About

About Randi Jensen: My Story

As you will learn in my book, “Just Because You’re Suicidal Doesn’t Mean You’re Crazy,” I was suicidal for twenty-four years, from age 8 to 32.

I am a professional counselor and a professional speaker/educator. But more importantly, here I am offering you a way to get help, and give help, out of my own deeply personal experience.

- Randi Jensen

Randi's Recent Writing: "How do you function?"
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Just Because You're Suicidal Doesn't Mean You're Crazy

The Psychobiology of Suicide

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“Coming together is a beginning. Staying together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford

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About Suicidality

Suicidality is a spectrum of thought patterns & behaviors including:

Ideation Means Thought.

Suicidal thought is not just feeling really sad. It is not a matter of wanting to die. Most people who become suicidal do not truly want to die. Instead they want the pain to stop. They feel their situation is untenable, unchangeable and hopeless. While suicidality can be a frightening or taboo subject to many people, those who are dealing with it on a daily basis know that it is very real, painful, and drastically affects every aspect of your life.

Suicidality is the result of massive hopelessness.

A person is driven to believe that there is only one way to bring relief or cessation of pain. That thought pattern can create an indelible deeply laid neural pathway perpetuated by endorphins supplied by the relieving thoughts themselves. Once the suicidal thought patterns begin – it is very difficult to stop thinking about “not being here.” That’s because suicidal thought is endorphin-driven and it follows the same neural pathway in the brain over and over again.

What exactly are endorphins?

Endorphins are the body’s own internal pain relievers that act like prescription narcotics, such as morphine and codeine. They provide pain relief and a feeling of well-being when they are activated.

Endorphins are neurotransmitters, a type of chemical that passes along signals from one neuron to the next in the brain. Neurotransmitters play a key role in the function of the central nervous system.

The body responds to certain stimuli, especially stress, fear, or pain, by producing endorphins. They originate in various parts of your body — the pituitary gland, spinal cord, and throughout other parts of the brain and nervous system. Endorphins communicate primarily with receptors in brain cells.

Suicidality has a predictable and progressive course.

Suicide unfortunately results in a permanent solution to a temporary problem. In order to provide proper treatment for suicidality, we must embrace and understand its prevalence and progression.

Is thinking about “not being here” the same thing as thinking about suicide?

t seems like it would be very different. But, thinking about “not being here” (or being free from the pain of hopelessness) releases endorphins in the brain that initiate and reinforce a neural pathway. You automatically feel better and continue to build a deeper pathway each time you return to the thoughts of taking yourself out of the unrelenting problem(s). It is not too long before thoughts of “not being here” become thoughts of not being anywhere – then not being alive. If you are thinking about suicide, understand this: The truth is, your brain has been sidetracked by a purely neurological chemical process. Neural pathways (the message highways over which sensory signals travel to the brain) are the pathways that determine and control our intellectual, emotional, psychological, and physical responses.

The neural pathway of suicidality in your brain may have started as a coping mechanism.

Coping mechanisms are useful tools that help you deal with and get through difficult times. In the case of suicidal thinking, the tool becomes a dangerous weapon that you turn on yourself. But it can inadvertently become an automatic, habitual, and very deadly one for you. Those ruts or neural pathways may seem unavoidable and unchangeable, but things are about to change for you. It is not your fault that your brain has been sidetracked by this neurobiological process. You’ve had no way to control it or understand it – until now. Suicidality is a natural strategy for a mind to employ. It’s simple: “If you cannot remove the vexing problem – remove the person the problem vexes.”

When your first thoughts of suicide came - you didn't know what was really happening to you. How could you?

I can teach you an amazingly effective way to help yourself or someone else get help.

Simple. Natural. Tragic.

It is this simple and natural, yet tragic, strategy for overcoming crushing adversity that explains the amazing prevalence of suicidal ideation in the general public and the military. See publications: Arango, V., Huang, Y., Underwood, M., & Mann, J. (2003).; Rudd, D. (2011, August 4); Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: The NSDUH Report (2009, September 17). Unfortunately we reject and deny the possibility that so many could be suffering so silently. But not so surprising, we also fear and stigmatize those who report suffering from suicidal ideation.

Some facts that few know

Suicide is preventable and treatable.
Most people start thinking about suicide long before they ever talk about it.
Post traumatic stress, acute stress, and life’s accumulated distress can visit terror of unimaginable magnitude.
Lack of sleep prevents any rational thought or focus. Get them a medical evaluation.
When people talk about suicide, they mean it – take it seriously.
Just because someone is laughing and interactive does not mean they are not thinking about suicide as a default coping behavior.
Continued untreated stress and increasing symptoms (substance abuse, raging, insomnia, nightmares, hyper vigilance, jumpiness, mood swings among others) will always culminate in serious consequences.
If you have to shout to be heard, then shout how much you care. Do not become so empathetic that you jump into the suicidal boat, too.
Situations change over time. Buy time… one minute, one hour, one day at a time.
Healing is a daily process. Suicidal thought is NOT conducive to healing in any way.

Individuals close to killing themselves get very angry when you “get in their way." ANYWAY
Without intervention and treatment, suicide is only delayed.
Post traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury from concussive blasts are life changing problems – no one is ever the same.
You need support. Remember, "to get three" means finding three concerned others who understand the JSP3© and will work the protocol with you. Everyone supports each other.
Do not think that any legal action is too drastic to keep someone alive. You take actions to keep them alive until they can think straight enough to keep themselves alive.
Never allow any person struggling with suicidality to keep a weapon. If you see it, you take it, or get someone with authority to remove it.
Keep the person struggling with suicidality far away from inappropriate coping mechanisms (alcohol, drugs, weapons, other dangerous people or situations).
Don’t worry about how angry that person will be. Go ahead and look like a fool. Do it for life – the precious life of your loved one.

Support JSP3©

The suicidality counseling that Randi provides is on a sliding scale or often times completely free. We believe there should be absolutely no barriers to saving a life. Donations make it possible for Randi and her team to deliver life-saving JSP3© counseling.

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