Lived Experience Forum

[Jacques]

Hello everyone I have just read an article about the impact of Mental health, suicide on children and loved ones, i found it very interesting, but also very confronting.

A warning If you are easily triggered, don't click this link

http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwgN-pwyk

It is very confronting but also very thought provoking of the impact suicide has on loved ones.

If you are feeling triggered please contact these numbers 

Emergency     000

Sane Helpline 1800 18 7263

suicide callback service 1300 659 467

Take care everyone.

Jacques

[Appleblossom]

Thank you @Jacques

I believe need to keep these discussions going.

In many ways it was a good article.  The inital letter from an adult daughter of a father who suicided is confronting to read, but her insight is significant.  The response of the therapist was intelligent and calmly supportive.

However for me personally, with my history, I felt deeply offended by the tag: "Problem solved"  I would have had more respect for the newspaper if they had left it off the page.

There are many ramifications for all the different relationships surrounding a suicide... if there is only one.

[Jacques]

I agree @Appleblossom, it was very unfortunate to have that at the bottom of the article. their is still al ot of work for people to understand our daily struggles, i was not trying to trigger anyone, i just thought some insight into a child of a person who suicided and the impact it has had is very poinient to all of us. 

In such dark times we focus on ourselves and not on the ones we leave behind, for me their is only mum no one else will care, but for people with large close families or people with children the impact is huge and lifelong. 

I was very impressed to of the therapist, to help explain what her father was going through and his thoughts at the time, that is a very bold move, it would have been a very delicate conversation. 

I hope it has helped you in some way, i was very scared posting this, i was worried others would take it the wrong way.

[Appleblossom]

Anything that helps me think constructively about suicide as a phenomenon is useful.  So yes it helped. Dont worry I was not triggered. For me it was the shame and hiding and silence that kept my hurt alive. 

More and more I feel like an enormous weight is lifting from me.  I think it is in part due to my frankness on this forum.

I hope that others are not triggered by it beyond thinking about it productively.

For you ... I wont argue with you that you are worth something.  I just hope that one day soon you will start to feel worthwhile yourself. 

[Jacques]

yes i feel much the same, i am still embaressed and guilty about wanting to take my own life, i see so many family members that want to live and it makes me feel worse about my own thoughts.

that is fantastic, our burdens weigh us down, if some of yours has lifted that is so good.  sometimes others expeiances and life stories help us put our own stories into perspective, help us let goof some of our bagage.

[Appleblossom]

It took a long time before I could even let the thoughts pass out of my mind and speak them in therapy.  I was diagnosed with severe depression long before I had admitted to anyone I had the thoughts myself.  I had a head honcho psychiatrist whom I trusted so I thought I was dealing with things, but ... it was not good enough. Unfortunately my inability to hide my feelings was disturbing for my daughter.  My step daughter just wiped off both her mothers as mad.

As an adult she said to me by the time she was in grade 5 she was worried a lot of the time that she would come home from school to find me dead.  I never spoke of it directly to her as the father did in the article, but because of the other deaths, she put 2 + 2 together.  She was 8 when my brother died and went to his funeral.  So she knew about the concept very young.

There were a few family therapy sessions. It just wasnt enough to process the events. She is an extraordinary woman now and I am finally accepting that it is all too painful, and as she is doing well its best not to open wounds.  I know that I did my best to see she had a good start so some of that success is due to my parenting, and a great deal of it is her determination to grab life with both hands and make the most of it.

My son's experience is quite different as he was much younger 3 and didnt have memory of my brother or the event.

I also know a man whose father suicided when he was about 8, and he just wrote him off as an alcoholic and better off that way.  People are so different in how they experience it.

[Appleblossom]

@Jacques

I had a deeper sleep than usual and a dream as if I was mothering both my dead sister and biological daughter in the same generation.  My mother was in it and somehow sweet potato figured too.  The good thing is that I rarely dream about them and I see it as a good sign for my personal integration.  It was not scary just practical mumstuff.

I attribute that to our conversation about these real and necessary issues.  Thank you.

[Jacques]

Hi @Appleblossom,

I am so glad you can see the positives with your daughters, it must have been as tough for them as it was for you, i have the same thing with my parents, they where not suicidal but both suffered bad anxiety, i am so glad they have at least found happyness and grew up to be well adjusted women. and yes i think it was down to your parenting.

I am so glad you dreamed about such beautiful things, maybe you where not only a mother to your daughter but your sister as well, i know my mum is more like a mother than a sister to her siblings.

I am so glad this has helped, sometimes things come in small packages and help us process things to help us heal. i am glad this has done that for you.

hope you have a nice night. hugs

Jacques

[Appleblossom]

I think it was a good article to post and everyone responds to grief in their own way.  Glad you took the risk to post on the courage of your convictions despite not being sure.  It is delicate and we do sometimes need to walk on eggshells around the issues or for certain people. Its also different at different times.  I have had a lot of time to post.

Yes @Jacques I was often in the mother role for my dead sister, for all my siblings. In one orphanage I would change her nappy and dress her for breakfast til we got split up. (she was 2, I was 6).

I knew a man who found his mum at 12. He was earnest, shy, scholarly and hardworking and died in his 80s a few years ago.  Maybe I attract the people who tell me their stories, but its the reason I have posted so much on the forum... trying to engage about it. It is so tragic that we are such a fragmented society and losing so many people.

Australia the lucky country with such a hugh suicide rate. 

What does everyone else think?