All posts by Hollis Easter

How to ask about suicide

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I’ve been writing a lot about suicide and how to talk about it since Robin Williams’s death. I’m also, coincidentally, teaching a two-day suicide intervention course today and tomorrow.  

People often ask me how to talk to friends and family about suicide. They recognize, especially at times like this, that most of us are surrounded by struggling people every day, and that it would be good to be able to listen and offer help. These people care really deeply already, but they’re acutely conscious of wanting not to make things worse. Maybe you feel that way, too.

I hope you’ll start asking people about suicide.

It doesn’t have to be hard. You’re talking to them already, right? And you’ve got some sense that they’re really having a tough time right now? Say “It seems like you’re really struggling. Is it bad enough that you think of killing yourself?“.

Or maybe “I hear that things are bad. Bad enough to want to die?“. Or “Hey, you seem really down, and that makes me wonder whether you’re thinking about suicide“.

The specific words aren’t that important, although it’s best to use clear, direct language like “killing yourself” or “taking your own life” instead of vague words like “doing something to yourself” or “hurting yourself”, and you want to be as non-judgmental as possible (so, “do you want to die?” rather than “are you going to do something crazy like kill yourself?”). I like to ground my question in something I’ve observed, like “I’ve noticed that you seem really sad lately“, before asking the question.

Do your best to be clear, direct, and non-judgmental. And then stop worrying about the words and just ask the question.

It’s surprisingly hard to make yourself actually say the question when you’re talking to someone you care about. I’ve been teaching this stuff professionally for a decade and my heart still leaps into my throat every time I ask someone, and my voice chokes up a little bit. That’s okay. It’s okay if it happens to you. Swallow hard, take a deep breath, and ask the question. You can do this.

You might be worried that, by asking directly about suicide, you’d be making things worse. That you might push a person to do it. That’s a reasonable fear, but both the research and our experience say that it doesn’t happen. Mostly, people are relieved to be asked, and they’re often really glad that someone finally noticed.

If they say yes, get them talking about why. What makes them feel this way? Start with the feelings, listen to the hurt, and steer toward the pain. Help them to talk. Do your best to spend most of your time listening instead of talking. Care.

It may feel awkward, and you may not be sure you’re doing it right. Listen anyway. It starts with asking the question. You can do this.

You can do this.

You might also like my article about suicide and Robin Williams, or the one about the “permanent solution to a temporary problem” language. I welcome comments on this article. Please stay safe—if you’re here because you’re thinking about suicide, I hope you’ll reach out and talk to someone. Try the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK) anywhere in the USA.

Why you shouldn’t say “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem”

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I write a lot about suicide. If you’re interested, also see my articles about talking about suicide (especially after Robin Williams’s death) and about suicide-related terminology. If you’re struggling with suicide, please tell someone—you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for free anywhere in the USA. 1-800-273-TALK.

People love the phrase “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem”. It appeals to something deep within us: our legitimate desire to have something valuable to say about the terrible cost of suicide. It feels like a good way to express our understanding that suicide is often a choice that only seems like a good idea for a brief moment, and that if you can just get through it things will often look better in the morning. The shaping of the phrase also has an appealing prosody to it, and we like the way it weaves and contrasts the  ideas of what is quick and what is lasting. Many of us feel like, if we can just “shake people out of it”, their feelings of wanting to die will go away.

All of those feelings and ideas are legitimate.

There’s nothing wrong with you if you’ve said that suicide was a permanent solution to a temporary problem—it’s one of the coded phrases society has taught us for dealing with the mass of emotions that surround suicide, and it’s worth remembering that almost nobody is neutral on suicide. We all have a lot of feelings, and this phrase feels like a useful way to be able to say something when we’re confronted with a person who’s contemplating death.

But I’d like to encourage you, gently, to find another way of saying it.

It’s not effective

The Hippocratic oath that doctors take includes words like “first, do no harm”. It’s a good statement of principle that, when we’re trying to help someone, we should do our best not to make things worse, right?

People thinking about suicide hear the “permanent solution to a temporary problem” very differently. In my post about suicide and Robin Williams, people wrote some wonderful comments relating to this phrase.

One, Joanna, wrote (emphasis mine):

“Good piece, Hollis. As a survivor of chronic depression who had suicidal thoughts, I would like to say that for me when someone suggested that suicide is a “permanent action to a temporary problem,” it caused me to not act on those thoughts, in the hopes that somehow, sometime, the depression would lift and I could begin to live again. The idea that the pain of my depression, which seemed interminable, could have an end without my having to take such a drastic action to end it myself, actually did help me defer action and try other tactics until I found something that worked. The other piece of counsel that was particularly useful was not to take irreversible action when I was at my lowest. It took a long time, with baby steps, to regain hope and even experience joy again, but it did happen for me, and could be possible for others, too. I pray this will be the case for others struggling right now.”

Joanna found it really helpful to be reminded that suicide lasts forever. I really like the other piece of counsel she mentions: “not to take irreversible action when I was at my lowest”. I’ll come back to that. But anyway, Joanna found the phrase helpful.

Anne wrote (emphasis mine):

“When my psychiatrist told me that ‘suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem’ I thought, yes, that is what I want. A permanent solution. No more trying different meds, talking about what I’m sad/anxious about, appointments, groups, etc. Permanent. Yay.
The words really didn’t help, they almost encouraged me to do it. It also felt like my feelings were being minimized.”

I really appreciate the bravery both of these people showed in sharing these thoughts.

Anne’s post underscores why the “permanent solution to a temporary problem” language is dangerous: it can backfire.

If the purpose of saying the phrase is to comfort a person who’s hurting and, ideally, help them choose to stay alive, it’s counterproductive to use language that some people perceive as encouraging them to die by suicide. First, do no harm.

It sounds judgmental

I’ve known people whose thoughts of suicide came as a result of temporary life changes, like a bad grade in school or a fight with a spouse or co-worker. But many, many more of the people I’ve know who struggle with thoughts of suicide do so because it’s their experience that the pain goes on and on for months or years or decades. Maybe the specific reasons change, but the suffering is often endless.

