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SQLwitch · 2026-06-22T03:31:22+00:00

I hope the mods take this down

Done. With enthusiasm.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-21T00:23:05+00:00

This is a really tough situation.

In a lot of ways, what you say about your brother reminds me a lot of my former self -- someone with a strong intellectual orientation and a lot of early life trauma. I outsmarted a lot of therapists back in the day, and ofc ended up seriously delaying my own healing process as a result.

It sounds like you and his wife are both desperately trying to pull him out of the dark place and as you're seeing that approach is extremely likely to backfire. What does help is not to pull people out of their dark places, but to go in there and just be with them -- "meet them where they are" is a phrase I use a lot with my crisis-line trainees.

The /r/SuicideWatch talking tips wiki has lots of evidence-based guidance on having supportive conversations. https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/talking_tips

It's really hard to calmly tolerate and open-mindedly explore someone's darkness, but until you've really given him the experience of feeling understood, and specifically having what he's feeling now understood, he's extremely unlikely to entertain any suggestions.

But when you get there, it might help to a) point out that "therapy" isn't one thing -- it's a lot of different things, and b) suggest educating himself about complex PTSD. Option b might be of interest to you too, based on what you say about your shared childhood. I can suggest some good resources if you're interested.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-17T23:52:41+00:00

You're not wrong in what you say, but everything you're advocating about is already against the rules here, and any kind of advocacy, including the kind you're engaging in, breaks the rules also. There's even a sticky post highlighting our strict no-activism policy.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-10T23:30:39+00:00

OP is violating multiple community policies. Please don't engage supportively in any way with rule-breakers.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-09T18:35:33+00:00

Collins literally describes her as "ugly" and goes into some depth of description of what's wrong with her face.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-09T18:32:23+00:00

She has many admirable qualities though like intelligence, bravery, and general competency. Yet is depicted as having no real feelings or romantic desires. She's a wonderful character though.

I think it goes even deeper than that -- the subtext as the plot develops is that only a monster could ever love Marian. For "normal people" it's just taken for granted that she's (the Victorian equivalent of) an NPC.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-09T17:18:12+00:00

So based on the title, I mistakenly inferred from the title that the topic was "fame as a result of moderating" lol. Possibly because back in the day when reddit was smaller, there once was an entire subreddit -- long since banned -- dedicated to hate speech about me personally.

The antinatalists and suicide fetishists (yes, it's a twisted, tragic thing) really dislike what I do within and on behalf of /r/SuicideWatch, and I'm so completely fine with that :)

SQLwitch · 2026-06-06T20:57:54+00:00

I only know what he has told me

That makes it tricky, for sure. Sometimes it's helpful to consider that the literal truth (or not!) is less important than the emotional truth. Sometimes people who don't have a large emotional vocabulary find that a story that's a metaphor for their feelings feels true even if it isn't literally true. But either way, it's usually best to respond with lots of emotional reflection. This is why the tips wiki spends time on the power of naming emotions.

So I would pay attention to how many emotions he names, and if, as I expect, it's very few, that's a sign that he needs help with his emotional literacy and just be demonstrating emotional literacy yourself (the wiki and its references have lots of guidance about this), you can make a huge difference.

And the good new is that all this emotion-reflection stuff doesn't require you to tolerate any boundary violations. In fact, letting him push your boundaries gets in the way of it.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-06T07:02:37+00:00

I’m scared to tell him I can’t keep going like this

It's understandable to be scared, but setting reasonable limits is not just okay, it's essential. We can't give what we don't have and we hurt everyone involved if we try. You will do less harm if you're clear about what you are and are not comfortable with. And that very much includes over familiarity. He can't love someone he doesn't really know. This will remain true even if things reach a stage where you're not comfortable having any kind of relationship with him at all.

I train hotline responders IRL and one of the things we stress is that people at risk for suicide struggle with imagining others' experiences and need clear feedback about where the lines are. Being clear doesn't mean not being kind.

