Grief after a death by Suicide Facebook live

Hi everyone. Welcome today. I'm glad you're able to join me or watch this in replay. I know many of you are in session or working now, but PESI asked me to do this today and I wanted to come to you live and talk about an important topic that's obviously in our news right now. There's been so many deaths by suicide as well as a new report from the center from Disease Control that I wanted to talk to you about. First of all, pesi, the organization that's bringing this to you. Many of you know them, they are a nonprofit organization and they're a leader in providing continuing education to mental health rehab and healthcare professionals around the globe. I've worked with PESI for many years, teaching counselors and therapists, as well as teaching and being faculty with the Psychotherapy Networker conference in Washington, D.C. so I'm so glad I've met a lot of you. I'm glad that you're here joining us to talk about this important topic. For those of you who don't know me, I'm David Kessler and I wrote this book on grief and grieving with the legendary Elisabeth Kubler Ross. And grief has been part of my work for decades now and I have been privileged to teach so many people about this challenging topic. I know many of you who are watching today are therapists, counselors, professionals who work with people in grief, and many of you who are watching or dealing with grief in your own lives and whether you're a professional or not a professional in this area, no one is exempt from grief in the world in the news recently about two tragic deaths so far around death by suicide, as well as this new CDC report that came out. And I'll make sure I put a link later in the comments below that you can take a look at it. But some of the highlights are 45,000 lives have been lost in 2016 to death by suicide and the suicide rates have gone up more than 30% since 1999. And 54% of the people who died by suicide did not have a known mental health condition. Now when I look at that number, it doesn't make me think, oh, there's a lot of people who don't have mental health issues. It makes me think about how under reported they are and undiagnosed they are. So I think that's really a wake up call to us when really being more aware of these issues as I know you have been, but as a society being more aware, the other factors that were named is relationships, financial issues, many of the stressors that we deal with in everyday life sometimes bring people to the brink. Now, for those of you who work daily with people in your offices and in facilities across the world, really, you know, when these kind of losses come up in the news, it triggers people who've experienced these losses before in their life. So what happens is public grief triggers our own personal losses. So with those personal losses, I can imagine, and many therapists have already told me that clients have come in talking about a loved one who died and it was a suicide, a death by suicide. However, they told other people that it was something different. And in our society, we often don't tell the truth around how people died. When it's death by suicide because of so much stigma. I see many people are joining us. I'm glad to have you on here today. So this stigma we talk about, let's get a couple of terms out of the way. Guilt is what we feel we did and we feel remorse about it and regret and it's discharged by making amends and apologizing. Shame is not about what we did, but who we feel we are. And we feel small and disgusting. And to release the shame, we need to release the secret. Stigma is what the outside world does to us. And it's interesting, we have seen studies that show when a loved one dies, we maybe get close to 70 to 80% support from friends and families and loved ones. When a loved one dies with a death by suicide, they may get support in their 20% area. We give people who have a death by suicide so much less support. So it is any wonder there's so much stigma and people lie about the causes of death. As you're listening to this, I want to be very clear that you understand we are talking about the aftermath of a death by suicide. We're talking about the grief that follows. We are not talking about how to prevent it, although I will give a couple of tips at the end. But we are talking about here, the death has already happened. And it's so important that we distinguish that because we're going to talk about how we often have to realize what we didn't have a choice in stopping their death. But that doesn't mean when you're working with someone who may have suicidal thoughts, we have to do everything in our power and let them know they have lots of choices and give them many, many resources. So keep that in mind. The reality is for the person in grief who's had a loved one who's died by suicide, we didn't have control over their life or their death. Sometimes our mind wants to insert control after the fact where we actually didn't have control. And remember, one of the things I always teach is pain from loss is inevitable. Suffering is optional. So when we talk about death by suicide, you may have noticed some of the language I'm using. We want to use the wording death by suicide. We don't want to say they committed suicide. Because think about when we use words like committed or attempted, they really criminalize it. And that's not the reality of what we're talking about here. And then you'll also hear people say it was a successful suicide attempt. Death by suicide is never a successful event. So we really want to change.

