are going to change someone's perspective,
you have to get deep enough into it
to understand that perspective.
And this is what we have to do
with people who are suicidal.
Mainstream mental health professionals
would say that we need to get suicidal people
to stop focusing on this way that they feel.
Stop focusing on their perspective
about death and suicide,
and instead focus on the goodness of life.
But this makes people who are suicidal
feel worse.
People who are genuinely suicidal,
they're thinking about suicide
everywhere they go.
If they're in a room,
they're thinking about all the possible ways
in that room,
that they could do it.
This on top of planning out "the way"
that they would choose to do it,
if they could choose any way,
is a kind of unconscious rehearsal process
which actually brings them relief.
Telling them not to think about suicide,
is like telling a person who's worried,
not to think about what they're worried about.
Telling a suicidal person
that if they do commit suicide,
they're gonna ruin other people's lives,
it doesn't actually work to make them feel better.
In fact, it makes them feel worse,
because on top of feeling
as bad as they do,
bad enough that they're actually considering
ending their life,
now on top of it,
you've just added the pressure,
of other people's feelings.
The responsibility for those feelings
of the people in their lives, and the guilt on top of it.
What if there was another way that worked better?
What if this way that worked better,
seemed counter intuitive
to people who are on the outside looking in?
What if we could say to people:
"Okay, I'm gonna humor you for a minute,
in this safe space that we're in,
what if we actually do
look at these emotions that you have about suicide,
look at the thoughts about committing suicide?"
What if we consciously play out the tragedy
of this suicide?
We see the impact on the family,
we see what happens after this initial relief phase
that they think they're getting.
We introduce them to the
"What then, after death?"
What if this counterintuitive
way of going about approaching suicidality,
actually is what enables a person to see
that the best choice for them
is to commit to life.
There's a push right now
for it to only be legal
for licensed professionals
that are trained through mainstream education
to be speaking about the mind
and about emotions.
I find this terrifying.
I Have always been clear about this,
and I'll say it again now:
I am NOT a doctor.
I am NOT a licensed therapist.
I'm not a psychologist.
What I am is a spiritual leader.
What I am is a revolutionary
in the field of personal development.
While I can absolutely appreciate
the risk of people who don't know what they're doing
doing things that cause more harm,
it terrifies me that we're trying to limit the field
to only certain people being legally allowed
to talk about certain subjects.
It scares me for the following reasons:
The first is:
There's a huge conflict among professionals
about whether the brain gives rise to consciousness,
or whether consciousness itself gives rise to the brain.
If consciousness itself gives rise to the brain,
then we cannot actually consider
mind and emotions
to be a purely medical concern.
Because if consciousness is beyond the brain,
the brain can't be
what we're pointing to as the "problem"
when it comes to all mental illness,
all thought processes
and all emotions.
It also scares me
because of how backward the mental health field is
at this current time.
We cannot forget
that at one point in time,
and it was a very long period of time,
that what medical students were taught
was to "blood let"
to try to resolve illness.
We now know that this killed people.
Lots and lots of people.
It just never occurs to us,
that we in this day and age
might actually be educating medical students,
psychologists and psychiatrists
the same level of damaging methodology.
This scares me because what it means
is that all spiritual teachers,
all self-help experts,
all people who have found amazing cures themselves
and want to tell people the answer that worked for them,
are now going to be in trouble
for sharing their opinion,
for sharing their perspective
and to be quite honest,
many of them have cures that work much better
than what is accepted in mainstream psychology
or mainstream medical science.
On top of this,
it means that these people
who have a genuine calling
towards sharing this information,
will now be without the ability
to fulfill their purpose.
To do the very important things
they have to do on this planet.
Imagine telling the Dalai Lama,
or Socrates,
or Eckhart Tolle,
or Anthony Robbins
that they can't talk about depression.
It's not legal for them to do so,
and that if they do talk about depression,
they could get fined for practicing therapy without a license.
On top of this, to be quite honest with you,
it is a terrifying world that we live in today.
If somebody has overcome suicidality
and is saying that they can actually show their perspective
on what actually did work
and people say we're not interested
in what you have to say about that,
because you're not a psychologist.
I am in a very difficult position
teaching about suicide
as a spiritual leader
and as a survivor of suicidality myself.
Because my perspective
differs immensely
from the mainstream psychology community.
This focus that people in the media have put on me
in relation to suicidality,
has painted the exact opposite picture
of what is the reality about me
and my stance on suicide.
They don't interview the abundance of people
who say that their lives were saved
by my perspectives
and by my stance on suicide
and specifically by the video that I did
on what to do if you're suicidal.
They never speak to or speak about
the psychologists and psychiatrists
who support what I'm doing,
who flock to my trainings to learn these new methods
because they agree with me.
Also because,
they see what I'm doing,
as the next step forward
for the mental health field.
What the media does not understand
is that when I talk about suicide,
when they put me in the position to talk about suicide,
what comes across quite clearly
to people who are suicidal,
is that I get suicidality better than anyone else.
Therefore what's happening,
is that they are driving people who are suicidal,
to me in droves.
They're showing up in mass numbers
to my platform, to my events...
every time I hold them and every day.
I would welcome this,
except for now I find myself an extremely slippery territory.
I now have a disproportionate amount
of suicidal people that are coming to my platforms
and coming to my events.
This is happening every day, more and more.
And there are some people,
who would like to hold me accountable,
if any of those people who are now on my platform,
decide to commit suicide.
The reality is that overcoming suicidality
is about changing a person's life circumstance.
So that the life circumstance that they're living in
feel good instead of bad.
As much as I would want to
for every individual person,
out of the millions of people
who watch my videos and are on my platforms,
it's not possible for me
to make sure that each individual person
out of those millions,
is making those changes.
Changing their life in a way
where they no longer feel suicidal.
So there's no way for me to guarantee
that somebody who flocks to my material,
won't ultimately commit suicide.
The thing that people don't seem to get,
is that I grieve every single one of these people
who might commit suicide.
The reality is,
is the impact of suicide is astronomical.
That being said,
I do have to make a statement
about our approach to suicidality.
It is my opinion,
that our attitude towards suicidality
and our unwillingness, quite frankly,
to explore different approaches to suicidality,
is reflective more of our own fear of death.
I want you to consider for a minute,
that it is that fear of death that we hold,
that might just be preventing us
from getting as deep as we need to go into the perspective
of somebody who is feeling suicidal
to figure out what actually works.
Instead of continuing to project on to suicidal people,
what we think will and should work.
I am getting the message right now
that it is better to not take the personal risk
of talking about suicide in today's world.
What does this say about us as a society?
This taboo that we're painting
around suicidality,
paints a taboo around people who are suicidal
and that is something that I am unwilling
to get on board with.
I want to be very clear,
I do not want to fight
the mainstream mental health community.
I don't want to fight mainstream mental health.
What I want is integrative mental health.
I want integrative medicine in general.
This includes people from a clinical background.
That being said,
I am compelled and driven
to represent these individuals.
Individuals who struggle with mental health concerns.
Individuals who are suicidal
and what I think they truly need.
Which just might be something
that society does not currently recognize.
I need to make one thing very clear to the general public;
It's that people don't want to die.
What they want is to stop hurting.
It just so happens that their life hurts so much,
that the only way they feel like they can stop hurting,
is to die.
Now what we need to do,
is to figure out methods that actually work
for individuals who are currently stuck in this mindset.
Instead of continuing to approach them,
with methodologies that are intended to help,
but instead cause them more pain
and do more damage.
Have a good week.