Boredom and suicide

I attempted suicide 20 days ago out of severe boredom. I still think the same and behave the same. I would do anything to get me out of boredom. Nothing works. Any same experience?

Did you try suicide just because of boredom? Are you sure boredom is your right emotion?

i don't think boredom alone can lead anyone to suicide. boredom is like turning off the lights at night. the problem there is the boogeyman under your bed that comes out when it's dark. in other words, you may not be able to see it, but you're clinically depressed. look for professional help

Boredom per se has never been quite the problem with me. I have a large supply of stuff that should entertain me. But often I have a hard time actually being engaged with stuff, or motivating myself to even attempt that. And then I end up wasting a bunch of time on stuff that I'm only sort of interested in wasting time on, but I do it because it requires less actual sustained focus and engagement, if that makes sense. Basically, my pastimes have kind of dwindled more and more to a list of things that require the least amount of effort, and it was never the most diverse list to begin with. I wish I could enjoy things more fully, I guess, but that's kind of the hand I'm dealt at this point I guess. Even in my current circumstances, I don't really feel outright bored, just less fulfilled than I used to be.

xykr wrote:Boredom per se has never been quite the problem with me. I have a large supply of stuff that should entertain me. But often I have a hard time actually being engaged with stuff, or motivating myself to even attempt that. And then I end up wasting a bunch of time on stuff that I'm only sort of interested in wasting time on, but I do it because it requires less actual sustained focus and engagement, if that makes sense.

That's exactly my experience, to a T!

How are you these days?

My perspective:

Dalloway » Wed Jan 07, 2015 wrote:Konrad Lorenz wrote in his book “Civilized Man´s Eight Deadly Sins” about a phenomenon which he referred to as “heat death” or emotional entropy.
In his perception joy can only be won through discomfort.

[...] rich societies tend towards, what he calls, unpleasure-avoidance.
Abundance results in being lazy and sluggish, which is natural behavior to draw energy for bad times. But when there are no bad times, when it´s always “warm”, one is bound to lose perspective.
The futile coping strategy is to somehow intensify the pleasure, while avoiding discomfort. Make the warmth even warmer because you don´t feel it anymore results in “heat death” aka boredom and flattened affect.

A growing intollerance towards unpleasure going hand in hand with reduced attraction to pleasure leads to the inability to put hard work in undertakings which promise pleasure at a later time.

He writes about a teacher of the blind in Vienna, who reportet, that young people in his classes, who, in suicidal attempt shot themselves in the head (through the temple), but only blinded themselves, never undertook another suicide attempt. They did not only live on but grew into balanced, happy beings.
In another case a girl who, with the wish to kill herself, jumped out of a building and broke her spine. She did not only live on parapledgic but happily so.

Lorenz writes, without a doubt in his mind the creation of a tough obstacle made the lifes of these young people, who were desperate because of boredom, worth living again.

Maybe you can come up with some untertaking, preferably one that doesn´t maim you for life.

Dalloway, what you quoted and wrote makes perfect sense, but on the other hand I flat out don't want to believe it in my own case.
The worst times in my life - deep depressions - have made me hate adversities with a burning passion. Of course everyone hates hard times more or less, but I feel like I got absolutely nothing good out of them, no new perspective, new appreciation of happier times, new existential understanding, nothing. When I came out of those depressions, it wasn't like a new happy world opened up in front of me, but instead I had a lingering bitterness that only time could heal.
Then again, maybe I simply haven't even reached the state where everything in my life is "warm" - rather I feel like I'm stuck in a survival mode even when things are good. I don't feel safe and comfortable on a deeper level, even if I could enjoy my life. So someone suggesting that I actually could use some difficulties in life (not that you did, obviously you weren't even talking to me) feels almost like a threat, or an insult at least.

Firstly I don´t think this is as applicable to you as it is to the op. Boredom is key here and I share xykr´s and your perspective on the subject.

Secondly, of course this isn´t something you want to hear. Sadly the emotional entropy isn´t the necessary obstacle. Entropy is a devaluation of energy, when we need a revaluation.

I highly doubt the teens, which tried to shoot themselves thought they were in need of more hardship.
The question is do you want something pretty, appealing to your ego or do you want something ugly, that maybe is true. All I´m saying is, when you´re with the back to wall, maybe this theory is worth a try.

I too don´t see much chance for understanding after reading something about it; I mean some have to blow their eyes out of their skulls to get it.

I wish I could believe it's really that simple, but it's not like I've had a life with no bad experiences. That might have been somewhat valid when I was a teenager (and at that time while I wasn't vibrantly enthusiastic about everything, I feel like at least in my early teens I had a much greater capacity for finding life worthwhile) And even today I'm sure there are people who have had to go through worse things than me. I had more significant issues with depression in my late teens and early 20s that never were treated with any success and made stable housing and employment hard to sustain, but eventually the recurring periods of depressed mood stopped for the most part, yet I still was struggling to cope with stressful and unpleasant work that I could barely live on and which wore me out seriously.

I think the depression relented due to making peace with my schizoid tendencies which I had previously tried to force myself to go against and went through a lot of unpleasant experiences in an attempt to make some degree of normal relationships a reality even though they were exhausting and offered limited rewards and to force myself into work which required interpersonal contact because it was better paying. But while accepting that I'm just not cut out for this was able to at least relieve some suffering, at the same time throughout these years I slowly became less and less able to appreciate the tried and true enjoyments which I was able to immerse myself in to a greater extent even in periods of suffering which made me, like lindi said, increasingly feeling bitter and exhausted.

I don't know, even today I am not really in a stable and secure situation, I am still working jobs I hate and barely scraping by, but I've tried and failed to cope with the demands of going back to school as well, and the social demands of more skilled work may end up being too great even if I did. Thanks to work which is at least not socially demanding, even if it's unpleasant and financially insufficient, my personal life is in better conditions. I quit excessively drinking and my housing has been more stable, but it's still a major drain and the constant money problems don't help my state of mind. It only makes sense to me that without those further concerns exhausting me, I might be able to finally feel like I'm actually recovering somewhat from basically years of feeling like dying the majority of the time.

Actually, while I obviously wouldn't purposely inflict it on myself, I doubt I would really feel seriously misfortunate about being in a wheelchair, as I have no interest in sports or anything. It would be an inconvenience for various practical reasons, but as someone who doesn't really have any major ambitions that would be severely limited by it I don't know that something like that would really demoralize me or the opposite. On the other hand, I'm fairly confident if I was permanently blinded I would almost certainly immediately try to seek out suicide.

Dalloway wrote:The question is do you want something pretty, appealing to your ego or do you want something ugly, that maybe is true. All I´m saying is, when you´re with the back to wall, maybe this theory is worth a try.

I just keep thinking, that there has to be an other way to regain your enjoyment of life than barely living through some horrible tragedy (not that I myself am looking for desperate ways - I enjoy life well enough). Maybe a total change of lifestyle? Some form of meditation? Amnesia about your earlier joys and sorrows? Regression to the level of a child?
Can't say that I honestly believe in those "spend a year as homeless in India"-type of advices though, they sound just too cheesy.