The reality of how we talk about it. We want to use the terms death by suicide. And we also don't want to say that person was a suicide. We don't want to say Jim was a suicide. We don't say sue was a cancer or Bert was an Alzheimer's. So we don't want to make the way someone died their identity. As you know from your work. People who had a death by suicide.

If they got a note, they wish they had gotten more information. The note didn't tell them everything we want to know. And the reality is people who didn't get a note wish they would. They think it had the keys. The reach of this is enormous. We think for every death by suicide, there are six to 10 people left in grief and most will get less support.

Here's one of the challenging things that's really changing in the world and how we talk about it. So don't be surprised if you have some reaction to this. We are trying to help people talk when we talk about this in a way that when we discuss death by suicide or mental illness or even addiction, that we wouldn't talk about those illnesses any different than we would someone who died by cancer. So for instance, you wouldn't say, oh, your loved one died by cancer. What a selfish thing they did. No, cancer is not being selfish. And having suicidal thoughts we know are not selfish either. Your loved one, we know from so many people who had tried to attempt death by suicide and survive, they always tell us they were not trying to find death. They were trying to find a way out of the pain. So they are dealing with enormous pain. They are not dealing with a selfish act. We know that wording doesn't work anymore. And mental illness and suicidal thoughts, they are progressively worse illnesses that we really want to put a lot of assets into helping people find Resources and help in this area, but not blame the person who died because their illness wasn't in their body. Their illness was in their mind, but it was no less an illness. So when we talk about the grief in people who had a loved one who have died, they avoid talking about the deceased. So it's important if you can encourage them that it's okay to talk about their loved one who died as if they had died from cancer. That they can be teachers to all of us and help us know. People in grief after a loved one died will often feel separation and isolation from the world. Survivors will feel stigmatized. It's also not unusual for people to have survivor's guilt in this area.

And just know they get much less support. So the support that we give survivors, family members and friends who have had a loved one die by suicide is very important. And as someone here says, a loss of a loved one is still a loss. Exactly. No matter how it occurs. Whatever the reason, it's beautiful that Crystal's mentioning that here. It's so correct that whatever was the cause, the loss is still the loss. And we need to make sure our clients, our friends and families feel validated and that that grief is seen just as much as any other grief. And we know in this area there's plenty of blame to go around. We blame the person who died. We say horrible things like they took the coward's way out or they couldn't take the pressure. We know those things are just not true. In fact, they, I believe, sometimes fight more demons than many people realize and that we may have not faced. So they are not cowards and they were dealing with the pressure. The other thing you hear is we blame ourselves. Why couldn't we have stopped this? Or we should have seen this? Just know, despite our best efforts, people still die in this world. People still die. And we sometimes will blame their work, their area, their management should have known, the society should have known. We have to really, as someone here says, we have to spread awareness because people do feel like talking about suicide might even a death by suicide may make it.

Contagious in some way. Let's talk about for a moment ceremonies and grief support. You might be shocked. Less people show up for the funeral if it's a death by suicide. And these families and friends need even more support. They need to know we care. Everyone deserves our support no matter how their loved one died. So it's important. Any rituals, anything you would do for someone with cancer, you would also want to do this for someone who's had a loved one who died by suicide. And grief is grief, and it needs to be witnessed, no matter what the reason.

And to know for those clients and friends and family members, the death by suicide did not happen because of something you did or did not do. You really need to hear that what preceded the death did often not cause the death and what you did or didn't do. They did not die because you called or didn't call. They died because they were struggling with a mind that was compromised at that time. We have to deal with many what ifs and if onlys. And part of the work with these people who have tragically had a loved one die is we have to help them move from why did this tragic event happen? Because we're not going to find a satisfying why? Into how can we move forward now?