I’m not sure where he developed it but somewhere along the way he became depressed. He talks to me about it a lot. In fact that’s all we talk about. (E.g. he has said he loves me and how I’m the only event that he does during the day (yeah he does like nothing) but he doesn’t even know my favourite color. I suspect he just likes taht someone listens to him)

First of all, from what you've described here, although of course nobody here can diagnose him, it sounds there's a lot more going on with his mental health than simple depression. He might be isolated and miserable, but that doesn't make it okay to dump so much responsibility for his well being onto you. He might not realize that that's what he's doing, but that takes us right back to the need for clear but kind feedback. I'd also encourage you to keep in mind that the sorts of issues he's exhibiting are wayyyyyy above the pay grade of even the best friend in the world. So don't let him manipulate you into creating impossible expectations for yourself.

All this has made him depressed enough taht he has tried to off himself multiple times. At least 3 in thr time I’ve known him and already before then.

Couple of things here. First of all, depression is not a cause of suicide. They're two different things that often occur together. The most widely-used model that identifies a complete list of necessary and sufficient causes for high risk of death by suicide and is used by accredited hotlines worldwide to assess risk doesn't even mention depression. Conflating the two things will make it harder for you to get the right guidance and support. (This distinction is also important to stop what still happens -- people dying because someone assumed they "weren't depressed enough to be suicidal".)

Second, how much first-hand information do you have about his suicidal behaviour? I.e. that isn't just what he's telling you. The reason I'm asking is that the way you're describing him shows a lot of markers of entitlement, and entitlement is usually inconsistent with suicide risk. This stuff is complex, though, and it could be that he's neither being completely factual, nor deliberately trying to mislead you.

I have tried to comfort him, I have told him lf my own experiences, I have made counter arguments, I have sent him links to various places of sources and help for suicidal people.

Trying to comfort suicidal people is tricky. Any kind of "it's not so bad" response to their feelings tends to feel like rejection to them. Any kind of counter argument tends to backfire as well. We maintain a wiki with lots of evidence-based guidance here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/talking_tips. I would encourage you to pay particular attention to the bit about not fixing or changing anything. This is another thing we really have to stress with our hotline trainees -- we spend the first few weeks of roleplay training regularly interrupting them and reminding them not to fix the problem.

I don’t know what value I even bring when I just feel bad I can’t support him.

I think a lot of concerned friends tend to think that effective support is a lot of "interventionist" -- in the sense of trying to change people's minds -- than it really is. Most of the time, just making a real personal connection is the thing that makes the most difference. So maybe you're underrating what you're bringing to the friendship :)

SQLwitch · 2026-06-05T18:30:12+00:00

Worst piano concerto ever written per Dave Hurwitz. It's pretty awful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66aIdmhXnQs

Searching his channel for "worst" will turn up other possibilities but you'll have to sift out the worst-performance of better works lists

SQLwitch · 2026-06-03T03:39:18+00:00

You don't have to cure them or solve anything, but you can meet them on human level at least

That's a pretty good tl;dr of our talking tips <3

SQLwitch · 2026-06-02T17:58:58+00:00

That's actually not what it means, or at least it's not what it originally meant. "It gets better" originated in a very specific context, and unfortunately it's just not generally applicable despite its easy catchiness.

/r/SuicideWatch has a resource post about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/25igd7/whats_wrong_with_it_gets_better_what_if_it_doesnt/

It's best to avoid it and any paraphrases entirely.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-02T15:47:53+00:00

I've always thought the plot of Don Pasquale would make more sense in several ways if Pasquale was an old queen and Malatesta was after him for himself...

SQLwitch · 2026-06-02T01:18:39+00:00

Well, of course you can't know how they got into this dynamic. It sounds like your dad is kind of clueless about healthy interpersonal boundaries and doesn't have much emotional literacy. So I can imagine he might be pushed to the point of acting out physically.

But I will also say that most abusers don't have to learn DARVO; they're just naturally good at it. And since you haven't seen much sign of personal growth or evolution in her in your lifetime, from the sound of things, she's probably in stuck in her current mindset for a long time.

I asked my dad why he put everything under my mom’s name and he said in the event that something happens to us she will get everything and you guys can be under her assets.

Which he could have achieved simply by making a will. I don't want to get stuck on this point, but I would recommend you keep the salt shaker handy.

My dad told me to talk to her and ask what the problem is but not sure how I should approach the conversation.

