Therapist Spotlight: Skye Sclera and Suicide Grief
Human/Mother welcomes Substack author of Painting with Lightning!
Therapist Spotlight is a series that features a mental health professional from Substack who shares insights on a rotating monthly topic for Human/Mother. The purpose of the series is to educate readers and offer guidance on how to navigate complex subjects while also doing the most important job on the planet: raising the next generation.
For its fourth installment, Human/Mother welcomes psychotherapist
to talk about this month’s topic: suicide grief.Thank you so much for being here, Skye!
Greetings, all! I’m Skye (at least, that’s what I call myself here on Substack). I can assure you I’m a real human (Katrina checked, since she’s very onto it), but anonymity allows me to write and speak a bit more freely than usual given my line of work.
I’m a psychotherapist with a background in suicide research and prevention, and the bulk of my current clinical practice focuses on trauma and PTSD. I write about therapy, ADHD, trauma and creativity over at Painting with Lightning. I’m also mother to a neat wee toddler, in whom I can very clearly see flashes of my brother. His wicked laugh, his cheeky sense of humour.
It's very bittersweet because my brother died by suicide some 15 years ago now. So much time has passed, remembering him feels a bit like tuning a radio. I have brief, vivid flickers. Standing on tiptoes to hug him. The sarcastic-but-sweet know-it-all vibe of his voice. The feel of his presence. A big personality: fierce and funny and flawed in such a painfully lovable way. We were inseparable, or so I thought.
A part of me still believes that, though the day is fast approaching when I have lived longer without him than with him.
Losing my brother to suicide and struggling to survive that sanity-shattering experience ultimately lead me to retrain in my current profession and brought me to the place where I’m able to write this to you today. It’s been a long road and it’s gotten pretty grim at times, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to share what I’ve learned about suicide grief.
The Difference Between Grief and Complicated Grief
The DSM-5 (or the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses) lists ‘Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder’ as a condition that needs further research and attention but which has yet to be fully defined. In other words, it’s accepted that grief can become a problem: but we’re not yet clear on what ‘problem grief’ (or ‘complicated grief’) looks like or how we measure it.
It’s the same dilemma that plagues most — if not all — diagnoses listed in the DSM to some extent: mental disorders are defined by an absence of normal, and how do you even begin to define what a “normal” bereavement looks like? Some people cry, some people rage, some people feel numb, some people want to talk about their lost loved one non-stop, some people can’t bear to hear their name. Some quit their jobs, some become workaholics, some can barely eat, others self-medicate with food. Some rare few suffer well and bear their pain with grace. Each loss is as unique as the person whose passing has left a hole in the fabric of the world.
Because there isn’t really a blueprint of “normal behaviour” to draw from, clinicians tend to use the passage of time to mark when grief becomes abnormal: most acute symptoms associated with bereavement will resolve within about 18 months. Seems pretty straightforward, right? If you’re among the 10-20% of people still really doing it rough after a year and a half, you’ve got a problem.
Except … that 18-month mark isn’t exactly arbitrary. The DSM was created by people with a vested interest in defining emotional pain as a problem (not deliberately, I imagine, it’s just the nature of the industry). In addition to this, the DSM reflects the culture in which it was written: one which values productivity and hustle. Different cultures have varying responses to death and loss: some encourage extra cheerfulness and even gentle teasing around the bereaved to get them back to baseline quicker. Others find the idea of ever returning to baseline absurd, that the death of a loved one changes you. Grief, in this worldview, is a process that continues to grow and change across a lifetime.
Personally, I relate to this idea. It’s not that you are never going to feel better or never going to be OK again after losing someone to suicide. It’s that you aren’t the same anymore. There’s this quote by Freud that I think captures the essence of it: that you will fill the emptiness left behind, but whatever you fill it with isn’t the thing that was lost.
Integrating the reality of a death, especially a suicide death that tends to involve trauma and complex emotions, takes time and space (and ideally a lot of love and support). So, rather than focusing on arbitrary time markers and symptom lists, I tend to encourage gentle self-inquiry. In my clinical work, I’m interested in whether things feel “stuck” for the person involved. Do they want things to change, but can’t make it happen? Or are they there because they feel they “should” be doing better than they are? Perhaps there’s ambivalence about feeling happy again (this is far more common than you’d think), and/or shame about not being able to “save” the person (and therefore not feeling deserving of a meaningful, full life for themselves).
