Suicide and Suicide Bereavement

Suicide

Suicide statistics across the world are quite alarming -  there are around 800, 000 suicides each year.  That's one every 40 seconds, and the rate has gone up by about 45% since 1970.  It is the second leading cause of death in 15-29 year olds.  What's more, for every suicide, it is calculated that there are 20 people who self-harm. 

If we look at just England, there are, on average, 4, 800m suicides every year (13 a day).  Suicide has been rising ever since the recession started, although 2006/7 bucked the trend, showing the lowest ever figures in England since records began in 1861.  London, Cornwall, Devon the NW and the NE have the highest rates.  Men are statistically 3 times more likely  than women to kill themselves.  There could be a mix of reasons for this - it is said that "men don't ask for directions, never mind asking for help," they are more prone to addictions and are generally more impulsive, which means they often use more violent and immediate forms of suicide, where there is little chance of being rescued.

The highest risk is for men in their 40s and 50s, although this is also a problem age group for women.  People under mental health care also have very high rates of suicide, which peaks 1-2 weeks after they are discharged from treatment - especially if they live alone. 

The military services have a big problem with PTSD, depression and suicide after combat.  For obvious reasons, this has not been widely publicised in the past, but is now starting to achieve more recognition and attention - and much more openness.  Previously, veterans would get either no military funeral or else a quiet one -  even if they were highly decorated heroes.  It is now more recognised than ever, that combat can cause metal health problems and it does not bar personnel from military honours and funeral procedures.

Suicide is a serious public health problem but is not treated as such.  It's a subject that is avoided by most people - after all, death is scary enough as it is, and suicide is more so.  Then there is the link to mental illness that people imagine goes with it.  Some of the headlines seen in newspapers concerning suicide can be really quite sensationalised.  Even though suicide was decriminalised in 1961, many people, especially the press, still refer to "committing suicide."  I would recommend that we all try not to use this phrase as it adds to the stigma.  To be fair, it is not easy to avoid using it as we have all learnt that the two words go together - but we should try.

It's not easy to talk about suicide and it remains a taboo area.  A typically common reaction is, "you can talk about mental health, but not about suicide."  Indeed, suicide has been removed recently as a topic from one of the Sociology A Level syllabuses.  When considering the need to remove the stigma and silence about the subject, this seems nonsensical.

It is a good idea to remember that suicide is a point on the metal health continuum - albeit an extreme one.  As such, we should all be encouraging each other to speak about our feelings, however difficult or despairing they may be.  The most recent statistics say that mental health problems are reckoned to affect 1 in 4 of us every year.  It is worth considering the following quote:

"The average person lies 4 times a day, 1460 times  a year, 87600 times by the age of 60.  The most common lie is I am fine."

Suicide Bereavement

Suicide bereavement has unique issues over and above the normal issues of bereavement - guilt, rejection, anger, shame, numbness, isolation, stigma and despair are common and often never go away.   It is sometimes described as "grief with the volume turned up." It is  common for parental sufferers to "blame" themselves for the rest of their life for "not doing more to help" their son or daughter.

There is a massive increase in mental health issues and well-being problems for those who are left behind.   They have much increased risks for suicide, dropping out of jobs and poor social functioning.  I think that we should normalise this because, for instance, the majority of parents suffering suicide bereavement have suicidal ideation themselves (and feel that they cannot talk about it and feel discouraged from talking about it).  The authorities  and society do not encourage them to do so: IAPT offers no support at all from those bereaved by suicide;  CAMHS will help children with ADHD but not those who find a family member dead by their own hand - however grisly the means.

The affects of suicide ripple out like a pebble in the water - individual, family, workplace/school/peers, community, society.  Robin Williams is as an obvious example of this - though it is true for every suicide.  Every suicide affects us all eventually as it affects the society we live in.

There is a particular problem with stigma, as it prevents people from talking about the issue and thus breeds isolation, insularity and despair.  Although some stigma may be viewed as "positive stigma" - in that it that encourages people NOT to commit suicide, most stigma has entirely negative effects.

   

It would be good for society to move forward in reducing and eventually eliminating all forms of stigma about mental health.  Bill Clinton summed this up well with the following quote:

"We shouldn't be ashamed of mental health problems.  We should be ashamed of the stigma about them." 