Yeah, that’s indicative of depression, and yeah, there are treatments that often work for that. But until you’ve been there, I think it’s hard to understand how exhausting survival is.

People often think that thoughts of suicide arise because of a single critical event, and it’s true that there’s often a precipitating factor—but most of the time, it’s been building for a while. Saying that the problem is temporary is judgmental and dismissive of the fact that the problem often isn’t temporary.

A friend shared some words from David Foster Wallace that expressed some of this stuff really well:

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of  ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing.

The person in whom its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames.

And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” — David Foster Wallace, source unknown. Used without permission.

I’ve known people whose thoughts of suicide come because of terminal cancer, where pain and decline are a virtual certainty. Because of the death of a loved one. Because of rape. Because of criminal convictions, or because of pending charges. Because of lots of things that, while you can learn to live with them, don’t necessarily get better.

That’s my biggest problem with this phrase: it judges the person’s situation and invalidates the person’s judgment. It says “Even though I don’t necessarily understand your problems or why you’re considering this option, I know enough to say you’re wrong.”

Minimizing another person’s struggles is a really effective way to alienate them and make them feel alone. Nobody likes feeling that their thoughts are pathologized or disrespected. And by relying on catchphrases, we give up the opportunity to stay in relationship and really connect with a person—and it’s good rapport that has the greatest success in suicide intervention.

That’s the risk of using language like the “permanent solution” phrase, because you don’t get to know in advance whether you’re talking to a person who’ll want the permanent solution.

So what do we say instead?

Try to avoid giving advice. Focus on listening instead. Start with the feelings that the person has, and go from there.

Give them space to talk about why they’re feeling so down, and why death feels like their best option right now. Give them time to tell you about it. Don’t try to force them to feel cheerful by focusing on all the reasons they have to stay alive.

Most people, if you give them space, will start to convince themselves that they’re less sure about suicide than they thought. They’ll find ambivalence. They’ll talk themselves into being open to staying alive. That’s when you support their desire to stay alive.

I liked something Joanna wrote: that it can be helpful to ask people “not to take irreversible action when they’re at their lowest.”

I kind of like that, actually, because staying safe right now is a temporary solution to a more permanent problem. It recognizes that we need to help people get through this moment, and that if we keep doing that, the future will turn out okay.

But really, just do your best to be direct in listening about suicide. Avoid catchphrases and pat advice, and just listen.

Make it less about what you say and more about what they say.

This post is in response to comments on my article about suicide and Robin Williams. Please stay safe—if you’re here because you’re thinking about suicide, I hope you’ll reach out and talk to someone. Try the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK) anywhere in the USA.

Talking about suicide and Robin Williams’s death

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Robin Williams died today, at 63. The Marin County Sheriff’s department released a press statement saying they suspect it of being suicide by asphyxiation, and there’s other news on their site.

There will be a media frenzy about this for the next little while, and a lot of people are going to be talking about it. I want to help people talk about it in a way that’s as respectful and safe as possible for vulnerable people, so here are a few thoughts and requests.

Be respectful about thoughts of suicide

Wherever you are, there are people near you who are struggling with their own thoughts of suicide. Some of them are going to feel strongly affected by Williams’s death, and the research shows that a small subset of that group will find that this news pushes their own thoughts of suicide into the forefront.

Please be careful how you talk about what happened with Robin Williams, because these folks will hear your words and may apply them to their own situations. Do you feel that he was a sick or weak person because he had these thoughts? How would that thought sound to these other folks? Did he “lose his battle” by acting on his thoughts of suicide? Be aware that, in the ears of a vulnerable person, you may be calling them weak too.

In particular, please don’t call suicide a “permanent solution to a temporary problem”. Whether or not the problems really are temporary, it doesn’t help the person at risk to have their troubles minimized—it just paints us as being out of touch. You don’t actually need to do that much talking about suicide itself; instead, get the person talking about what they’re feeling and why they’re considering suicide. It’s fine to help them see that these feelings may not last forever—but the “permanent solution” language is really toxic for a lot of people. Leave the labels behind and get the person talking.

Research suggests that about 5% of people (1 in 20) report thinking about suicide in any given year. That makes having thoughts of suicide seem pretty normal, but only a small group of people will act on those thoughts. If you look around, you will see people who are fighting—and winning—their own battle with suicide every day. Be respectful about how you talk about the issue.

People who’ve never struggled with suicide often seem to think that considering suicide is a choice. That, if only they knew how stupid it was to consider suicide, people would just stop thinking about it. I’ve worked on a suicide hotline for the last 15 years. Believe me when I say that most of the suicidal people I’ve talked to would have given anything to be able to make those thoughts go away. Be kind.

If you’re a person who has thoughts of suicide and the news about Williams is pushing your buttons, please reach out for help. If you live anywhere in the USA, you can dial 1-800-273-TALK and get the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is free and confidential and open 24/7.

Talk directly about suicide

It’s okay to use the words. Suicide. Killing yourself. Wanting to die.

We don’t need to be afraid of the words, and using clear language helps us communicate better. There’s no evidence to suggest that talking directly about suicide hurts vulnerable people, and there’s a lot of it showing that direct talk helps to reduce stigma and help vulnerable folks feel like they can talk openly about how they’re struggling.

“Committed suicide” isn’t great because it feels pretty judgmental (we commit sins). “Lost his battle” feels like it’s labeling him as weak.

So use the other words. It looks like Robin Williams died by suicide, may have killed himself, may have taken his own life. It’s okay to use the words. If you want to know more about the terms we use in the suicide intervention world, check out my guide and my other guide.

If you’re worried about someone you know, ask them whether they’re thinking about suicide.

Remember the whole person

Williams’s wife has asked that we remember Robin Williams primarily by honoring the man he was, not merely by examining the way he died.

He lived a life that meant a lot to us. He was a brilliant comedian whose imitations inspired me as a child, whose ability to improvise staggers me with its breadth and clarity. He knew timing. He did good work and helped us to look at some important, difficult things in life, and he helped us do it with a twinkle in our eyes. Turns out that he was also struggling with depression, possibly bipolar disorder, and thoughts of suicide.

