Words have power, and in the world of mental health, language can either be a bridge or a barrier. In this raw and vital episode, Lisa and Gretchen unpack why it's time to retire the phrase "committed suicide" and explore how compassionate language can shift stigma, empower survivors, and spark much-needed change.
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💡 Episode Summary
In this powerful episode, Lisa and Gretchen tackle one of the most impactful conversations around suicide: how we talk about it. They challenge the outdated, stigmatizing phrase "committed suicide" and offer insight into alternative language that centers empathy, healing, and truth. Through lived experiences—Lisa as a suicide loss survivor and Gretchen as an attempt survivor—they highlight why language matters, and how shifting it can transform both personal and collective grief.
📘 Lessons Learned-
Language shapes stigma: “Committed suicide” carries connotations of crime and shame.
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Empathy-first communication can change minds—and save lives.
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There are healthier, more respectful alternatives: “died by suicide,” “lost their life to suicide,” or “took their own life.”
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Survivors of suicide loss and attempt need compassion, not judgment.
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Changing language helps change narratives, which leads to more prevention, awareness, and healing.
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 – Trigger Warning & Welcome
01:20 – Why Language Matters
04:47 – The Realities of Mental Illness
06:39 – Calling 988 Saved a Life
10:19 – The Problem with “Committed”
14:01 – The Weight of Loss
19:40 – Changing the Belief That Suicide Is “Selfish”
23:43 – Your Call to Action: Change the Language
26:34 – Final Thoughts & Real Talk
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The Survivors is brought to you by our friends at the Help Hub. This
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podcast mentions suicide, mental illness, grief and loss and may be
00:00:08
triggering for some listeners. So please take care of your mental well being
00:00:12
by pausing or skipping any sections that feel uncomfortable to you. And if
00:00:16
you or someone you know is struggling, please call 988 for support.
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We're very glad you're here because this is a conversation that I know
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that I've wanted to have for a really, really long time. I've had it a
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million times in lots of other places,
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platforms, podcasts, and I am so excited to have it here.
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And I know you are too. And it's why we need
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to stop saying committed suicide. I'm so
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excited that we have an entire conversation dedicated to
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this one thing, because in my own opinion, as a
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suicide loss survivor three times over, it
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has become so visceral to me when I hear someone say
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committed suicide, because I understand the kind of damage
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that done when someone says it. And so I'm
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so excited to have a conversation where we explain
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why we need to stop doing that. And that that's one of the critical
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steps in changing the narrative on mental illness and suicide.
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Like when I had my attempt,
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I. That was the other thing that was going through my. Through my
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mind is how are people gonna define what I did to myself
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and how is this going to affect
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other people? I was in that type of frame of mind. I was
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close. If I hadn't called 988, I wouldn't have. I wouldn't be here.
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Yeah, I know, and I'm. I've said it before and I'll say it a million
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more times. I am so grateful that you learned about
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that number and that you had the presence of mind to call that number,
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because now we get to do this and we get to hopefully inspire other people
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to call that number or feel differently about
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struggling and reaching out and not being, okay,
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so let's talk about this, because it's like burning
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a hole in my heart. So I want you to think for a second about
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how language shapes things like stigma
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and that the words that we use matter
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so, so much. And when we say something like
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committed suicide, we put that word committed, attach it to suicide.