Support for People Bereaved by Suicide

Within the last fifteen years, it has been recognised that more needed to be done for those left behind by suicide.  The National Suicide Prevention Strategy was set up in 2002 and various organisations have been set up since.  "Action is the antidote to despair" said Joan Baez and the following organisations have a variety of strategies in place to help with both practical and emotional help:

Help is at Hand -  a programme that produces booklets and has a website.  Its message is "You are not alone."

www.supportaftersuicide.org.uk

healthtalkonline.org

Winston's Wish (for children)

Survivors Of  Bereavement through Suicide (SOBS)

(believes that everyone affected by suicide should be offered timely support)

ifyoucareshare.co.uk

facingthefuturegroups.org/

In America, there is www.actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org

Counselling is a good place for those who feel suicidal or are suffering the effects of a suicide bereavement to start to process of moving to a better place.  It is best to allow a little time to pass before starting counselling - as a bereaved person is initially likely to suffer feeling dazed, out of balance and unready for talk.  In time, although it is unrealistic to think anyone can ever fully recover from suicide bereavement,  they can find some coming to terms, peace and positivity about the future - and counselling is an excellent way of helping to bring this about.  I have worked with those suffering after they have lost someone through suicide and am ready to offer my support to those who need it.

David is a fully qualified and BACP registered Person Centred Counsellor.  If you wish to talk about a bereavement, you can book a session with him by ringing 07578 100256 or emailing him at David@eastcheshirecounselling.com

How Much Joy is there in Your Life?

“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”  Joseph Campbell

Whenever new clients tell me that they are depressed, unhappy or lost in life, I always make it a point to ask them early on in the counselling sessions, “do you have any joy?  And if so when do you have it?”  Most of them answer, “no,” and I feel that this answer has much to say about the problem. 

I think of joy as a bit like a barometer in a person’s life.  I often remark to my clients, “one ounce of joy is worth a ton of pain.”  Joy is explosive stuff.  It smashes though pain, sorrow or despair like nitro-glycerine.  However bad things are, experiencing some moments of joy can be like a fuel that keeps us going and makes life worthwhile.  In this respect, the only other things that I can think of that keep people going through really difficult times are love and meaning.  Both of these are good, but neither seems to spring from nowhere and both take time and are sometimes hard to find.  There is something about joy which can feel like revelation or transcendence.  It adds a bit of what feels like magic and often  it doesn’t seem to have taken much work at all – it just comes – sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes by doing something we can connect to.

First, I want to define what joy is and how it differs from happiness, pleasure and contentment.  Pleasure is always fleeting – whether or not we feel later that it was full or empty.  No one would want a life without any pleasure.  It would be awful and dull indeed; but like eating chocolate or spending money, no amount of it can make you happy.  Happiness can also be fleeting.  Although more sustained than pleasure and deeper for sure, it could be here one hour and gone the next.  One may have a perfect day in the sunshine one day, for instance, and then someone very close may die the next.  That seems to be the way life is at times.  Although contentment isn’t quite so keenly felt as happiness and you may not get quite the same buzz, it is more lasting and deep.  It is a general feeling that life is good and that there is a lot more to enjoy than to suffer in a typical stretch of time.  It is not possible to be content one day and not the next, although ones levels of contentment can go gradually up and down with the events and feelings brought upon by life.  Many philosophers and psychologists have said that it is better, and more realistically sustainable, to be content than to be happy. 

Joy is something different, a bit of an X Factor ingredient, in fact. You’ll certainly know if you’ve had it.  It feels a little bit like a lightning bolt or feeling on the wave of something marvellous.  It may be there in those moments when we feel that life is wonderful and it is good to be alive.  It seems to come from within but also seems to connect with what is outside of us on a profound level.  Richard Wagner commented that, “Joy is not in things; it is in us.” Unlike pleasure which seems to come from something outside of us, joy seems to spring up from inside.

Joy usually lasts anywhere from a few minutes to a whole day and there may be lucky times when it visits frequently.  Many people comment that these feelings arise when they are in nature, perhaps sitting in a field of wild flowers or walking in a wood and listening to the birds.  Most of us find it when we are in love - especially when we make love – the sense of connection can be deep and powerful - sex is normally pleasurable, but when it is joyous it seems to tap into our life-source and can be transcendent.  Some people feel it with moments of sporting success or with the arts – music and dancing are often quoted.  The poet Keats said that, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” and so we can see how the arts and nature would tap into this.  Sometimes being with a friend and finding yourself suddenly at one with them can also bring it.  Spending time playing with children, especially our own can also bring it.  Hobbies can bring moments of it, too, and those who have religious faith will also speak of knowing joy from time to time.  And most of us know that giving can be joyous – much more joyous than receiving. 