It’s important to talk openly and honestly about suicide, and to grieve for the loss we feel. We feel hurt by his death, and feel that he was taken from us too soon. That’s real, and that’s fine to talk about. But let’s refrain from making Williams a caricature of his own life. Suicide was a part of it, sure, but let’s not reinvent his whole life in this context.

Avoid assumptions about Williams’s treatment history

A lot of the initial stories have focused on Williams’s alleged history of struggling with bipolar disorder, and I’ve read a ton of Facebook statuses and tweets saying “if only he could have gotten treatment” or “I wish he’d known there was help available”.

This is well-intentioned but not really that helpful. We don’t know whether Williams was receiving treatment or not, but the sad truth is that treatment doesn’t always work. Medicine is imperfect. People react to different drugs and therapies differently, and there’s no magic solution out there. The field of psychiatry is getting better at treating bipolar disorder, and there’s a lot of reason to be hopeful, but it’s not anywhere close to 100% yet.

Remember, most people with thoughts of suicide want to stop having them. If treatment were easy and fully effective in all cases, don’t you think most people would have taken that option already?

If it helps you to understand why this sort of statement is unhelpful, imagine that Williams had died of cancer. Would it feel useful to say “oh, if only he’d known that treatment was available!” or “he should have fought harder”?

Would it help his family to hear that people made those assumptions about how easily Williams could have gotten better? Remember that the survivors of suicide loss are all around us, too.

Do encourage people to seek help

For a lot of people, talking about their thoughts of suicide helps them to go away. Some people need the help of a trained professional, and some people need drug treatment or hospitalization. But a lot of people just need a caring person to listen. If someone starts telling you about their own thoughts of suicide in the aftermath of this, stay present and listen.

Ask them why they’re feeling that way. Let them talk about the reasons for it. Start with the feelings. Don’t try to shove reasons for living down their throats—they won’t be able to breathe. They know there’s stuff worth living for; let them talk about the reasons they’re thinking about dying.

And encourage them to keep talking, to you and to others. As I said above, invite people to talk to the NSPL at 1-800-273-TALK or call a crisis line or reach out to other caregivers.

Avoid assuming it’s suicide

We know that Robin Williams has died, and the coroner has preliminarily ruled it a suicide. That said, we still don’t know for sure—they’ve also said that the investigation continues and there will be a press conference tomorrow. There can be benign (non-suicidal) reasons for a person dying by asphyxia at home. Let’s do our best to refrain from contributing to the frenzy about suicide until the professionals have reached their conclusions. Actually, let’s do our best to hold back the frenzy even afterwards.

Edited to add (2014-08-13): the Marin County coroners have released information saying that they’re pretty sure that Williams’s death was suicide, and that there’s no reason to suspect foul play. They’re still checking for other possibilities, but it looks like suicide at this point.

Talk about suicide and mental health

This is a big one. This is what we need to be doing if we want to prevent deaths by suicide in the long term. There remains a huge amount of social stigma around thoughts of suicide and mental health concerns in general, and it’s still hard for people to get help.

Tons of our hotline callers tell us they feel they can’t talk to their doctors or families about the way they’re feeling because they fear people won’t understand, will judge them, will label them, will lock them up, or simply won’t listen. We can and should do better.

So let’s talk about it, and not just in the gossip-ridden aftermath of a celebrity’s death. Let’s talk about expanding access to health care for all citizens, and then let’s make sure that we train health care workers about mental health AND build systems that give them enough patient contact time to have these crucial conversations.

Let’s make it easier to get access to mental health care, and let’s fund agencies that do the work. Let’s have the hard conversations about how we care for people who struggle with suicide in our communities, and let’s actively seek the voices of the people who struggle so we don’t make too many assumptions about what would help.

There’s a whole group of professionals who’ve learned a lot about how suicide happens and what we can do to prevent it. I’m one of them. We’re doing our best to get the messages out, but we need help. Will you help us? Join a suicide awareness group or help out with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Talk to your legislators about securing funding for mental health and crisis organizations, and ask them to help make that funding a lasting priority. Talk to your family and friends about suicide, and let’s start treating it like a public health topic rather than a sin.

Most of all, let’s keep talking—and do it with respect and kindness in our hearts.

(My background: I run a suicide hotline and served for years on the national governing board for crisis hotlines. I teach several different suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention curricula, and if you’d like more information, please ask. Remember that if you need to talk to someone about thoughts of suicide, there’s probably a crisis hotline near you. 1-800-273-TALK is a great starting point anywhere in the USA.)

Work and love, made visible

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There’s a common phrase in a bunch of the artist communities I frequent: “Work is love made visible”. It probably derives from Kahlil Gibran’s poem, “On Work”, which is part of The Prophet:

“Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.”
  — Kahlil Gibran, “On Work”, used without permission

People often use it to remind us that the work we choose is important, no matter what it is. I’ve often heard people refer to it in contexts where phrases like “speak your truth” and “dance like nobody’s watching” and “be your best self” come up. It seems as though the underpinnings of Gibran’s point touch on the fact that the way we work can be as important as what we do.

Religions address this question, too: sometimes the language there talks about whether it is most important that adherents undertake “right action” or that they live with “right intent”. Maybe it’s that having God in your heart is the key; maybe it’s that by their fruits and by their works shall ye know them. In any case, people have been talking about the idea that your mindset and your approach matters for a pretty long time.

I was out for a walk today in south Burlington, VT, where I’m taking a couple of days off from work to visit my partner, Jasmine. I had hoped that we’d have time to go for a walk today, because I checked her schedule before making a surprise visit—but it turns out that she’d made some work commitments that I hadn’t seen when I checked her calendar, and this afternoon’s walk wasn’t going to happen. Frustrating? Sure. I made a plan and put a bunch of effort into it, and it didn’t go the way I intended.

But while I was out walking alone, I came across the Gibran quotation stenciled onto the back of a building, and it got me thinking.