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It really stems from a time in our history, in our collective
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history, when suicide was considered a sin or a crime. And in some
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places, unfortunately, it kind of still is. And when we
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say committed suicide, it's reinforcing
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things like shame and guilt and this whole
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idea that suicide is this moral failing
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rather than a mental health crisis or the result of
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unbearable emotional pain, which is what it is. It
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is not a crime. It is not immoral, it is not illicit. It
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is a product of depression, which is a product
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of mental illness. Illness and
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words matter. And the way we talk about things shapes
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and frames the way people think about those things. Does
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that all make sense? It does, you know, because when
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we say things other than
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committed suicide, we are. We're helping to break down that stigma
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because there's so much
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stigma in, in this arena. And
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then you add on the mental health aspect to it, then
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you add on vets, men, children, women, the whole
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nine yards. When you say the words committed suicide, it also
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implies, like you said, guilt and shame. Like
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when, for the survivors, there's so
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much more that goes into that and it
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makes it hurt, hurt even more. It does, it does, because
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it unfairly stigmatizes the person who
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chose to end their life. And we have to remember
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that when someone is mentally ill, when they're in a headspace where
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they are absolutely desperate and hopeless and in pain,
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in absolute pain, all they
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want is for that pain to end. And that's where it comes from.
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That's where the decision to end your life
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comes from. It's not because most people want to escape their family
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or escape their job or escape responsibility or. It's not.
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It's not like that, that quick exit for those reasons.
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It's an exit out of the pain that they're in. And at that
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point, probably when someone is at that stage where they're so
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totally hopeless, well, that's the only thing they can control,
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is because clearly if someone is that affected by their
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mental illness and depression and they can't see any light
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whatsoever in their life, they just don't have control
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anymore. And so that's a way that someone
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can regain, even in a final act, can regain that
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control over their life by making the decision to make it
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stop. And unfortunately, that is a surefire
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guarantee that it will stop. It just stops everything. It
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doesn't just stop the pain. And that's the shitty part about mental
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illness, is that it hijacks your common sense, your, you
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know, depression. That's a sneaky little conniving
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bitch because it sneaks into your thoughts and corrupts
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your ability to rationally think about something
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and your ability to see that, okay, like, I'm in a bad place right now,
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I'm in a bad headspace or a bad situation, and this is sucking right now.
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But it will not always be this way. It will not
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always look this way. It will not always feel this way. There's another side. You
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can't see that, could you? Before you called
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988, where was your headspace before you called
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988?
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It was all over the place. I just wanted it to stop.
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I couldn't get the voices in my head to stop.
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I couldn't. I couldn't find my voice. I couldn't find my footing. I couldn't
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even describe to you how I was feeling because I didn't understand it.
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And by the time I got to the point where I picked up the phone
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and called 988, I was kind of relieved
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because now somebody put a voice to what was going on in
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my head. It's a scary place. And
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when you don't understand what's going on and you
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can't put words to it, it makes it even worse.
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Yeah. And then when the words that you
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are putting to it are words like committed, and
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let's isolate that word for a split second and think about
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the connotation. In so many ways,
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the word committed has a very negative connotation because you think,
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commit a murder, commit a sin, commit a felony, commit
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adultery. Like, those are not positive things. There's no spin
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on those. Those are negative things. So you're
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unfairly stereotyping the person who's dealing with mental illness. Would
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you ever do that to someone who had cancer? Would
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you ever do that to someone who had heart disease or who
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died in some kind of an accident? Like, no one's
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stereotyping those people or stigmatizing those
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people or having issues
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talking openly about what happened to those people because
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nobody thinks that there's anything wrong. It's like, oh, that per. That poor person.
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It was beyond their control. Well, guess what? Everybody who's listening right now to this
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conversation. So is mental illness. In so many ways, it is
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beyond the person's control, but what
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it is, is still an illness. It needs to be
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treated in the same way that you would treat any of those other
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illnesses. And it just sucks that for
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centuries, since the beginning of. Of time,
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when people started taking their own lives,
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whenever that began, suicide was illegal
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and it was immoral and it was taboo.
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And that stuck. And you know why it stuck? It stuck because
00:08:30
of the language that we used. And even though, okay, sure, a lot of
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the laws in our modern day society have
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changed in a more positive way to reflect an
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understanding that it's not immoral, illegal, or illicit.
