It is generally due to a fragile, over sensitive ego-personality and a weak vital full of sentimentality. It could be something one is born with or develops due to the psychological environment one lives in. The result is an inability to bear the shocks or take the challenges of life. The frustrations and disappointments then easily assume a larger than life shadow that swallows up the will to live and stifles all hope. The person enters into an acute egoistic state wherein he or she is totally clouded and unable to see anything other than one’s own disappointed desire. The more one concentrates upon oneself, the more one sinks into a narrow dark hole. Thoughts become more and more centered around the difficulty and the depression making it much larger and seemingly impossible to get rid of. One enters a state of extreme tamas (obscurity and darkness). The will is paralysed and one looks for an easy way out of the state one is caught up in. The field of nature then becomes an easy ground for the hostile forces to take over and make one do the most stupid things one can imagine including the extreme step of taking away one’s life.
The recovery process starts by rectifying the wrong thoughts that often exaggerate the loss and draw unjust conclusions from the events by magnifying them through the lens of the ego. Then one starts instilling hope and faith and thereby turning the emotions locked within the little hole away from oneself through work, activity and people who matter and love. Love has to be diverted from the object of hurt towards plants, creatures, even objects that draw us away from oneself and give or used to give joy. The mind must be diverted from its excessive preoccupation with oneself and the problem through books, music, cinema. The problem is then put into perspective, dressed down to the actual proportion and then alternate solutions found. The crisis can become a moment of awakening if one can perceive through it all the very nature of life, anityam asukham lokam, transient suffering world, and having thus understood the person can be helped in finding the true and radical remedy by turning towards the True, the Permanent, the Eternal. A restructuring of personality and changing the old patterns is the last but time consuming process.
This of course is only a very brief summary of a,vast and complex subject that often requires professional intervention including medication, especially if sleep is disturbed, the suicidal state is not triggered by outer circumstances, there is strong heredity element and the hostile forces have taken a complete hold upon the person. There are many shades and variations of this problem and each has to be dealt on its own merit.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