Work is love made visible

 

I think Gibran got it right, but that there’s something else of value to consider here. Switch those words around.

Love is work made visible.

We get a lot of messages about romantic, overpowering, all-consuming love in our society. From The Little Mermaid to Love Actually to Rocky to the latest heartwarming kids’ movie to the latest rom-com to your favorite novel, we get a pretty steady diet of the idea that love, true love, is easy. Allegedly, when you meet the right person, it all just works. I just started watching Hart of Dixie (a cute show about a NYC physician transplanted into the deep South), and this assertion shows up there, too: “You’re right… with the right person, everything just flows.”

It’s even true, sometimes. There are moments in a loving relationship, whether romantic, filial, parental, or whatever, where everything is just easy, everything flows, the words tumble out, and smiles abound.

But more often than not, love takes work.

Sure, it’s not always work, and the work looks different for each person. But in thinking about it, every kind of loving relationship I know of requires work. Parents spend untold bazillions of hours working hard to care for their children, raising and feeding and sheltering and teaching them. We name the formal beginning of that process “labor”. Romantic relationships—if they last long enough—always make it through the honeymoon phase into the territory where people’s differences start showing up, and the relationships that last do so largely because people put enough effort into reconciling those issues so the underlying love can flourish. Even children work at loving: watch the way kids try hard to live up to their parents’ expectations, or the way two sisters find a way to make up and resolve their problems after a tearful spat.

I think there’s still a place for unconditional love, but it’s my experience of living and watching other people that unconditional love doesn’t stretch as far as people think. Pretty soon, differences start showing up and people start working to accommodate them.  We’re taught to believe that you can judge the quality of love by how little people have to work to sustain it: by how easy it is.

We might all be happier if we took the measure of love by asking how much work people were willing to do to sustain it.

Gibran also writes “if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine“, and he’s right.  So I’d like to see us shifting our cultural narrative away from the fairytale romance where everything is easy once you meet the right person toward the idea that it’ll take work to love people—and that we should encourage them to find ways to work more joyfully in that vineyard. Love is work. And that’s a good thing.

Mandolin Picks Comparison

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When I did my post on making mandolin bridges, I wanted to make sound files available so readers could form their own opinions. Here’s the same thing for mandolin picks!

Mandolin players seem to love talking about picks. Which ones sound the best, which play fastest, how long they last, whether they’re worth the cost, which are hardest to drop, etc. Pick any vector of analysis and you’ll find people whose preferences span the whole thing.

It’s challenging to compare picks, though, because there are so many variables. Pick size, pick material, pick thickness, type of mandolin, type of strings, size of strings, microphone placement, bridge type, bridge and nut material, etc., and that’s just before we get to player-specific variables like how hard a player picks, what angle they use to approach the strings, how deeply they insert the pick, where along the strings they play, what style of music, etc. Compound those issues by using words (rather than sound samples) to describe the picks and it’s no wonder that picks are hard to talk about.

When I started learning to play guitar, someone gave me the advice to stop into every music store I passed and try to purchase one new kind of pick that I hadn’t used before. Picks are cheap, and this is a fun experiment to run over time. I’ve found some favorite picks this way–the Dunlop Primetone from Guitar Sam in Montpelier, VT; the funky tortoiseshell (that I think is made by Saga Music) from Dick’s Country Store Gun City & Music Oasis in Churubusco, NY; the Golden Gate picks from Dave Nichols of Custom Pearl Inlay in Whippleville, NY.

Experimental design

I want to present the picks without a lot of verbal analysis so that readers can form their own opinions. I’m going to reduce variables as much as possible:

Mandolin with microphone attached
Mic setup (click to enlarge)
  • Instrument: Eastman MD-504 oval hole A-style mandolin with homemade maple 11-hole bridge with a ToneGard on the back
  • Tune: Equinox, a jig that I wrote and regularly perform with Frost and Fire
  • Microphone: K&K Silver Bullet cardioid electret condenser mic with phantom power
  • Mic placement: gooseneck clipped to ToneGard and pointed at body just down from 14th fret and 1″ away from it
  • Audio interface: Shure X2U XLR-to-USB converter
  • DAW: Reaper 4.71 in 64-bit mode running on an Apple MacBook Pro with Retina (October 2013 model)
  • Strings: D’Addario J74 (have been on the instrument about six weeks)
  • Post-processing: All tracks saved as MP3 and normalized to 89 reference dB with MP3Gain Express 1.1.1. No other processing or effects.

This setup duplicates my normal on-stage setup except for the audio interface and DAW. Because the mic is mounted on the instrument, it should insulate against subtle changes due to position alteration. There was a lot of road traffic in front of my house today, so you’ll hear some cars going by in some samples—I guess you can think of that as a faithful test of normal playing conditions!

Each pick is labeled with an identification letter (A through BB); I also randomly assigned each pick a serial number to identify its sound samples and play order. There’s a link to the   “answer key” at the bottom of the page.

The Picks

photos of mandolin picks
Mandolin picks (click to enlarge)
  • A: Dunlop Primetone Sculpted 3 mm
  • B: Dunlop Nylon 1 mm
  • C: Dunlop Ultex 1.14 mm
  • D: Dunlop Ultex Jazz III 1.3 mm
  • E: Dunlop 204 2.0 mm
  • F: Dunlop Stubby Triangle 3.0 mm
  • G: Dunlop Jazz III XL 1.3 mm
  • H: Dunlop 1.5 mm
  • I: Wedgie 1.0 mm
  • J: Pickboy Nylon 1.00 mm
  • K: Pickboy 1.50 mm
  • L: Pickboy Edge Carbon Nylon 1.00 mm
  • M: Pickboy Classic Rainbow 1.00 mm
  • N: Pickboy Classic Luminous 1.00 mm
  • O: Golden Gate mandolin 1.4 mm
  • P: Gibson USA X-H 1.1 mm
  • Q: Unknown (Saga?) “tortoiseshell” 1.4 mm
  • R: Unknown (Saga?) “tortoiseshell” 1.3 mm
  • S: Cool Heavy translucent yellow 1.0 mm
  • T: Cool Heavy black 1.0 mm
  • U: Cool Heavy white 1.0 mm
  • V: Martin H 0.6 mm
  • W: Wheatware H 1.5 mm
  • X: Wheatware 2.0 mm
  • Y: Stylus Pick
  • Z: Fender Heavy 0.9 mm
  • AA: Dunlop Jazz III black 1.3 mm
  • BB: Dunlop Tortex 0.88 mm

These are the picks I had when I did the test. If you’ve got a pick you’d love to hear added to the test, or if you find this comparison helpful and want to send thanks, send me some new picks to play with! If you find this really helpful, send me a Blue Chip or Wegen pick. 🙂 If you want to send me something, leave a message in the comments or ping me on Twitter and I’ll get in touch with my address. Thanks!