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It's still stigmatized. People are still
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afraid to Say, oh, my person died
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by suicide. Or I'm a survivor of an attempt, and
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it needs to change. It needs to change. Because any of
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these narratives around mental illness and suicide won't ever
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really truly change unless the language we use to
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talk about them changes first. Right. Like,
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you know, good alternatives to committed suicide
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are they took their own life. We.
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We lost them to suicide. Died by
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suicide. People are saying died by suicide. Yeah, people are saying they
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suicided. I don't personally say that as much, but I'm
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hearing it more and more and more, and it's becoming very, very
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commonplace. But there are so many other ways. You know what that does. It
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preserves that person's dignity. Yes. Or
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even, like, died as a result of mental illness.
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But, like, just be kind, be kind. Because
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when someone loses their life to
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suicide, there's so much grief
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behind that. So much, much more than,
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like, if somebody had gotten hit by a car or died of natural
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causes. When somebody gets to that point. And speaking for
00:10:09
myself, you have a million things going through your
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head, and it is the scariest thing.
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It's the scariest place to be, I'm sure. So,
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going back to the word of the year, just be kind. Use your
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kind words. It's unfair. I was trying to think of a
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better word, but, you know, apparently I'm having a brain fart today,
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so. That's okay. That's okay. You're
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allowed. This happens when you almost
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62. You know the other thing around using the words
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committed suicide, there's so many connotations to it.
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Like if you're talking to the spouse or a
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friend or a coworker, it makes people
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feel uncomfortable. If you say they lost
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their life to suicide or they took their life,
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that has a softer tone to it. And yes, suicide is
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still a taboo word out there. I don't understand why it
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shouldn't be. Just as mental health is still taboo.
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Get over it, people. It's still happening. It happens on a
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daily basis. And the world's not
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helping with that. No, it's not. And you did a great job
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of highlighting a lot of the alternatives to saying
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committed suicide and what to replace it with. And
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when you say something like died by suicide or
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ended their life or took their life, those are phrases
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that will acknowledge that person's death
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without judgment or without blame. And that's the
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end game. That's the idea. That's
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how we change it and how we open up the conversation
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so that it's not so hard and scary and hurtful and
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taboo anymore. It's just, it is, it is what it is and
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you're not stigmatizing the person who's attached to it anymore. You
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know, it also honors the pain and the humanity because now you can
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focus on the suffering and the mental illness. Yeah. Rather than
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the act itself. It's easier to support the survivors.
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Right. Because when you are
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thinking about taking your life, there's a lot that goes into that. There's a lot
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of mental, like, bingo going on in your head, like,
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okay, well, if I do this, like, how, how's this going to
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affect people that will be talking
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about me later on after I've
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taken my life? It's just,
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it's really hard and it's really hard on the survivors. So,
00:12:48
you know, use your kind words.
00:12:52
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00:14:01
Yeah, and speaking as a survivor, I know how it
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feels to live in the aftermath
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of not one, not two, but unfortunately, three different
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suicides over the course of my life. And in some cases,
00:14:17
there were elements of those deaths that were obvious.
00:14:21
Like, in other words, what I mean by that is the why was
00:14:24
a little bit more obvious in some cases with some than with others. Like if
00:14:28
you take the. The circumstances around my father,
00:14:32
for instance, we. We only knew bits and pieces, very few bits and pieces. The
00:14:35
rest we really won't ever know. Like, what was the event, what
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was the thing that kind of brought them to that
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tipping point? And, and there usually isn't one thing, it's usually a
00:14:47
lot of things, but we don't know. And then there's
00:14:51
the guilt piece and then there's the shame piece, which of course
00:14:55
the word choice that we Use is a huge contributor to that shame
00:14:59
piece. Because now we're taught, and we're teaching
00:15:03
everyone that it's shameful because of the way we talk about
00:15:07
it. So we can't do that. And shifting the language is
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such a powerful but such a small act,
00:15:15
but it has humongous ripple effects. When you change
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language, it just normalizes talking about
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this big, ugly, scary thing openly and it breaks down things
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like silence, which is always attached to
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suicide. And it creates room for things like prevention
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and for things like intervention and for things like support
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just by virtue of shifting the language, you know, and it tells the people who
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are struggling. Like, I bet when you were struggling, I know that
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your wife wasn't aware, people weren't aware, you're very much an
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extrovert. So you were just like, I'm good, I'm
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good. How you doing? Gee, I'm great. I'm great. I bet you would have
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loved to have known that it. You're not a criminal, you're not doing
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anything wrong. You're a human being and you're in pain.