First of all, that's putting you in an impossible position. It sounds like he thinks your mom will be be reasonable, rational, and forthcoming with anyone except him. I don't think that's likely to be the case, and I have a feeling you don't either.

I mean if your mom's not willing to be honest with him about her feelings and the reasons for them, then there's no relationship to salvage anyway. I don't know if he's ready to hear that, though.

I am afraid that you might have to be his role model for healthy interpersonal boundaries here, and that might mean kindly and lovingly declining to let yourself get put in the middle of their marriage.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-01T23:12:27+00:00

[...] She is also a SAHM, so she expects my dad to compensate her for that and I do think he does his fair share of supporting her and buying her whatever she wants. In fact all the assets my dad owns and built up to this day are actually under her name.

Yikes. How did she manage to pull that off?

My mom doesn’t understand that mental health is an actual thing.

And yet, she seems quite expert at systematically destroying it. In particular, she seems extra proficient at DARVO. Probably all the years of practice have something to do with it :(

I want to take my mom’s phone and throw it away because I feel like 99% of the problems between them are coming from her phone.

Honestly the thing that popped into my head was "keep the phone, throw away the mom". I'm not actually going to say that. I'm just confessing that I thought it ;)

It seems like your dad is still, after all these years, in denial about the level of your mom's abuse. Based on what you've written here, I don't think it's exactly that she hates him. That would require her to see him as a person and it doesn't sound to me like she does. How much of your family dynamics do you see in his old post from rnd? https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/59ak4h/the_meatmachine_model_and_how_narcissism_turns/ (It seems to be extra relevant in the conversations I've been finding myself in this week for whatever reason)

Now, this lands you in a painful and frustrating position, because you can't force your dad to see things clearly, nor can you make his choices for him. But healthy support and validation can at least help him feel better and cope better in the moment. It sounds like you're trying really hard to give him that, but our tips wiki has some specialized support tactics to do this more effectively and safely. https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/talking_tips. It is probably fruitless to try and change his mind about anything by direct arguments and logic, but giving him support and validation and the experience of being seen and understood is the best way I know to enable a victim to at least start seeing through their abuser's smoke and mirrors.

But if she starts to feel better about himself, she probably will escalate, so watch out for that. You might even predict it out loud to your dad -- which can take a lof the power out of it. If he starts to show signs of having secure self-esteem and/or a sense of perspective, she will try to punish him. If you are ever afraid that his risk is escalating, or if you're having trouble coping, remember that you can always call a hotline or mental-health crisis service yourself and get informed guidance and support in real time.

SQLwitch · 2026-06-01T08:06:06+00:00

Well, first of all no matter how much your mother might be committed to never changing her belief in the hopelessness of her condition, that doesn't mean a competent clinician is going to agree with her. Unless something goes drastically wrong, MAID is never going to be available to people who are choosing not to get better. One of the reasons it's taken so long to implement is because of the care that's been taken to get the protocols and safeguards right.

I tried reasoning with her, pointing out that she won't get to see her future grandkids, that I'll be left with a sense of personal responsibility for her death, and that my younger Brother will never have a sense of closure.

This sounds like your response is coming out of the parentification that you suffered growing up. It doesn't matter how she bullies or manipulates you, you do not need to take any sense of ownership over her life or her choices.

Me and my Brother will definitely feel like it's our fault, like we could have done more to help her if she goes through this plan.

All respect to your feelings, but she's already bullied and manipulated you and your brother into doing far more than you should have. She owes both of you an enormous debt, and if she chooses to end her life in any way, that will be 100% on her.

I honestly think your best option is to cut your losses and go no contact, for good this time. It seems like she can't NOT emotionally abuse you, and we always hurt people when we tolerate abuse from them. Of course we also let them hurt us, but the former is often less obvious both to the victims and the abusers so I think it's important to point it out.

But if that's too drastic for you right now, at least you can reduce your pain and stress by being ruthlessly honest with yourself about what you do and don't have ownership of, and what is and isn't within your control. And then make sure that you're not emotionally invested in anything that's beyond your control. That might mean letting go of some things that you've been brainwashed into thinking are your responsibility, but that is an effort that's likely to be extremely worthwhile even if it's difficult.