Sound samples

Normalized (all samples set to 89 dB with MP3Gain Express)

 

Discussion

Before you click to see the answer key, consider a few questions about the picks you’ve just heard.

  • Do you notice similarities between picks of the same shape?
  • Do you notice them between picks of the same size?
  • What about between picks of the same material?
  • What about between picks of the same brand?
  • What about between picks of the same color?
  • If you notice similarities, how would you describe them? If you notice differences, what words would you choose to explain what you’re hearing?
  • How much would it surprise you to learn that I had recorded this tune 28 times in a row with the same pick? Would you believe me? What factors would make you believe or disbelieve that? Do you hear enough difference in the recordings to believe that something changed?

I actually did record it with 28 different picks, but I think that’s a key question: would you believe me if I told you they were all the same? If so, we can say that pick selection doesn’t matter tonally. If you hear differences, great! See which ones you prefer.

If you’re willing, write up your thoughts and post them as a comment before you click to see the answer key.

Raw sound files (not normalized)

Remember to leave your thoughts as a comment before you click to see the answers. Please also check out my article on making mandolin bridges at home!

Preparing for Work

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Many traditional arts prescribe a ritual for commencing work. Often these rituals start from a place of practicality—making sure your attention is fully present is a good idea if you’re going to be working with potentially-lethal tools—but they grow from that into something more. Our society has gotten away from a lot of traditions, but most arts still teach a practice of preparation in some form. Sometimes it’s called “preparing yourself for the work”, sometimes “approaching the work”, sometimes just “preparing for work”.

I was listening to an interview with Jian Ghomeshi and Russell Simmons (of Def Jam) talking about meditation the other day, and I was struck by something Simmons said. He sees most of the things people do for self-care as being basically “ways to turn down the noise inside your head”, and that resonated for me. He chooses meditation instead of drugs or religion because, as he put it, if you’re focused on turning down the noise, why not go with a method that’s explicitly directed at “turning down the noise”. (It’s a good interview, and I’d encourage you to listen to it.)

I think of preparing for work as the way that we turn down the noise.

So, preparation.

The preparation needs to fit the task, obviously. You prepare for making a meal differently from how you prepare for teaching a class, hiking the Appalachian Trail, or writing a love letter. But in each case, I believe that the quality of your preparation affects the quality of the work you do in a pretty deep way. I notice a connection between how well I prepare myself to approach the work and how well the work comes out.

On some level, this is all pretty obvious stuff. Not all the important things are invisible. I encourage you to read through what follows, see if any of it resonates for you, and let it spur you to be mindful as you approach whatever work you do. Discard the things that don’t feel right.

Here are some of the questions I ask as I’m approaching the different kinds of work in my life. I hope some of them help you! If you have any of your own ways that work well for you, please leave them in the comments.

Physical preparation

  • Body
    • Is my body clean enough for this? This might mean clean hands, or a shower, or whatever.
    • Is my body relaxed enough for the demands of the task?
    • Am I strong enough? Do I have enough energy?
  • Tools
    • Do I know where all the tools I’ll need are? Are they where I can reach them?
    • Have I prepared my tools adequately? Are the knives sharpened, the instruments tuned, the batteries charged, and the tank full?
  • Materials and Supplies
    • Do I have all the supplies I’ll use up in this work? If not, how am I getting them?
    • Are the materials adequate to the task?
  • Surroundings and space
    • Is this space appropriate for the work I plan to do?
    • If I need people to help me, are they aware of the need and ready to help? Are they prepared to approach the work?
    • Can I keep myself and others safe if I do this work in this space?
    • Will I be able to hold my concentration in this space?
    • Is there room for my tools to be assembled where I can reach them?
    • How much space is there for moving around?

Mental preparation

  • Attention
    • Am I sufficiently aware of my body to do this task well and safely?
    • Am I conscious of how to use these tools safely and effectively? Am I ready, in this moment, to use them with respect and skill?
    • Am I aware of the strengths and weaknesses of my materials, my tools, my materials, my body, and my mind? Am I ready to adjust how I work to reflect changes in these things?
    • Can I react quickly enough for the needs of this task in this moment?
    • Can I bring high-quality attention to this work in this moment? How much of my attention does this work require?
    • Am I thinking of anything else? Is that a problem?
  • Knowledge
    • Do I have the knowledge I think I’ll need to complete the task? If not, how am I going to fix that?
  • Mindset
    • Am I decisive enough for this task right now?
    • Am I ready to deal with it when this work doesn’t follow my plan? How’s my resilience right now? If failure is likely, am I prepared to accept that? If success is likely, am I prepared to accept that?
    • What are my priorities in approaching this work? Am I practicing? Playing? Performing? Teaching? Are my priorities in harmony with my approach to the work?
    • Am I willing to commit to using the supplies and materials I’ve collected for this work?
    • Am I willing to stick with it for the length of time this work requires?
    • To what standard am I hoping to complete this work? How good a job do I need to do?
  • Risks
    • Am I aware of the risks that accompany this work? Do I have the knowledge and experience to evaluate them appropriately? If not, how am I going to fix that?
    • Am I willing to accept those risks, in this moment, for the sake of this work?