00:16:04
And oh, by the way, there's so much help out there.
00:16:10
Funny you brought that up. Cause I was just thinking about that. For those
00:16:14
of us that present as extroverts, yes, we are
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happy. Go lucky. 9 times out of 10, you are not going to be able
00:16:21
to tell if we're super depressed. We mask it well.
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Not a badge of honor. If you're doing that
00:16:28
now, please stop. Because I can tell you from my own experience, it doesn't
00:16:32
help. It only really hurts. But for those of us that are
00:16:36
extroverted, I've
00:16:40
often heard of people saying that suicide is selfish
00:16:43
and that you're a coward and you had so much to live for.
00:16:47
Okay? When you're in that process, I'm just going to tell
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you there's a lot of shit that's going on in your head
00:16:54
and you're not thinking about how maybe selfish this
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is or how much you have to live in your for in your life or
00:17:02
how you're a coward. For me,
00:17:06
I was 59 and a half when this happened. I didn't
00:17:09
understand what was going on in my own head.
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And I couldn't think enough about
00:17:18
how this was going to affect other people.
00:17:22
But when I started to share my story, I had one or two
00:17:25
people reach out to me and tell me what a selfish act that would have
00:17:29
been. Don't do that, okay? Because I already
00:17:33
felt shitty enough as it was. I don't need people to
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tell me What a selfish, cowardly
00:17:40
thing that is to do with Be nice.
00:17:44
Yeah, and I'm really glad that you brought that up. And I have mentioned this
00:17:48
in past episodes relating to my own belief
00:17:51
systems around suicide and how much that's changed.
00:17:55
I will absolutely own up to the fact that for
00:17:59
a great portion of my life. So I'm almost
00:18:02
57, touched by suicide since I was nine years old. So it's
00:18:06
been unfortunately an ongoing relationship
00:18:10
with grief, loss, death, suicide. That, that's been part of my life since
00:18:13
the very beginning. And the first death I ever encountered
00:18:17
was a suicide. My cousin took his life and I was nine and I was
00:18:21
made aware that it was suicide. No one told me that it was
00:18:24
selfish. No one talked to me about things like
00:18:28
stigma, because nobody was talking about it in 1978 anyway or
00:18:31
1977. But I just somehow
00:18:35
concocted this image of suicide as a selfish act.
00:18:39
And I lived with that belief quietly in my own little head and
00:18:43
heart. I'd never expressed it to anybody,
00:18:46
but that's what I felt. And it was only when
00:18:50
I found out the truth about my own father's suicide.
00:18:54
He had been gone 35 years. I thought it was a heart attack. And
00:18:59
the revelation in my story is that it wasn't a heart attack. He took his
00:19:02
life. And I learned it by mistake 35 years later,
00:19:06
learning that he had mental illness and then really understanding what somebody who was
00:19:10
in your headspace was going through or was feeling
00:19:13
like my father was feeling. It absolutely changed everything for me.
00:19:17
And it was like overnight. I no longer believed that
00:19:22
it was a selfish act because I understood. But there are a lot of people
00:19:25
out there who don't believe that still. And that's the
00:19:29
other thing that if you wanted to kind of pair something with
00:19:32
changing the language around suicide, it's
00:19:36
changing the belief system about the selfishness of it.