These things all have in common a sense of being connected (even if momentarily) to someone or something that seems to make us fully alive and take us beyond ourselves to a wider sense of the specialness of things around us and beyond us.  Moments of joy can be closely connected to our “inner child.”  Children seem to tap into joy more than adults....think of “jumping for joy” and you think of yourself as being childlike or perhaps like a new-born spring lamb discovering his legs for the first time.  What happens to us as adults to deprive us of that?

When one has joy, there is a sense of freedom - of being like a bird; and when one has despair there is a sense of heaviness.  Joy resolves into peace, whereas if you are in despair a sense of stagnation and meaninglessness is sure to follow.  It has been reported (for instance by a Macmillan Cancer survey) that people turn to moments of joy when they recall what was good about their lives. These moments made them feel that their lives were good and that it was great to be alive, and they feel buoyed up by that as death approaches.  Near to their end, few people seem to be consoled much by the gods of pleasure and money.  Of course it is good to have had those, but they won’t ultimately give anyone a sense that life has been good.  

C S Lewis commented, “I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”  If he were alive today, I suspect that he’d probably say just how much truer that was now than it was when he wrote it – for the world is getting fuller and fuller of pleasures, and distractions – most of them offering instant gratification and triviality rather than something deeper.  For instance, one wonders how many people who find themselves addicted to Facebook would want or need to be so wrapped up in it if they had moments of joy in their lives.

Given how explosive and enlivening joy can be, one begins to see that, no matter how bad things are in a person’s life, it can blast though it – perhaps not permanently – permanent changes take time – but enough to give a sense that things are going to get better and that the world is not such a bad place after all.  When people are depressed, that is what they need to feel.  They need to feel that life is worthwhile and that there is something in it that can make them feel good.

Counselling can be a perfect place to explore joy in your life.  Do you have any?  What is it and where does it come from?  When are you likely to experience it?  If you don’t have any, why not?  Is there someone who helps you to find it?  Are you somehow sabotaging it or is someone around you trying to do that?  Did you have it in the past or as a child?  Have you stopped doing something that you used to do that brought you it?    Have you started becoming overwhelmed by the cares, responsibilities and jobs of this world rather than allowing a space for joy? 

This is why I always talk about joy to my clients who come saying that they are depressed, have no meaning or feel lost, sad or lonely.  I know from my own life and those of previous clients just how powerful a force joy is and how it shifts things and brings hope. Finding joy or at least creating the conditions were joy might arise can be an important way of moving out of depression. Joy can be a barometer showing how a person’s life is.

David is a fully qualified and BACP Accredited Counsellor.  If you wish to talk about joy in your life, you can book a face to face or skype session with him by ringing 07578 100256 or emailing him at David@eastcheshirecounselling.com.  You can also follow him on Twitter as Contented Counsellor at: https://twitter.com/#!/SeddonDavid

When to Use the F Word with Your Partner

The famous (or infamous) Anglo-Saxon swear word is often thought of as one of the most powerful words that anyone can use, but it has a tiny fraction of the force of another word beginning with f.  This other word is one of the true heavyweights of the English language.  If you haven’t already guessed, that word is forgiveness.

Done whole-heartedly, the act of forgiving is one of the most sacred and powerful things that anyone can do for another person (and also for themselves, as we shall see).  The poet Alexander Pope described it like this:

“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” 

Throughout our lives we are likely to be called on to forgive – friendships, work colleagues, lovers, team mates etc.  This is even more likely to be the case with family and partners, as these relationships tend to be deeper and more permanent.  It is impossible to stay in a long-term, important relationship without forgiveness.  We are all human and even the best of us mess up and hurt those we love from time to time.  It’s not the hurt itself, but how you deal with that counts.  

It is often not an easy, simple or minor thing to forgive someone.  Mahatma Gandhi said that, “the weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”  If we are deeply hurt, it can feel almost impossible to forgive the perpetrator of our hurt.  Sometimes the hurt party has every human need and justification to feel the pain of his or hurt first before they can move on.  Feeling the hurt first is often an important part of making the forgiveness deeper and longer lasting.  How odd it would feel if we did something awful to someone and they immediately said, “I forgive you.”  The chances are that we would not feel forgiven, and such quick pardon may not help us shed our feelings of guilt.  Sometimes it takes time to forgive.

