I specialize in suicide bereavement support, education & recovery
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IF YOU'VE LOST A LOVED ONE TO SUICIDE, you know: grief after suicide is unlike anything you've ever suffered before. It strips your whole world down to the bones. Your soul is hollowed out like an abandoned building. Light can barely get in. Few people can imagine what you're going through, or what you may need to survive and rediscover a life worth living. I get it. My own daughter, Beth, killed herself. It's why I do this work.
What Makes Suicide Bereavement Different? The impact of suicide on those who are left behind can be catastrophic. Of course, any death can be devastating. Is there any real difference? Studies, surveys, interviews, and clinical experience say yes. While suicide bereavement shares common elements with mourning other traumatic losses--especially sudden, unexpected, or violent death--at least four aspects are unique. |
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Suicide is a death like no other, and those who are left behind to struggle with it must confront a pain like no other. - KAY REDFIELD JAMESON, Night Falls Fast
Choice. For one thing, we wrestle with the mind-numbing fact that someone we loved actually chose to die. It didn't just happen. Whether impulsive or carefully considered and planned, they acted deliberately and decisively to end their own life. The role of will or choice does not apply to accident, disease, homicide, or any other cause of death. This, perhaps more than anything, makes suicide grief fundamentally different than all other losses. We're haunted by the elusive, yet utterly rational question: Why the hell did this happen?
Stigma. Another complication that clouds the unspeakable tragedy of suicide loss is social stigma. For centuries, suicide was considered a crime or a sin, a blot on the person's character and, by extension, their family and friends. Often, those who are bereaved by suicide are subtly shunned or awkwardly avoided. Many receive less sympathy and social support than people grieving a natural death. To protect the image and reputation of our loved ones, we may deny or conceal the cause of death, which severely complicates the normal mourning processes of celebration and memorialization, further increasing our sense of shame and social isolation.
Prevention. The widespread assumption that "suicide is 100% preventable" can greatly amplify our suffering, if we believe that this particular suicide could have been prevented. We may take on an unbearable burden of guilt and self-blame, or search for the one thing we should have done to forestall this tragedy: If only. If only. The reality is, there are always multiple, interlocking causes. And, after 50 years of research in risk assessment, even psychologists cannot predict suicidal behavior any better than a guess or the flip of a coin.
Diagnosis. Surprisingly, few mental health professionals have training in ordinary grief and loss, much less suicide grief. Unless they're familiar with the literature on suicide bereavement, even grief counselors can pathologize otherwise normal emotions--shock, fear, disbelief, yearning, relief, guilt, rage, blame, numbness, feelings of rejection or abandonment, even magical thinking. Many therapists don't realize that the intensity, form, and duration of these reactions are not abnormal, given the circumstances. Diagnosing grief after suicide as a "disorder" and "treating" it like an illness can be humiliating and harmful--a condition known as "iatrogenic" (physician-caused) harm.
Stigma. Another complication that clouds the unspeakable tragedy of suicide loss is social stigma. For centuries, suicide was considered a crime or a sin, a blot on the person's character and, by extension, their family and friends. Often, those who are bereaved by suicide are subtly shunned or awkwardly avoided. Many receive less sympathy and social support than people grieving a natural death. To protect the image and reputation of our loved ones, we may deny or conceal the cause of death, which severely complicates the normal mourning processes of celebration and memorialization, further increasing our sense of shame and social isolation.
Prevention. The widespread assumption that "suicide is 100% preventable" can greatly amplify our suffering, if we believe that this particular suicide could have been prevented. We may take on an unbearable burden of guilt and self-blame, or search for the one thing we should have done to forestall this tragedy: If only. If only. The reality is, there are always multiple, interlocking causes. And, after 50 years of research in risk assessment, even psychologists cannot predict suicidal behavior any better than a guess or the flip of a coin.
Diagnosis. Surprisingly, few mental health professionals have training in ordinary grief and loss, much less suicide grief. Unless they're familiar with the literature on suicide bereavement, even grief counselors can pathologize otherwise normal emotions--shock, fear, disbelief, yearning, relief, guilt, rage, blame, numbness, feelings of rejection or abandonment, even magical thinking. Many therapists don't realize that the intensity, form, and duration of these reactions are not abnormal, given the circumstances. Diagnosing grief after suicide as a "disorder" and "treating" it like an illness can be humiliating and harmful--a condition known as "iatrogenic" (physician-caused) harm.
On several occasions, I found that professionals who had not lost a loved one to suicide were quite damaging to me. - PARTICIPANT, research study of people bereaved by suicide
Are You Finding the Support You Need?
Within nine months of Beth's devastating death, I had seen two psychotherapists (neither of whom had experience with suicide grief) and visited or participated in seven different bereavement support groups. Several were for "suicide loss survivors", as they call us; one for survivors of sudden death; two for parents; another just for fathers. Some were run by laypeople, others by licensed professionals.
To be honest, few of these experiences were helpful to me. Some were shockingly insensitive or incompetent. Two were positively infuriating. I was assaulted with assumptions, agendas, and unsolicited advice. Rarely did I feel safe, supported, or fully understood.
I wondered what was going on, why even mental health professionals couldn't seem to get it right. As an educator, meditation teacher, health coach, pain management specialist, and psychotherapist with considerable knowledge and experience, I decided to do something about it. I resolved to embrace my beloved daughter's suicide and my own grief as a challenge, an invitation, a calling. To offer to other loss survivors the safe space, the compassionate attention, and intelligent intervention that I had so desperately needed myself.
If no one seems to understand your needs, your pain, your unique ways of grieving or mourning--if your support network has failed and people are pushing you to "get over it" and "move on," if you're wrestling with The Why Question, or struggling to function in your daily life or work--let's talk. You are not alone.
Within nine months of Beth's devastating death, I had seen two psychotherapists (neither of whom had experience with suicide grief) and visited or participated in seven different bereavement support groups. Several were for "suicide loss survivors", as they call us; one for survivors of sudden death; two for parents; another just for fathers. Some were run by laypeople, others by licensed professionals.
To be honest, few of these experiences were helpful to me. Some were shockingly insensitive or incompetent. Two were positively infuriating. I was assaulted with assumptions, agendas, and unsolicited advice. Rarely did I feel safe, supported, or fully understood.
I wondered what was going on, why even mental health professionals couldn't seem to get it right. As an educator, meditation teacher, health coach, pain management specialist, and psychotherapist with considerable knowledge and experience, I decided to do something about it. I resolved to embrace my beloved daughter's suicide and my own grief as a challenge, an invitation, a calling. To offer to other loss survivors the safe space, the compassionate attention, and intelligent intervention that I had so desperately needed myself.
If no one seems to understand your needs, your pain, your unique ways of grieving or mourning--if your support network has failed and people are pushing you to "get over it" and "move on," if you're wrestling with The Why Question, or struggling to function in your daily life or work--let's talk. You are not alone.
Jay E. Valusek, MS, MEd, CPPC, NLC
Author of Girl of Light & Shadow: A Memoir of My Daughter, Who Killed Herself
Member of the American Association of Suicidology
Suicide Bereavement Specialist
BPS Health Strategies LLC
Longmont, CO, USA
Author of Girl of Light & Shadow: A Memoir of My Daughter, Who Killed Herself
Member of the American Association of Suicidology
Suicide Bereavement Specialist
BPS Health Strategies LLC
Longmont, CO, USA