Spiritual preparation

  • Presence
    • Is my heart present as I commence this work?
    • Am I spiritually present as I start this work?
    • Do I have respect for the work, the workpieces, the tools, the helpers, and myself as I begin this work? Can I sustain that through the process?
    • Have I taken enough time to calm my mind, allow other thoughts to dissipate, let the mental dust settle, and bring the full force of my awareness into this work? If not, should I?
  • Taking responsibility
    • Am I willing to be responsible for bringing this work into the world? Does the world need it?
    • Am I doing this work for the right reasons?
    • Do I want to do this work? If not, am I willing to take responsibility for that and do it anyway?
  • Emotions
    • What’s my emotional response to the work? Is it well suited to doing this work right now? If not, will there ever be a better time?
    • Is there a way I can bring a more joyful, loving, focused, attentive, respectful, or caring presence to the work? If so, does the work need it? How long would it take to do a better job?
  • Support and intuition
    • Have I asked for support and guidance if I feel I need it?
    • If I need support, is it from a person? From a deity? From the universe? From luck? From my kitty?
    • Do I have a good feeling about this work?
    • Do I have a feeling that something is going to go wrong? (I tend to trust those feelings).
    • At the end of all the questions, am I ready to start? If not, what is needed?

Closing thoughts

These are some of the questions I ask myself when I’m trying to approach my work in a mindful way. What I actually do differs quite a lot depending on the task at hand, and I’ll give a couple of examples.

The point is that having a system of preparing yourself to do great work is valuable because it becomes a habit—and also, that on some spiritual level we can all tell the difference between work conducted in full preparation and presence and work done without being ready. The qualities of the worker become part of the work, and that includes our preparation.

My friend Shane wrote an excellent article about modifying handgun grips a while back, and he gives a lovely description of preparation in it. You might also enjoy Atul Gawande’s thoughts on checklists in the surgical world. His book (The Checklist Manifesto) is good, too, even though it rambles and has relatively little hard content.

If I’m approaching the work of gouging cane for a bagpipe reed, my preparation might include checking my gouges and knives for keenness, assessing the condition of the cane I have to work with, making sure there’s enough light, making sure nobody else is in the part of the workshop where I’ll be using sharp tools and concentrating hard, putting on an apron and closed-toe shoes, and making sure that the gouging board is firmly fixed in the vise.

Then I’ll check in to make sure that I’m paying enough attention to be trusted with sharp tools, remind myself to pay attention to the feel of the cane under the gouge, the sound of the knife moving, and the weight on each of my feet. Finally I’ll make sure that I’m approaching the task with hope rather than pessimism. (Making reeds is hard enough with a good attitude; it becomes damn near impossible if you’re in a bad mood.)

If I’m preparing to teach suicide intervention, my preparation includes making sure the space is safe and comfortable and free from distractions, putting out boxes of tissues and carafes of coffee, checking the A/V equipment, confirming plans with my co-trainer(s), and organizing my materials. Then I’m going to make sure that I have all the pieces of the training in my head and that I’m ready to deal with the fact that suicide intervention classes never follow the script perfectly.

I know that I’m going to hear some hard stories, because every suicide intervention class I’ve ever taught has had survivors in it—people who’ve lived through their own attempts and people who’ve lived through the deaths of people they loved. I bring myself to a place of inner quiet and ask for the strength and presence to hold those stories, care for those people, and still teach them how to do a good job.

I used to fly airplanes, and pretty much everyone’s heard of a pre-flight checklist. It’s a fabulous way of forcing you to attend to critical details and also notice whether you’re ready to take on the responsibility of piloting an airplane, especially with other lives on board.

Think of preparation as a pre-flight checklist for life, but also think of the ritual as a tool for becoming ready. That’s the piece that underpins all of it: often, by bringing your attention and presence to the tasks of preparing, you can fix the bits that are broken, tune the strings that have drifted flat, and become ready.

 

George Will and the “Myth” of Sexual Assault

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updated 6/19/2014

Shame on you, George Will, and shame on you, Washington Post. The June 6 article by Will is an embarrassment to your profession. If you want an example of irresponsible writing about sexual violence and crime, look no further than today’s op-ed.

George Will writes that liberals, the Obama administration, and college campuses around the country are now making “victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges”. Really? What are these privileges? The privilege of having your body violated by another person? The privilege of being grilled by campus courts that have a vested interest in finding no evidence of crime? The privilege… I can’t even fathom what he means.

Will goes on to describe some events that happened at Swarthmore College, my alma mater. He relates a sexual assault and goes on to trivialize it, assault the character of the woman who reported sexual assault, and imply that she made the whole thing up. He assassinates her character by pointing out that she waited six weeks to file a report. Six weeks! She must be lying!

Will goes on to assail the concept of “trigger warnings”, strongly implying that warning victims of trauma about what they’re going to see is a namby-pamby liberal coddling of people who are too wuss-bag-tastic to handle the rigors of a Real Education. “Otherwise, traumas could be triggered in students whose tender sensibilities would be lacerated by unexpected encounters with racism, sexism, violence (dammit, Hamlet, put down that sword!) or any other facet of reality that might violate a student’s entitlement to serenity.”

Any other facet of reality. Will is laying rhetorical claim to speaking for the real world, the Lorax of Real Life. I hope he’s as strongly opposed to the G/PG/PG13/NC17/R rating system, since that’s really just an age-based trigger warning scheme—but, in any case, that’s kind of secondary. Will is using his older white man speaking-for-reality privilege to deny the lived experience of millions of people, and doing it from the pages of a respected newspaper. That shit has to stop. Who signed off on this?

Others have attacked Will’s piece with, perhaps, more clarity and vigor than I can muster, but I feel like I need to add my voice to the choir in part because talking about sexual violence so often breaks down along gender lines: women are vocally against sexual assault and men are, often, pretty damn silent.

So, here are some points from me, a guy who’s angry about sexual violence.