What is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness means the giving up and renunciation of anger, resentment, bitterness and offence, but it doesn't mean condoning hurtful behaviour.  It means that whatever the previous disagreement or wrongdoing, we will no longer seek to punish, give out “justice,” get our own back or demand any sort of restitution such “sack-cloth wearing” from another person.  We pardon them completely and make them free of all debt (whatever its nature).  Forgiveness should be unconditional and willing, BUT there is a proviso, and one that is absolutely vital in a healthy relationship:

The hurt party needs to feel respected and  not abused.  Often in life if there is a yin, there’s a yang – and here the necessary opposite is repentance, remorse and contrition.  Before both parties can move on, the person who caused the hurt needs to be able to recognise that what they have done is wrong and accept that there have been some consequences – such as anger, pain, broken trust.  Patience is also important with deeper hurts - dismissing a partner’s feelings, especially betrayal, by telling them to "get over it," is insensitive and crass and seems to attempt to minimize or justify the wrong.  They need to be able to commit to not repeating the hurtful behaviour and to making amends for it.  Making amends could be something like treating the hurt partner to something special (and recognising that sometimes a bunch of flowers just doesn’t cut it).

Sometimes Enough is Enough

Experience tells us that there are some hurts that we will never be able to forget – especially if it there are serious repeat offenses.  If a partner is continually abusive (whether physically or verbally) or unfaithful then there nearly always comes a time where one says, “enough is enough.”  It’s best still to try to move on – but this may have to be done without the errant partner.  Forgiving a cheating partner can come down to whether we loved the partner before the cheating occurred.  If you already feel like strangers, then an infidelity can be a good reason or excuse to end things.  If you do love them, then (in time) things can be rebuilt; and forgiveness is the key to that.

What about Forgiving and Forgetting?

As human beings, our pride often howls at us to take revenge. Even if we don’t want to say or do anything straight away, we may at least want to keep a “guilt card” in our pockets, to be whipped out later in order to trump another person’s ace: “so what about the time that you did this to me...”  We can probably all admit to having done this at times – and then probably witnessed how it hurt the person who thought they’d been forgiven or degenerated into a long list of offenses from both parties.  Lists of grievances cause a lot of damage and intensify, entrench and deepen any rift - but forgiveness means trying to move on from it.  In short, it’s about valuing the person you love MORE than the wrong they did to you once upon a time. 

Henry Ward Beecher said: “I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive.  Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it can never be shown against one.”

That is true.  Once the note has been ripped up, the injury should not reappear as ammunition during every major row.  That doesn’t mean that the hurt party becomes “a mug” and is cornered into a position where they keep getting hurt and keep forgiving.  It also doesn’t mean that we should keep forgiving someone who doesn’t even recognise that they are being hurtful.

If you love someone remember that your relationship with them is your primary concern; not scoring points, counting sins or showing who is right or wrong.

The Benefits of Forgiveness

“When you forgive, you in no way change the past - but you sure do change the future.”
Bernard Meltzer

Forgiveness can lead to:

·         more love

·         feelings of understanding, empathy and compassion for the one who hurt you.

·         more energy (holding onto grudges is very wearing)

·         healthier and more adult relationships

·         better psychological, spiritual and emotional well-being

·         less hostility, bitterness, anxiety and stress

·         less risk of depression

·         less chance of addiction to drugs or alcohol

·         the release of pressure that might otherwise build towards a poisonous or negative atmosphere

·         greater connection and depth in our relationships

·         the pleasures and sweetness of “making up”

Conclusion

Most of us know people whose lives are dominated or even defined by grudges, hate, bitterness and resentment?  In reality, this poisons them more than the people who these feelings are aimed at.  It’s far better to let it all go and to forgive and move on.  

Corrie ten Boom showed saint-like forgiveness, probably beyond that which most of us could manage.  After WW2, despite initial difficulty, she forgave both the German concentration camp guards that she had previously tried to rescue Jewish prisoners from and been held prisoner by, and the Dutch collaborators who had acted against her; yet she said this: “Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to find out that the prisoner was me.”  When we consider her example, perhaps forgiveness for lesser crimes may seem less onerous.

If you are still struggling to forgive someone but would like to, then counselling can be an option.  I have had many clients who have felt that coming to talk to me helped to clarify matters so that forgiveness could be found within a workable and positive framework.

David is a fully qualified and BACP Accredited and registered Person Centred Counsellor.  You can book a session with him by ringing 07578 100256 or emailing him at David@eastcheshirecounselling.com