We all respond differently to any sort of bereavement, and the complexity around suicide doesn’t help. There is no right or wrong way, and it different within the family environment too.
We are all individuals who each had a unique relationship with the person who has died, and so the support needed can be different too.
Our team can visit the whole family together and work out who needs what support, and the difference we will manage.
There are times when a family want to come together and have the opportunity to remember the person they have lost; to talk together about the person, looking at videos, going to places the person loved, creating memory boxes can also be comforting.
Supporting a person to write their feelings down on paper can be helpful, spending time outside and plenty of self-care. Developing rituals can be helpful a way of marking a person’s life can all be ways to help manage the intense feelings of loss.
We can work with the differences in a family help put together the best support your family. When other express their grief different, it doesn’t mean that they don’t care, there are many different ways to manage. It can become difficult if you can’t relate to their way of grieving, which is why 1:1 support can help. Often some family members don’t want to express their grief for fear of upsetting others around them, especially if those people had a very close relationship with the person who died.
Remember, that professional support can offer you the safe space to explore these difficult feelings, with compassion, patience and understanding without having to worry about how others will react.
Read on to find out more about suicide bereavement can affect members of the same family: (Credit UKSoBs.org)
Any parent will tell they can’t imagine the pain, the reality is no parents ever wants to. The death of a child is always shattering, almost soul breaking, no matter the age of the child. Child loss by suicide is a particularly cruel for the surviving family and friends, who tell us that often they simply don’t feel they can go on. The loss of a life cuts so short, derailing the generational cycle of life. Many parents feel immense guilt that they simply didn’t know, or didn’t do enough, the feeling of helplessness, more so if support was sought and not found. Parents often struggle with their own relationship, and often relationships break down. For families, there is the additional stress of post-mortem, inquest, the child’s friends, and the media. The reactions of others is uneducated, intrusive, and sometimes unapologetic. Parents often find that milestones are very triggering and their relationships with other children are profoundly impacted.
Losing the person, you have chosen to share your life with can destroy your hopes and expectations for the future. When you lose a partner to suicide it is not unusual
to experience strong feelings of rejection or betrayal – a sense that they broke your shared commitment, that they chose to leave you or that they did not feel that they could look to you for help.
“I felt I was not good enough to stay alive with….”
You are likely to have had one of the closest relationships with the deceased – physically and emotionally. If there were no indications of their intentions, you may question yourself about how you could not have noticed or feel that they deceived you by hiding it. Or if there were indications, you may feel guilty that you did not do enough. You may find yourself questioning other aspects of your relationship and worrying about how others perceive you as a partner or spouse. It is likely that you will be grieving alongside your partner’s birth family, and it may
be that their reactions leave you feeling blamed in part or whole for the suicide. This may be unintentional but sometimes people voice explicitly where they think that the blame lies.
“This wouldn’t have happened if (s)he hadn’t been with you…”
If you have children, you may find that you have to manage your experience of grief as a spouse alongside supporting your children through the loss of their parent. In addition to the emotional impact of your bereavement, you may have practical concerns as a result of now having to cope with finances, home, and family single handily. There may need to be major changes to your life – changing or giving up your job, moving to a more affordable house or becoming a single parent. You may also find that your social life is impacted too – the world may suddenly feel as if it is made for couples. You may find that it is difficult to contemplate developing new relationships in the future.
When you lose a brother or a sister, you lose someone who shared many experiences and memories and who you may have expected to be with you for most of your life. Many siblings share a deep, protective connection. You may feel very guilty that you did not do enough to help them or that you are still alive when they are not.
Siblings may find that they become isolated in the family – perhaps because the parents seek to protect their remaining children by not sharing or involving them in the experience or it could be that remaining brothers and sisters do not share fully with their parents because they do not want to provoke worry or distress.
Brothers and sisters may also feel overlooked when attention is directed towards the parents by others:
“I was completely devastated. But each time I went into the village everyone, without exception, asked me how my mum was, as if I had no feelings about it at all”
This can feel very isolating but is worth remembering that sometimes people find suicide a difficult topic and so they may use an indirect question to start to a conversation – “how is your mum?” – which may then lead to a more direct conversation.
Twins may feel an even more extreme sense of loss – emotional and physical – and may feel further isolated as so few will have a shared understanding of their experience.
The death of our parents is always challenging but even more so when they die by suicide. It can invoke feelings of abandonment or rejection when someone who holds a key caring and guiding role in our lives takes their own life. The loss of a parent can have a particularly damaging effect on our self-esteem.
In addition to dealing with your own grief and confusion, you may also find yourself dealing with a remaining parent who is grieving for their partner. This may be the first time that you have seen them emotionally vulnerable, and it can be very distressing. If you are a child, they may still be caring for you whilst dealing with their own bereavement; if you are older, you may find yourself caring for them as they grieve and that the roles become reversed.
If you lose your parent as a child, you may find that people around you try to protect you and exclude you from details about the death. You may not be able to grieve fully, and feelings may remain undealt with. This protection may even be so extreme that you may only find out the truth about your mother or father dying by suicide many years after the event, which may lead to a lot of memory searching, questioning and a breakdown of trust.
Grandparents are vulnerable to being hidden grievers, as much of the focus is on the partner or the parents – however the relationship is very close. You are likely to also be very concerned for your own children, the parents of the deceased and want to be supportive to them. Your own grief reaction may get overlooked.
You may not have been closely related however you may still be deeply affected by a suicide in your family, particularly if you had close relationship with the deceased. Other family members may not realise the depth of your grief – indeed they may look to you to provide practical help and support. However, it can be very supportive to let them know how loved and appreciated the deceased was, when you feel that the time is right to share.
An earlier separation or divorce may not limit the grieving – you may still care deeply for the person or be affected even if your relationship was not good. Some aspects of your pain may be increased – for example you may fear that your separation was a contributory factor.
