Grieving After Suicide Doesn’t Have an On/Off Switch
A lot of different experiences and emotions come out when you frequent a suicide survivors support group. But lately, I’ve seen a rather disturbing trend. Someone will post that they were told (and often by a close relative or friend) to “get over it”, as if the loss wasn’t unimaginably painful, and often, still fresh in their minds (one woman said it was within a few months of her husband’s death).
Suicide isn’t something you can just flip a switch and get over. With any other death, be it a terminal illness, an accident, or the result of some congenital disease or defect, people are usually appropriately sympathetic and will allow one the time to grieve and start on the long road to accepting the person they loved is gone.
With suicide, the road is often much longer, and fraught with pitfalls nobody can really warn you about so you might be able to avoid them. I imagine it’s even worse when the suicide occurred in front of the person who grieves, and in so many stories I’ve read lately, that’s the case. It’s hard enough to learn later that your loved one (or ones) took their own life. In that, I consider myself fortunate. Even finding them after the deed is done must be horrific, and a sight you cannot unsee.
Compassion is Taking Responsibility for Your Own Reactions
But to watch a person do the unthinkable and to be helpless to change the outcome has to be more traumatizing than any of us who haven’t been there could possibly imagine. I suspect many who have been there must add PTSD to the many challenges they face in the aftermath. So to be told “get over it”, whether it’s years or mere months since the suicide is, in my opinion, the epitome of insensitivity, but also of selfishness.
As I see it, if a person tells a suicide survivor to “get over it”, what they’re really saying is, “this death is extremely disturbing to me and the sight of you grieving is a constant reminder. You need to stop triggering my own emotions of pain, guilt, and grief as I have better things to do.”
To that I say, “take control of your own life and stop blaming your challenges on others.” One of the wisest things I think I’ve ever heard is we don’t have control over what others say or do. We only have control over how we respond. However, when someone is grieving a loss by suicide, they’re incredibly vulnerable, at least unless or until they do what I did and cram everything into a bottle and seal the lid with cork, wax, and maybe some glue to seal the deal.
Suicide Survivors Will Always Have Triggers
They can’t help the fact that a word, a face, an event will trigger a memory of someone they’ll never see 
again, and who chose to leave though they were dearly loved. They can’t stop the tears, nor stem the flood of emotions which are never very far from the surface anyway.
Maybe that’s why I subconsciously isolated myself from family and friends, both physically and emotionally so I could go through the grieving process in my own time and place. Still, I don’t recommend the approach I used. It’s taken far too many years of my life and isolating yourself, despite the insensitivity you’re liable to encounter when you leave yourself open is not worth disconnecting from humanity. There are plenty of people who can and will do right by you, allowing your grief to flow, and reassuring you that it was not your fault. You might not believe it the first few hundred times, but repetition is a great teacher. Eventually it sinks in.
A Better Understanding to Comfort the Grieving
I will continue to put effort into understanding the many factors which lead a person to choose suicide. Although I do follow some of the research, I’m more interested in the human factor; the part of the person that unquestioningly believes they’re better off dead. I realize it isn’t going to be the same story every time, but I’ve already seen there are commonalities. They may just be bundled together in different configurations. Right now, I’m wondering if there’s always a triggering event, or if, in some cases, it’s a long build-up over time. Nor can I discount the cases resulting from ingestion of doctor-prescribed drugs whose most frightening known side-effect is suicidal tendencies.
I’m still baffled by the last one. Isn’t it like pouring gasoline on a fire to give someone a drug for depression or sleeplessness that could cause them to take their own life? My heart breaks for the woman whose husband shot himself in the heart right in front of her because of one of those drugs, and apologized as he lay dying in her arms.
My own mother died from an overdose of sleeping pills she ingested intentionally. It seems to me the responsible thing for doctors to do is limit the size of the prescription, at the very least, to a non-lethal dose, and to closely monitor the effects on each patient, refilling the prescription for only a few pills once they’ve assured themselves the patient is responding well to the drug without showing suicidal tendencies. Granted, suicide by or because of pharmaceuticals may only be the tip of the iceberg, but it’s certainly a sad treatise to our mismanagement of people with depression and mental health issues.
Where in the World?
I am a numbers person, (you can take the girl out of accounting, but you can’t take the accounting out of the girl) so I was curious about suicide rates by country. I found a site which ranks countries by suicides per 100K of population. It surprised me that the U.S. was 38th on the list. I’d have expected a much higher ranking, maybe even in the top 10, but maybe we’re still hesitant to report deaths as suicide in some areas.
Though my initial reaction might have been surprise, I also realized the sense in finding the lowest
numbers in places like Jamaica, Barbados, and the Bahamas. Living close to the water is, in and of itself one of the best stress relievers available. I could certainly make the mistake of assuming these places are less crowded and slower paced, so people have no reason to be stressed out. But we’re humans. We have worries and concerns. We stress ourselves out even without excessive outside factors. Having someplace to go or something to do to release the pressure cooker in our minds which seeks to turn a trickle into a waterfall after a heavy rain goes a long way towards keeping those stress levels in the manageable range.
Granted, stress, too, is only part of the problem, and I’ve once again strayed from my original topic. Yet, compassion from others is a stress reliever too. Knowing someone cares enough to listen while we pour out all the dark, ugly feelings either in a dribble or a flood can help us grieve as we need to an move on to the healing process more quickly.
Grieving is Only the First Step in the Healing Process
Though it may sound insensitive on my part to someone who’s recently experienced a loss, you do have to grieve, but grieving is the beginning of healing. The time required will differ from person to person, circumstance to circumstance, but eventually we do heal. The wounds scar over, at least enough to begin seeing life through clearer eyes, unclouded by inconsolable grief. It is, though, merely the beginning of a long, difficult journey which doesn’t really end. It gets easier, yes. But there will still be reminders and events which trigger old feelings. It means we have more to wade through. We have emotionally charged memories we have to defuse and release.
The more we have to hold our feelings in and grieve alone, the longer it will take and the more devastating the triggers will be.
Essentially, I’m asking for not just the same patience and compassion you’d give someone who lost a relative to cancer, a car accident, heart failure, or Alzheimer’s, but more. Suicide is not a natural death, nor an easy one for the deceased or the survivors. There’s so much we don’t understand, and maybe never will. Nonetheless, I’m looking for answers and will share what I learn, that others will be better equipped to be a rock for suicide survivors instead of a wall.
About the Author
Sheri Conaway is a writer, blogger, Virtual Assistant and advocate for cats. Sheri believes in the Laws 
of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. She specializes in creating content that helps entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income. If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author.
Be sure to watch this space for news of the upcoming release of “Life Torn Asunder: Rebuilding After Suicide”.
