what to say to a friend who attempted suicide
What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Grieving a Suicide
Suicide tin can leave the survivors with anger, confusion and guilt, and even well-intentioned words tin cause pain.
Information technology can be hard to know what to say to a person in the thicket of grief; when someone is grieving a loved one'south suicide, the right words — whatsoever words, fifty-fifty — can feel all the more elusive and fraught. Suicide can leave survivors racked with anger, confusion and guilt, and in this country, sometimes fifty-fifty well-intentioned words tin can hurt.
Don't Say, 'I Know How You Feel'
I reached out to Debbie Posnien, executive managing director of the Suicide Prevention Network based in Minden, Nev., for advice. "Don't say 'I sympathize what yous're going through.' Unless you truly do," she said.
This resonated securely. A few days after my female parent took her life in 2009, my husband shuttled me and our newborn to our first postpartum/postnatal checkup. I was still reeling from the news of my mom'due south suicide; she had died when the infant was one week old. I wasn't sleeping; I could barely speak; it was hard to convince myself to leave the business firm for the checkup — every nervus in my trunk was on edge, braced for the next disaster.
Our midwife's assistant led us to the cozy exam room in our midwife's dwelling house, and offered me a glider chair. I couldn't keep the tears at bay equally I saturday downward; I leaked tears and milk as I slid the chair back and along, clutching the baby to my chest for love life. The assistant sighed and said "I know just how you feel. My ex had a heart assault terminal week."
She hadn't talked to him in years, she said. My mother had yelled at me over the phone hours before she died.
"You don't know how I feel; you don't know how I experience," I started chanting in my head. By the time the midwife entered the room, I was inconsolable.
Ms. Posnien's words helped me encounter what had bothered me that twenty-four hours — as much as I knew my midwife's banana was pain, too, and trying to find connectedness, she didn't truly sympathize what I was going through; I felt unseen in the complexity of my fresh grief.
Don't Call Suicide Selfish, or Impose a Timeline
"Don't place value judgments on the suicide, such as 'Information technology was a selfish selection, a sin, an human action of weakness, or a lack of faith or love or strength,'" Ms. Posnien said.
Tracy Roberts, a writer who lost her sister to suicide, explored this in her essay "Suicide Etiquette": "Subsequently Amy killed herself," she writes, "someone said, by manner of comforting me, 'Suicide is the coward's way out.' Besides being an inane truism, this pronouncement indicted the sis I was mourning. How was that supposed to console?"
I've had people say similar things to me, and while I appreciate that their comments were coming from a good (and devastated) identify, such judgments made me feel defensive and all the more anxious and insufficient.
Ms. Posnien also recommends not putting a timeline on the loss survivor's grief. "Healing after a suicide loss is a lifelong journey," she said. Comments like "'This too shall pass,' and 'You need to move on' can make the loss survivor feel pressured to 'get over information technology.'"
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention offers like advice about how to talk to suicide loss survivors. Ane tip I appreciated was "Exercise not assign or imply blame."
They write: "Suicide loss survivors often place blame on themselves. Be careful not to say things or ask questions that might advise they're responsible for the suicide, whether directly or indirectly."
Words That May Help
I blamed myself for my mom's suicide for years, wondering whether I could take washed or said anything that would have led to a different outcome. It was only when an adult pupil in a writing course I taught left a folded note left on my desk-bound maxim, simply, "Information technology was not your fault," that I finally started to release my feelings of culpability.
While it can exist tricky to know what to say to a suicide loss survivor, it is much better to attain out than to hold back out of fright of saying the wrong thing. A simple note, a simple gesture, can brand a huge difference. "It was not your mistake" is something many suicide loss survivors need to hear over and over and over again, as is "You lot are not alone."
And a suicide loss survivor is not alone, fifty-fifty though it may feel that way when i is grieving; suicide is now the 10th leading crusade of death in the United States, and the Earth Health Organization estimates that one meg people take their lives worldwide each yr. Often, the greatest gift you can provide to a survivor is your ain presence.
But don't experience afraid to say the proper noun of the person who died, to share your memories of that person, to create space for the survivor to share their own memories, to honor their loved one's life. Let the grieving person say what they need to say, experience what they need to feel.
Ms. Posnien suggested: "Mind with your centre, peradventure hold their hand, look into their eyes, let them know you feel their pain." Maxim that you feel someone's hurting may seem similar to "I sympathise what you're going through," but those words more fully honor the complexity of the survivor'southward experience — they hateful "I understand yous need support" and they mean "We're going to walk through it together."
Gayle Brandeis is the author of "The Art of Misdiagnosis: Surviving My Mother'due south Suicide."
If y'all are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or become to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Here'south what you can exercise when a loved 1 is severely depressed.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/well/family/what-to-say-and-not-to-say-to-someone-grieving-a-suicide.html
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