How to Cope With Not Wanting to Live or Die

Key Takeaways

• Feeling like you don’t want to live or die is often a sign of emotional distress rather than a wish to end your life.
• Such thoughts are often tied to feelings of hopelessness, powerlessness, mental health issues, or exhaustion.
• Reaching out for professional help, seeking social support, and taking small, caring steps can help you learn to cope with these thoughts.

Feeling like you don’t want to live, but also don’t want to die, can be a painful and confusing experience. Such thoughts are known as passive suicidal ideation and are a sign of emotional distress and need for support. Learning how to cope with not wanting to live or die is important and may involve therapy, safety planning, and support.

Information presented in this article may be triggering to some people. If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.

For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database.

What to Do If You Feel Like You Don’t Want to Live or Die

• Reach out for support right now: Talk to someone you trust or call a crisis hotline like 988 (the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) in the U.S.
• Tell someone how you’re feeling: Sharing your thoughts with someone you trust can reduce feelings of isolation and help you to feel more understood.
• Focus on the immediate future: Break things down into small steps and focus on dealing with them.
• Stay safe: Remove or avoid anything that might pose a risk to your life or well-being.
• Avoid being alone if possible: Stay connected to friends or family, or consider reaching out to someone through text or online in a support group.
• Do something comforting: Spend time doing something soothing, whether it’s wrapping up in a warm blanket, listening to music, or going for a walk.
• Talk to a professional: Reach out to a counselor, therapist, or doctor who can help you work through these thoughts and find relief.

What It Means When You Don’t Want to Live or Die

If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die,” you’re not alone. Major life stressors, childhood trauma, or untreated depression are all reasons that someone might feel this way.

This can be considered suicidal ideation, which means thinking about taking your own life.

How Common Is It?

• An estimated 7.8% of people experience suicidal ideation in their lifetimes.
• Around 14% of those make attempts.
• For every 31 attempts, there is only one completed attempt.

Passive vs. Active Suicidal Ideation

Passive suicidal ideation means that you’ve thought about not living anymore, but you don’t have any active plan to die by suicide. 

However, passive suicidal ideation can quickly turn active (i.e., having a plan, means, and intent).

It’s important to remember that feeling suicidal is a state that can change rapidly.

This means the feelings can also be reduced quickly, including through promising new interventions such as ketamine infusion therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Why You Might Feel This Way

Feeling like you don’t want to live but you don’t want to die means that something hurts. “It can convey emotional pain and a desire for change,” says Cubbage.

It might be caused by:

• Feeling emotionally numb or empty
• Feeling like a burden to others
• Chronic stress or exhaustion
• Grief or a major loss
• Depression or other mental health issues
• Isolation or lack of social support
• Unresolved trauma or painful memories
• Hopelessness about the future

It may signify that you feel like much is outside of your locus of control, and those feelings of powerlessness can also lead to the hopelessness that makes it feel pointless to live. Or perhaps you are feeling a bit of an existential crisis—wondering what the point of all this is. You might be wondering why the minutiae of your life matter and why you matter. 

Grappling with these big life questions can be really hard and may feel incredibly isolating, making it easy for you to spiral and believe that nothing matters. However, existential questioning can also open up space for more meaning in your life as you think about what does matter to you.

How to Get Help

You may be feeling desperate right now, but there are a number of things you can do, such as therapy, reaching out to your social support network, and safety planning.

Therapy

If you are not already in some kind of mental health treatment, consider seeing a therapist who can help you work through these feelings and find out why it is that you feel like you can’t live like this.

They can also help you identify coping tools you can use to keep yourself safe and reduce these feelings.

Get Help Now

We’ve tried, tested, and written unbiased reviews of the best online therapy programs, including Brightside, which specifically offers help for people experiencing suicidal ideation. Find out which option is the best for you.

Safety Planning

“Safety planning is an evidence-based way to help prevent hospitalization and attempts,” says Cubbage. 

In research with suicidal patients in the emergency room, safety planning was associated with the patients being less likely to exhibit future suicidal behavior and more likely to attend mental health treatment.

Some key things to include on a safety plan include a list of coping strategies that have worked for you and sources of support. Sources of support can be friends and family, as well as mental health professionals—either your therapist or a local mental health agency that you can contact.

Mental health professionals sometimes use a tool called the “Reasons for Living Inventory” to assess for suicidality, but you might also want to look at it on your own to begin to jog your memory of reasons you want to live. Or you can make a list on your own, and nothing is too small to include. If you want to live because you love your morning coffee, that counts! 

Just as hopelessness can lead to feeling like you don’t want to live—but you don’t necessarily want to die—feelings of hope mean that there is a glimmer of light out there. In a study, those who identified more reasons for living were better able to access those reasons, even in periods of depression.

Seek Social Support

Depression or suicidal thoughts may lie to you and tell you you’re a burden—but they’re lying. Your loved ones care about you and want to help you—and social support is one of the leading protective factors against suicide.

Some benefits that social support provides:

• Tangible resources, such as providing the number for a hotline or counseling center
• Physically interrupting a suicide attempt
• Increased feelings of belongingness 
• Increase in protective factors such as self-esteem
• Feedback from others
• Resources for problem-solving
• Exposure to positive events 

Feeling like you belong because of social support increases self-esteem and reduces feelings of burdensomeness. A feeling of belonging may contribute to reduced suicidality.

Find Connection

Research shows that having some kind of religious practice reduces the risk of depression and suicide, due to feelings of meaning, purpose, and gratitude often felt in connection with religious involvement.

If you’re not religious but spiritual, the same concept still applies. Practicing your spirituality can help you find meaning in life.

How to Support Someone Who Feels This Way

If you’re a loved one worried about someone who has said they don’t want to live anymore but they don’t want to die either, we know this can be scary for you, too. 

Janel Cubbage

Your natural instinct may be to remind them of the reasons they have for living or to tell them to think about their friends and family and how their death would affect them. Push those instincts to the side and listen to them. Hear them. Let them tell you what’s contributing to their emotional pain.

— Janel Cubbage

Of course, if someone is in imminent danger, contact emergency services or bring them to the nearest emergency department. 

What This Means For You

We acknowledge how brave it is for you to realize that you don’t want to live like this anymore—and that you don’t want to die. A safety plan and a support network can help you through this crisis.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

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By Theodora Blanchfield, AMFT

Theodora Blanchfield is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and mental health writer using her experiences to help others. She holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University and is a board member of Still I Run, a non-profit for runners raising mental health awareness. Theodora has been published on sites including Women’s Health, Bustle, Healthline, and more and quoted in sites including the New York Times, Shape, and Marie Claire.

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