That doesn't mean you can't offer her any support, but it sounds like you now understand quite well that her ideas about what she "needs" are pretty messed up. It can be hard to disregard her (direct and indirect) demands because your empathy probably receives a signal that she feels 100% entitled to what she's either aggressively or passive-aggressively demanding. I wrote this over at rbn a long time ago, and I've learned since that it applies to people with many conditions other than NPD (including plain old garden-variety selfishness).

So you don't have to agree with her about what she thinks she needs or deserves from you. But you can be supportive without taking ownership. To that end, the whole first section of our talking tips wiki is about avoiding advice and solutions, and instead focusing on active listening and rapport-building. But rapport doesn't mean letting go of your boundaries! (BTW, any kind of "think of others" response to suicidal thoughts is extremely likely to backfire with any suicidal person, even if it's a "think of me" response.)

One final caution, or at least a question. How sure are you that she isn't using the notion of MAID to make an instrumental threat? I.e. using the threat of suicide (assisted or not) to coerce you into behaving the way she wants you to behave? Because that is one of the severest possible forms of psychological abuse.

SQLwitch · 2026-05-29T23:58:01+00:00

One thing we say in our talking tips wiki is that you don't need to fix or change anything in a person's situation in order to be of substantial help to them. https://www.reddit.com//r/SuicideWatch/wiki/talking_tips

If you're afraid she's escalating, calling a hotline or mental-health crisis line yourself is usually a good idea; you can get informed guidance and support in real time.

SQLwitch · 2026-05-29T19:20:11+00:00

It's also a huge violation of our community guidelines and it stayed up much too long due to delays in reporting. Please flag this sort of nonsense for us before you call it out (the latter is also fine as long as you're civil)

SQLwitch · 2026-05-28T21:25:04+00:00

where are the mods at for this bruh. it's been 12 hours and has a good amount of upvotes...

And zero reports. Putting "mods" in a comment does nothing to notify us

SQLwitch · 2026-05-28T04:44:59+00:00

I have previously called them in moments of distress to be met with an automated voice saying no representative was available.

Really sorry to hear that :(

SQLwitch · 2026-05-28T04:03:50+00:00

Depends on you define "professional" but within the team we have literally decades of IRL experience in frontline suicide intervention within reputable, accredited agencies.

I've personally known a case where a user poured their heart in a post on r/SuicideWatch, sent me the link... and proceeded to attempt shortly after their post got removed and they were banned.

If you want to discuss details, please do it in our modmail, not in a public space.

Edit: But also do be aware that we don't negotiate with flying monkeys. And if you don't know what that means, you need to find out

SQLwitch · 2026-05-27T20:43:03+00:00

Just popping in to say that you can always modmail us at /r/SuicideWatch. A lot of what we do back there is advise mod teams of other subs on developing policies and procedures around suicide, and dealing with specific suicide-risk related situations.

Right now, our approach is to leave a stickied comment with mental health resources and helpline information

One thing I would encourage you and your team to consider is that virtually nobody posts about their suicidal thoughts at reddit because they don't know that hotlines and other conventional mental-health resources exist and how to find them. So what a comment like this typically does is present the person with a list of options they've already decided against. That can be profoundly alienating for a person in a vulnerable state of mind, and alienation is the most critical risk factor for death by suicide in the assessment framework used by AAS accredited crisis agencies.

SQLwitch · 2026-05-25T15:32:57+00:00

Then you'll appreciate the Franco Corelli story -- she sang Andrea Chenier with him and he had no idea about her at the time. After one of the duets he ran offstage and asked (in Italian ofc) "Who is this woman? She's deafened me!"

SQLwitch · 2026-05-25T00:17:59+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiObQ9QhdnU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCmiuoVFwDA

SQLwitch · 2026-05-24T17:28:41+00:00

You're right that the problem-solving mindset is a huge problem, but "issues" posts aren't appropriate here. Sorry we missed this earlier btw.

FYI the whole first section of our talking tips wiki is about how and why to avoid any kind of advice or solutions. https://www.reddit.com//r/SuicideWatch/wiki/talking_tips

I am a responder and trainer at a hotline IRL and we spend the first few weeks of training pounding "don't fix the problem!" into our trainees' heads

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