Sexual violence is hard to figure out, because a lot of it involves relationships and blurred lines, Robin Thicke notwithstanding. There’s a lot of gray involved. I say that as someone who’s worked on a crisis hotline for 19 years, as someone who’s hired and tried to comfort many victims of sexual assault, as… well, as a person. It’s hard. That does not make it okay to treat it with sarcasm, to accuse victims of weakness, to make fun of their attempts to use the judicial system, or to ridicule universities for trying to protect the students living on their campuses. By asserting that efforts to care for victims of violence are somehow “hypersensitive, even delusional”, Will is basically saying that his desire to live in a world where sex isn’t complicated is more important than our desire to take care of people who’ve been hurt. I call bullshit.

For most of my life, I’ve worked and lived with people who’ve been hurt by sexual violence. I’ve been lucky to avoid it, and I use “lucky” because someone planned to sexually abuse me when I was a child—my parents intervened in time, and nothing happened, but I feel really lucky that they learned about it before things got bad, and delay of a few hours would have made a big difference. I work in suicide intervention, so I hear a lot of people’s stories—and I’ve heard about sexual violence as the precursor to depression and thoughts of suicide so. many. times. that George Will’s screed denying this stuff literally made me gag with rage.

Consent is important. On some level it’s hard, I guess? I guess it’s pretty complicated to ask “how are you feeling about this?” when it comes to sex, and to stop doing whatever you’re doing (or even better, not start doing whatever it was) unless the answer is an enthusiastic “this is great!”. I guess if you’re an old angry white dude bitching about progressives and feminists and uppity women and privileged victims, it’d be hard to swallow the idea that you might need to actually ask someone before involving them in your sex life. Wait, no. Consent isn’t actually hard at all. If it’s not enthusiastically present, act as though it’s not there at all, and stop.

But honestly, his piece becomes a lot more tolerable when you view it as George Will blurting out the fact that he’s developmentally stunted when it comes to respecting other humans and acting like a reasonable person. Re-read the article and substitute some other group when you read “sexual assault” and “rape” and “victims”. Try it with people of color, or nurses, or secretaries, or flight attendants, or international students, or whatever.

Try it with veterans who have PTSD: “They are learning that when they say [PTSD] is ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.”

He goes on to say “Now the codes are begetting the soft censorship of trigger warnings to swaddle students in a ‘safe,’ ‘supportive,’ ‘unthreatening’ environment, intellectual comfort for the intellectually dormant. ”

Notice the three words in quotations, the three words Will uses to stand for all the things he hates about the world that these colleges, these uppity women, and these regulations are trying to create. He hates that they are trying to make college a safe, supportive, unthreatening environment. Which leads to an interesting conclusion about what Will thinks is important:

College should be un-safe, un-supportive, and threatening. It’s better for your education if you feel threatened and unsafe.

Just close your eyes and try to relax, dear. The rape apologists are here, and they’ve got you covered.

updated to add: papers are starting to notice, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has pulled Will’s columns and gotten rid of him on syndication. It’s a start.

 

Suicide-related Terminology

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We use a lot of specialized terminology in the suicide-intervention world, and it can be pretty opaque to outsiders. This page is intended as a quick introduction and glossary to help folks understand what we’re talking about. Also check my pages on talking about suicide deaths and why you shouldn’t forward photos of suicide deaths.

Updated March 29, 2015.

I’ve broken the terms into three categories: Generally Accepted, New Terms, and Deprecated/Discouraged. This is because consensus about language happens slowly; others may disagree about where given words belong. These are my thoughts.

If you’re here because you’re thinking about suicide and you want help, I’m so glad you’re reading this—and I want you to know that people like me are here to listen to your story. Chances are good that there’s a local crisis hotline near where you live; if you’re in the USA, you can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK / 1-800-273-8255) for free from anywhere in the country, or you can get online help at CrisisChat.org. Please call or visit the website—there’s help for you.

Generally Accepted Terms

Most people in our field agree on what these mean.

  • Attempt (n) (v). To take actions with the intent of dying by suicide.
  • Caregiver (n). A person who helps with prevention, intervention, or postvention. Usually used to describe the people directly interacting with a person who has thoughts of suicide. It’s also appropriate to use specific descriptions for a role (counselor, rabbi, police officer, doctor, etc.) if needed, but we tend to use ‘caregiver’ as the generic catch-all term.
  • Completed suicide (n). A suicide attempt that ended in the death of the person attempting suicide. Also “died by suicide”, “suicided”, etc.
  • Crisis (n). Hard to define, but we tend to describe it as the condition where a person’s usual coping methods aren’t getting it done anymore. Sometimes a crisis is precipitated by a traumatic event, but often it’s a slow accretion of difficulties until it feels like something has to change because the old way won’t work anymore. Sometimes a person who is in crisis will think of suicide as a way to resolve the situation, and we call that a ‘suicide crisis’.
  • Ideation (n). Thoughts about suicide, whether accompanied by intention to die or not. Suicide ideation is often considered the “thinking about it” phase of a suicide crisis. Anyone in a crisis where suicide is one of the options they’re considering could be said to have suicide ideation, independent of whether they actually want to die right now. There’s no single word in common use to describe the change from when a person is considering suicide (ideation) to when they are planning suicide (intent to die, desire to attempt, etc.), but we usually talk about a shift in intention. Note that suicide ideation does not always lead to a desire to die, and a desire to die does not always translate into an attempt. Also called ‘suicidal ideation’.
  • Intervention (n). Helping someone who is currently in a suicide crisis. The crisis may involve thoughts of suicide and may also involve attempts/actions.
  • Lethality assessment (n). A systematic way of assessing how immediate/acute/imminent a person’s suicide risk may be. Also refers to the tools/checklists/etc. used in performing a lethality assessment.
  • Lived experience (n). The things a person has experienced, particularly regarding suicide. May conflict with theories or beliefs held by others. See this guide to talking about it.
  • Person-first language (n). Using terms that place emphasis on the whole person, not just a particular condition. For example, “person with thoughts of suicide” rather than “suicidal person”.
  • Person with thoughts of suicide (n). A person who’s thinking about suicide. We prefer this in favor of more-judgmental terms like “suicidal person” because it uses person-first language that doesn’t define the person solely by the crisis.
  • Postvention (n). Working with individual people or groups of people to support and care for them after a person has died by suicide. Postvention often aims to promote healing among survivors while also preventing harm to vulnerable people.
  • Prevention (n). Working with individual people or groups of people to diminish their future risk of suicide. Generally presupposes that the people are not in a suicide crisis right now.
  • Safety contract (n). A verbal or written agreement in which a person with thoughts of suicide promises not to attempt suicide. There’s a lot of debate about whether these contracts are effective, and the consensus seems to be moving away from them.
  • Suicide cluster (n). A group of suicide deaths that occurred near the same place or around the same time. Does not imply that the deaths were connected or related in other ways. Some people use the term to refer to attempts as well as completed suicides.
  • Suicide contagion (n). A group of suicide deaths where there seems to be a causal connection between the people who died that led them all toward suicide. Some people use the term to refer to attempts as well as completed suicides. Differs from a suicide cluster in that a contagion has links between the people who died.
  • Suicide crisis (n). A crisis where a person thinks of suicide. Not all suicide crises lead to attempts; in fact, suicide attempts occur in a relatively small portion of suicide crises. When someone helps a person in suicide crisis, we call it ‘intervention’.
  • Suicidology (n). The academic study of suicide.
  • Survivor (n). Someone affected by the suicide death of another person. Survivors are often friends, family, or coworkers of the dead person, but anyone who feels affected by a suicide death is a survivor. Note that we do not historically use ‘survivors’ to refer to people who lived through a suicide attempt; for that, look at ‘suicide-attempt survivors‘ under New Terms.

