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Why people kill themselves: Part 9 -Fight, Flight or Freeze — The Ten Emotional Stages to Suicidal Thinking
The Ten Steps to Suicide
- Primal Vulnerability — At birth, we are totally helpless, powerless and exposed and without care from and protection by others who adapt to us, we will die.
2. Secondary Vulnerability — As we venture as an infant or child out into the world, it pressures us to adapt to it and if we are not able to do that we can feel overwhelmed.
3. Cumulative Vulnerability — As we go through life and more and more stress is added to our lives that we merely get past but not fully over, it builds up and we cross over into distress where our focus is relieving that distress in any way possible.
4. Fragile — The point at which the distress so overwhelms us that we are no longer able to attack it by fight (getting angry at others or ourselves) or run away from it by flight (into frenetic activity, busyness or mania) and instead freeze and begin to feel internal cracks in our mind.
BTW this is also the point where when we can’t escape the mounting vulnerability that our anxiety…