And I think it's so important we begin to create meaning. You may have heard me talk about, I believe meaning is the sixth stage of grief from my work with Elisabeth Kubler Ross. And we can prevent these deaths in the future. So how can we make meaning out of these losses? How can we change the stigma that's out there? Some of the themes for survivors are why they're trying to make sense of the death. Responsibility. They feel like they may be responsible or to blame or they felt like there's social disruption. Now they may isolate. They feel the shame and the stigma and they may feel anger, rejection and abandonment from others. So for your clients, people you're taking care of, help them deal with self care. By the way, I did a video for any of you who are dealing in working with people in grief. You can find it@griefselfcare.com or just go to my site, grief.com and there's lots of free resources there. We need to help them with self care. We need to help ourselves with self care. We need to educate people about suicide. Help those clients just take it one day at a time. And I often say, stick with the people who get what you're going through and avoid those who don't. So if your client has a relative who doesn't get it, that's probably not the best person to hang out with. Beware of people who are always saying, well, at least they died quick. At least they're not suffering. Anytime a sentence starts with at least, we are minimizing the loss, we're minimizing the grief, and we don't want to do this. So how can you help friends and family members? First of all, check in with your clients. This is such A good way to really ask by the way.

You are dealing with loss. And as you deal with loss, have you had a death by suicide? Because we all have. So check in with your clients. When in doubt, with friends, reach out, give the gift of presence, don't say too much, offer assistance, give practical help, give them resources. And know we have to stay in this for the long haul with our friends and family members. We have to keep in touch, see how they're doing and remember anniversaries and just know how the news now can trigger a lot of old losses. So I wanted to come on and I hope these tips will help you and I really hope you will share them. Let me close with a couple of things here. If you happen to be watching this and you are struggling with thoughts of harming yourself, just know you are important and your life is important to us. Please let your family members and your friends know you are struggling and call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and you can call them at 800-273-8255. They're available 24 hours a day. And I want you, if you are struggling to know, you may not feel hopeful, but professionals like me and the people who are watching, we will hold out the hope for you and get you the resources you will need if you will just reach out. Because that's so important. I think we might have a couple of questions.

Yes, Jovi says, how do you recommend talking with teens in the school setting when they blame the girlfriend or boyfriend for the suit?

How do you recommend talking to teens when they blame the boyfriend or the girlfriend? So just know teenagers, it's so tragic because teenagers very much will often have impulsive deaths by suicide. And we often hear after relationship this comes up after a relationship breaks up or there's some relationship issues.

I would normalize it for those teenagers and for the boyfriends, the girlfriends. And know breaking up, having relationship issues are normal events and a death by suicide is not a normal event. And so we cannot blame ourselves for that. You know, teenagers every day are having relationships that work out and don't work out, work out. And not everyone dies by suicide. So we have to remind that teenager they were just living their life. They did not know that their actions or breaking up with someone would contribute or cause in any way to a death. So just know we have to help them not blame themselves. It's a great question. Ruth here says, I heard someone say it must be hard to deal with someone who had depression. I wanted to divorce them by I don't understand that question, Ruth. So maybe you can rewrite it again.

Sure.

She talked about how she heard someone say that it must have been hard to deal with someone who's had depression. And then he wanted a divorce, and then she died by suicide.

Oh, gotcha.

And so she wants to know, could he have done anything different?

Well, I think the message for all of us is we need to change how we look at mental health issues. We need to not feel. And I know I'm preaching to the choir here, we need to let people know seeing a therapist is not a problem or a weakness. You have the same way we maintain our air conditioners in our computers, we need to maintain our bodies and our minds. So if we can take the stigma out of mental health issues, if we can let people know seeing the school counselor isn't a bad thing. Seeing a therapist is a really good, helpful thing.

Talking openly about our mental issues we have, our challenges in life are a good thing. So if this can be a wake up call for all of us to talk more about these issues, that will help things dramatically. We all, in this moment, as a country, as a world, have the power to go with these recent deaths. We can make real changes. We can remove some of the stigma, and we can prevent more deaths by helping people. And we can take the stigma out of people who have had a loved one die from a death by suicide. And this is important work we're doing. I hope you'll reach out. Check out a lot of Pesi's work and Pesi classes that you can see. For continuing education, Visit me@grief.com. if you're a counselor, please know you can also, if you're in private practice and license and you want to register with grief.com so people can find you and your work and your practice, please know you can do that. I have a therapist listing. Please share this with friends, share this with colleagues. When you share this, you never know what someone's going through. You never know what they might be dealing with. So I'm David Kessler. I want to thank you and I want to thank Pessy for taking the time and doing this today. I hope together we can save lives and we can treat people who are in grief much better than we have in the past. Thank you so much and thank you all for the work you do. I'm David Kessler. Take care.