00:19:40
And that's. People who are gonna say that are people who are just
00:19:44
pissed cause it affected them. What do you mean
00:19:48
you're not happy in your life? You've got everything to live for. You know, we
00:19:51
see all these celebrities who take their life and it's like you had fame, you
00:19:54
had money, you had admiration, all these things, and why could you
00:19:58
possibly take your life? It becomes so, so self
00:20:01
centered. Anybody who says that,
00:20:05
who says it's selfish because it's not about you. I
00:20:09
mean, yeah, unfortunately it's going to affect you if someone close to you takes
00:20:13
their life. But it wasn't about you, it was about the pain they were
00:20:17
in. So stop Making it about you. My
00:20:20
God, like, spot on. For those of us that are suicide
00:20:24
attempt survivors, you know, there was
00:20:28
so much that went into that day, and it had been building up and building
00:20:31
up and building up until I got to the point where I was just
00:20:35
done. But there's a lot of
00:20:39
shame that goes into this. And that shame comes
00:20:43
from everything we've learned through social media and the news and
00:20:47
everything else. And so it's not just celebrities that are
00:20:50
taking their life. There's, like, normal people like me. And
00:20:55
life gets hard, really, really hard. And
00:21:00
it's a shame game. And telling survivors that their
00:21:03
partner or friend, that was a cowardly thing to do. And I was
00:21:07
selfish. And you have zero
00:21:11
right, I mean, zero to say
00:21:14
anything. If you have nothing nice to say,
00:21:18
don't say anything at all. I hear my mother in my
00:21:21
head right now because that's something she would say to us all the
00:21:25
time. And use your good words.
00:21:29
Think really, really hard about if you were the survivor.
00:21:32
Right. How would you want somebody to address you? Use your
00:21:36
nice words. Yeah. And remember that those
00:21:40
words that you use when they're not the nice
00:21:44
ones, the understanding, compassionate, empathetic ones, are the ones
00:21:47
that are perpetuating this stigma.
00:21:52
And it's. It's once we have these conversations over and over and
00:21:56
over and over again and drum it into people's heads that we need to change
00:21:59
that language. That is when the shift will happen. So.
00:22:03
So you and I, from time to time, I feel like in almost
00:22:07
every episode, one way or another, we have a call to action.
00:22:11
It's call 911. It's check out the Trevor project. It's lean into
00:22:15
the people who are closest to you. Try therapy. We have lots of different
00:22:18
call to action. So here's the call to action that we
00:22:22
have for you today. If you're listening to this conversation,
00:22:26
challenge yourself and the people around you
00:22:30
to be intentional with the language that you use when
00:22:34
you're talking about something like suicide. Because you may not
00:22:37
be one of the 94 million people in
00:22:41
this world, around the world, who are affected in some way by
00:22:44
suicide. But if you aren't, you're lucky. And
00:22:48
if you aren't, you will be eventually. So
00:22:53
listen to this conversation, absorb this conversation, internalize it,
00:22:56
and educate your communities, educate your
00:23:00
people. Get off your phone right now and have this conversation
00:23:04
with your teenage kids or have this conversation with your
00:23:07
boomer parents who are hardwired to think
00:23:11
that there's only one way to talk about suicide, and it's to Say committed
00:23:15
suicide. Talk to them. Share this conversation, especially
00:23:18
in the media and schools and in mental health
00:23:22
spaces and in your book club. Like, normalize the
00:23:26
correct language that we all need to be using
00:23:30
and model it. Model it gently and
00:23:33
correctly and make sure that
00:23:37
you're using it appropriately
00:23:40
so that other people can do the same. I love that call
00:23:44
to action. And my call to action is if you have
00:23:48
any questions for me as a suicide attempt
00:23:51
survivor or for Lisa as a
00:23:55
suicide loss survivor, reach out to us on our DMs or
00:23:59
go out to our webpage. I'd be more than happy to talk to anybody.