New Terms

These terms are new, growing, or debated. Some people use them; others don’t.

  • Attempt survivor (n). Someone who attempted suicide and lived. See also suicide-attempt survivor and survivor of a suicide attempt.
  • One bereaved by suicide (n). Proposed as an alternative to ‘survivor’, i.e., a person who is affected by a suicide death. Not yet in wide use.
  • Psychiatric disability (n). Proposed as an alternative to “mental health issues” or “mental illness”, to encourage people to think of mental health disabilities with the same respect (and legal rights) they bring to other disabilities. From Shayda Kafai.
  • Suicide (v). To die by suicide. Usually used as “he suicided” in place of more judgmental language like “he committed suicide”. Proponents of this term feel that it’s a relatively value-neutral word that simply describes a death by suicide; opponents dislike it because it feels clinical, isn’t a word in common use as a verb already, and doesn’t add much value over phrasings like “kill [yourself]”, “die by suicide”, “take your life”, etc. Suicide-as-verb tends to be used more frequently in academic literature.
  • Suicide-attempt survivor (n). Someone who attempted suicide during a suicide crisis and lived through it. This is different from a ‘survivor’, which the field defines as the people left behind when someone dies. Backwards, I think, but that’s the consensus.
  • Suicide-loss survivor (n). Proposed as an alternative to ‘survivor’, i.e., a person who is affected by a suicide death. Not yet in wide use.
  • Survivor of a suicide attempt (n). See suicide-attempt survivor.
  • Survivor of suicide loss (n). See suicide-loss survivor.

Deprecated/Discouraged Terms

These are terms we, as a field, are asking people to stop using, either because they pathologize suffering or because they’re not sufficiently precise to be useful.

  • Commit suicide (v). Judgmental language. We commit sins, we commit crimes, and we commit people to mental hospitals. Use “attempt suicide” to describe an attempt or “die by suicide” to describe a death.
  • Gesture (n) (v). People sometimes refer to suicide attempts or thoughts as “gestures”, often suggesting that the people with thoughts of suicide are selfish or seeking attention. This is disrespectful (because it trivializes and devalues what the person is going through). Use “attempt” instead, and try to avoid judgmental tone.
  • Hurt yourself (v). People often use this kind of phrase when they’re uncomfortable asking directly about suicide. Two issues: it’s not specific enough (see entry for ‘Self-harm’), and it shows that the speaker is uncomfortable talking about suicide, which makes it harder for the person being asked to share openly. Use “attempt suicide” instead.
  • Just (adv). You’ll hear this a lot: “just depressed”, “just feeling bad right now”, “just having a hard time”, “just needed help”, “just not coping very well”, “just not strong enough”, etc. In each case, the “just” serves to minimize the problems and casually disparage the thoughts and experiences of the person with thoughts of suicide. Avoid it.
  • Permanent solution to a temporary problem (n). This feels incredibly disrespectful if you’re the person with thoughts of suicide, because it shows that the speaker doesn’t take the thoughts or situation seriously. Consider how you’d sound saying suicide was a “permanent solution to a temporary problem” if you knew that the person wanted to die because they’d just been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. I wrote a whole follow-up article about the “permanent solution to a temporary problem” language.
  • Self-harm (n). Covers a broad range of self-injurious behaviors from suicide to substance abuse to cutting to… really anything. Unless you want to describe the whole range of self-harm, pick a different term.
  • Selfish (adj). We ask people not to describe suicide as a selfish action because (a) it’s not usually true and (b) it makes it harder for people with thoughts of suicide to seek help if they think they’ll be called selfish.
  • Self-mutilation (n). Same as self-harm, but more judgmental. Use “self-harm” if you want to describe the broad range of behaviors; use the words for specific behaviors if you want to discuss them individually.
  • Successful suicide (n). When someone dies by suicide. We don’t want to portray suicide death as a ‘success’. Use “died by suicide” instead.
  • Suicidal person (n). There’s debate on this one, but most people prefer “person with thoughts of suicide” because “suicidal person” feels like it labels and pathologizes the person more, defining them by their illness. Compare to “person with lung cancer” vs. “lung-cancer person”. See “person-first language” above.
  • Unsuccessful suicide (n). When someone lives through an attempt. We don’t want to portray suicide death as a ‘success’. Use “attempted suicide” instead.

Do you have terms that should be added to these lists? Leave a comment and I’ll take a look! Thanks.

(I’m sure it goes without saying, but: these are my own thoughts and my own definitions, not those of my employer or anyone else I’ve worked with. And really, if you’re reading this and you need help, please call a crisis hotline. We’re here to help!)