Why Do We React to Pain With Blame?
Reading other people’s stories about their experiences with suicide and the horrors many experienced before, during, and after, I’m tempted to think I haven’t had it so bad compared to others. Then I stop because I realize we all had the challenges we were supposed to, horrific as they might seem to the outside world.
Still, my heart goes out to those who had to watch a suicide happen, helpless to stop it or save someone they loved once the action was taken. I ache for those whose last encounter with their loved one was tarnished with words of anger. Even more for those who had to endure anger and castigation from a family who needed someone or something to blame, and lacked the compassion to see the one they blamed was hurting far more than they could imagine.
We’ve become a society which thrives on assigning blame; most of the time when we have neither right nor cause to do so. We use blame to assuage our own guilt or relieve ourselves of responsibility. But most of the time we pile blame on the heads of those least deserving and worse, least likely to have the wherewithal to be responsible in the first place.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the peace-loving Muslims, a grief-torn widow, or the Millennials. None are culpable and many have enough struggles without being saddled with responsibility for deeds they couldn’t possibly have performed.
Learning to Deal With Our Own Grief and Guilt
If you ask me, blame is another version of the smoke and mirrors being used by anyone who 
fears losing their ill-gotten gains or power. They know the foundation on which they stand is shaky at best so they seek to shore it up with the bodies of innocents. Humans have failed throughout the centuries to evolve past this limiting behavior. The worst part is, those who do this always come to an inglorious end.
So when families blame the spouse for a suicide, it’s often because they can’t deal with the guilt they, themselves feel for having failed the deceased. Rather than deal with that guilt and process their own grief, they fling it like horse manure at the significant other knowing they don’t have the emotional strength to let it slide off, much less, fling it back.
I read more and more about this kind of malicious and unnecessary behavior in groups devoted to people like me who’ve lost a loved one to suicide. It saddens me to think the poor behavior that’s become so commonplace with regard to just about everything else has infected an area already as misunderstood and neglected as suicide.
Don’t Judge What You Can’t Imagine
People on the outside don’t get to see what the person living with a person prior to their suicide sees. They don’t see the anger, or the depression. There might have been abuse, or erratic and sometimes violent behavior. Especially in cases where suicide was completed in front of that person, there are things the rest of us not only never see, but that no one should ever have to see.
So to add blame from the family to their already unbearable load is, in my opinion, the height of insensitivity and yet another nail in the coffin of a compassion that is fighting for every breath in this crazy, blame-ridden world we’re living in.
It’s a world where you’re either a target for yet another product solving a problem that didn’t exist until the product was invented, or a weaker link to be made weaker through blame and abuse. You’re discouraged from being unique, or heaven forbid, standing out.
Raising Awareness of Our Mental Health
Yet, like the plant that finds a way to grow in a sidewalk crack, there are those who find a way 
to survive in an unforgiving world. And when they do, they rise up and exhibit the element so many are missing right now.
Whether it’s Ronnie Walker’s Alliance of Hope which she created after losing a loved one to suicide, or Give An Hour created by Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen to raise awareness and acceptance of mental health, people are taking tragedy and turning it into opportunity. But not opportunity for gain as is often the case. They’re turning it into opportunities to help each other in heartfelt ways through some of the most horrific events imaginable. Whether it’s suicide, mass shootings, or natural disasters, both groups recognize the human aspect. They see what we’ve been taught to ignore; our mental health is being compromised every day.
Face it. No matter how strong you are, you have days when you’re emotionally shaky. You get hit with a barrage of challenges that, on occasion, bring you to your knees. You have days when you feel hopeless, frustrated, unloved, unappreciated, like a failure…I could go on, but I think you get the picture. There are days when you get kicked in the teeth, where a friendly word or a hand helping you climb out of the pit you’ve fallen into would be more welcome.
Building Communities Based on Compassion
I think in many ways, we’re taught to put up walls discouraging others from helping us. Why? Because even looking like you need help is a sign of weakness—but is it really? I believe it’s all a ruse to keep everyone struggling along on their own. If I admit I need help, someone else is going to see they’re not alone in being unable to handle everything life throws them. They might help me this time, and allow me to help them the next. Soon, we’d form a community that looks out for its members, lifting up the weaker ones until they can stand on their own.
If this sounds familiar, you’re one of the fortunate ones who’s found your way to such a community, and who’s learned asking for help is a sign of strength and courage, not the weakness we’ve been taught to believe. You have learned compassion and kindness are an essential piece of a strong society, and a piece we’ve watched dwindle away for far too long.
I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I didn’t have to watch either of my parents take their lives. And I don’t have final angry words as their legacy. I have plenty of things I did and do have to work through; incidents where my compassion was non-existent. But I don’t have an indelible picture in my head of their deaths like so many in the suicide loss groups do. Nor did anyone blame me outwardly for their deaths. I’m grateful for that, but know it means I have that much more responsibility to advocate for those for whom putting one foot in front of the other is challenging enough right now.
Helping Each Other to Help Ourselves
I’m also incredibly lucky to have blundered my way into a community which believes in 
giving as well as receiving. I have been embraced by people who practice compassion and gratitude as effortlessly and naturally as they do simple tasks like brushing their teeth or making a pot of coffee in the morning. Compassion is woven into the fabric of their being, and as long as people like me pay attention, we’ll learn it’s in ours as well, even if we had to dig awhile to find it.
Because I lived so long without it, I feel a personal responsibility to help others find it too, and with my family history, mental health is my primary focus. Suicide, murder, rage, blame—those aren’t the causes, they’re the symptoms. The cause is inattention to our entire selves: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
If you cut off an arm, you bleed. If you try to disconnect your mental and emotional health from your physical self, you bleed too, but in a way that’s not immediately visible. Still, toxins enter your system just as they would with an untreated wound to your body. And they poison your system just as devastatingly.
Compassion isn’t the cure either. What it is, though, is the avenue from which we’ll start effecting positive changes; where we’ll be there for others as both a giver and receiver. Because we all need, at one time or another, to be both.
On a Mission to Spread Compassion?
Does your business, your purpose focus on spreading compassion? Do you need some help getting the word out as you focus your attention on building a better world? Would you like to take a task or two off your plate? Maybe it’s content creation, or perhaps it’s getting your books in order and creating a budget. If this sounds familiar and you’re ready to put your energy into doing the things you live while giving your business space to grow and thrive, CONTACT ME and let’s talk!
About the Author
Sheri Conaway is a writer, blogger, ghostwriter, and advocate for cats. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help 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. And check out her new group, Putting Your Whole Heart Forward.
Be sure to watch this space for news of the upcoming release of “Life Torn Asunder: Rebuilding After Suicide”.