00:24:02
I'm still dealing with it two years later, but I'm in a much
00:24:06
healthier headspace than I was Christmas Day
00:24:09
2022. Yeah, we want to hear from you.
00:24:13
We want to hear what you think, we want to hear what you feel,
00:24:17
we want to hear what you say. What's your language? What
00:24:21
do you say? Maybe you say something different than the handful of
00:24:24
suggestions that we've given out today. We want to
00:24:28
know. We'll circulate that. I'm always curious
00:24:32
to see how people can do this in different ways.
00:24:36
One thing I want to shout out, and it's not really a great shout out,
00:24:39
TikTok, I'm talking to you right now. I have real issues
00:24:43
with TikTok, and I'll probably get Shadow banned for saying this, but
00:24:47
I cannot type the word suicide
00:24:50
into a post on TikTok because
00:24:54
it will get rejected. And that is the
00:24:58
biggest bunch of bullshit. And it's what is
00:25:01
absolutely wrong with this world right now. This is
00:25:04
exactly the generation that we need to appeal to
00:25:08
because they are the future. They're the ones who are going to
00:25:12
make the changes and have to live in this environment, in this world,
00:25:16
with this issue, long after we're gone. So
00:25:20
the only way to get around saying suicide on
00:25:23
platforms like Twitter is to say unalived, which
00:25:27
I think is ridiculous, but that's what everybody says,
00:25:30
unalived. And I think that is a bunch of
00:25:34
shit, because we need to be saying the word. Like
00:25:38
suicide is a word that exists because it is a thing that happens
00:25:42
at least 94 million times a year. Well, at least 700
00:25:46
times a year around the country. And then 94 million people are
00:25:50
affected by it. So it's out there, friends, and we have to get used
00:25:53
to it. And that's the only way that we're going to stop it. These are
00:25:56
outdated narratives that we're talking about. And
00:26:00
gee, you and I are trying to do our part to help change the
00:26:03
collective consciousness. And we hope that for everybody
00:26:07
who listened to this conversation today, we hope it resonated.
00:26:11
We hope it shifted something in you. If you were one of those people who
00:26:14
was just saying it the way you were taught, no, shame on you. It's just
00:26:17
how we all grew up. It's what we all learned. But now you know, there's
00:26:21
a different way. There's a better way. So please take this to
00:26:25
heart. Please continue this conversation with the people who are in your life.
00:26:28
And please help in changing this narrative, because it needs
00:26:32
to be changed. Thank you, Ms.
00:26:35
Lisa. I love this so much.
00:26:39
Okay, now I lost my fucking train of thought again. So. It's okay. We'll
00:26:43
end here. Wow. We just went from super
00:26:46
deep to swearing and just calling it
00:26:50
quits because. I'm old and I can't remember what I was gonna say.
00:26:54
I know you need to. You need to take your iron pills or something like
00:26:57
that today. I don't know. Listen, I want you to do me a favor. After
00:26:59
we're done here, I want you to go home and take a nap.
00:27:03
Anyway. Hey, look, this is a great conversation. It was. I
00:27:07
love you a lot and I appreciate you. I love you, too. I'll see you
00:27:10
next week by.
00:27:16
Thanks for joining us on the Survivors. Remember, no matter how tough things
00:27:19
feel, you are enough. And the world needs you just the way you are.
00:27:23
You're not alone in this journey. There's a community here, and every step forward
00:27:27
counts. We're so grateful you took the time to listen and we hope you'll
00:27:31
take one day at a time. Just know there's always more light ahead.
00:27:36
Thanks for being here. Friends, just remember, help is out there
00:27:39
in so many different places. So if you or someone you know is struggling,
00:27:43
please call 988 and a trained crisis counselor like me will be
00:27:47
there to help. You can also find an inclusive and comprehensive directory of
00:27:51
mental health resources, tools and content at
00:27:54
thehelphub.co. just remember that help is always
00:27:57
just a call or a click away. We'll catch you next week. In the
00:28:01
meantime, keep
00:28:01
Survivor.