No matter the circumstances of a loss, everyone deserves to find a way back to living again. Eventually, you have lain by the graveside long enough, and if you need some help with getting up and wiping your eyes … don’t we all, one way or another?
Your Grief: As Unique as the Person You’re Grieving
Here’s the thing I wish everyone knew about bereavement of all kinds, but especially suicide loss: you can’t feel grief wrong.
If I had a dollar for every client who told me they’re afraid they are not grieving correctly, I’d have enough money to buy at least a McChicken combo — which doesn’t sound like a lot, even in this economy, but nobody should be concerned that they are too sad, or not sad enough, or angry where everyone else seems to be sad. Your feelings aren’t wrong. They just … exist. Like clouds, or seagulls, or peanuts.
Now, on the other hand, you might be concerned about the actions you are taking as a result of your grief, and that’s a little different. You might need some support with that, which can take many forms: friends, mentors, support groups, therapy.
One thing that’s really important to mention is that grieving a suicide presents additional challenges and complexities. I tend to think losing someone this way is almost always inherently traumatic, even before taking into consideration the horror involved if you were directly exposed to the death.
So, putting my trauma therapist hat on for a moment: if you’ve been exposed to trauma, there generally isn’t any benefit in talking about the specifics with a therapist in the first three months. Certainly, you might want to see someone for support and clinical advice, but actually going into detail about what happened in that initial period can make things worse, not better. Everything takes a while to settle.
However, if you’re beginning to notice symptoms of PTSD after a few months (nightmares, flashbacks, self-blame, feeling like you’re reliving what happened, dissociation (where it’s like you’re not present in your body), emotional volatility, or avoiding reminders to the extent it limits your life) … please find a good trauma therapist. Someone experienced, someone you feel you can build trust with, someone you feel safe with.
Remember: you cannot have too much support around you, and this is particularly true in the wake of a suicide death. When I lost my brother, in a very real sense I also lost my family. Not one of us was in a position to support anyone else, and our individual ways of grieving were so different and conflicting that they upset and confused other family members.
Nobody had any idea what to say to us, and in their awkwardness some people said diabolically stupid things. They meant well, though.
I appreciate that this will be a controversial take, but I’d encourage trying to practice as much grace as possible because there truly aren’t any words to convey the enormity of what you’re living through. All anyone can do is be with you in it, and allow you to have your experience without trying to “make it OK”. That sounds simple, and it is, but it’s very hard to do.
I think that’s a helpful thing to remember as a parent, too.
Resources for Parents Dealing With Suicide Loss
If you take nothing else away from this piece, I would like you to remember this: I believe that being a good parent is about making sure your kids are taken care of.
Somewhere along the way, that got all tangled up with the idea that you — and only you — must be there for your children at all times. If you were incapacitated because your appendix exploded, you’d understand the need to get other people involved in supporting you to care for your household — right? Trying to do it from your hospital bed would be a really terrible idea. Same logic applies.
That said, don’t assume because you’re grieving you are not capable of being a good parent and need to get others involved lest you contaminate your children with your feelings. Caring for those you love can be the kind of meaningful, dedicated work that gives some structure and purpose to your days. You don’t stop being a human just because you are feeling deeply, if anything it makes you more able to be present and tender and helpful, provided you’re not overwhelmed.
Remember that you are a stranger to yourself in grief. You have probably never lived through something like this before. Go easy, do what you can, ask yourself what you need with kindness, and be open to the answer when it comes. Accept that things may change moment-to-moment. Essentially, I think a huge part of getting through a period of crisis involves learning to intuit when you need to keep moving versus when you need to stop and rest. I’ve written a little detail here about what I mean.
If your children ask difficult questions about suicide (which of course they will, because they’re children), I think a good way to proceed is to tell them that you will answer, but first, you would like to know what has prompted them to ask. What are they curious about, or afraid of?
Not only will this buy you a little time to think about your answer (and don’t be afraid to say “I need to think about that a while because getting the right words to answer is important”). It will also help you to understand the need behind the question. Do they want comfort? Do they want certainty? Do they want to know if what they feel is OK, etc.?
A Final Note and Some Encouragement
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. Please do share this piece if you think someone you know could benefit from reading it, and if you have helpful resources or advice from your own lived experience, please share them in the comments. If you have a question I haven’t covered, I am trialling an ‘Ask a Psychotherapist Anything’ feature in my subscriber chat (Painting with Lightning), so you’re also welcome to connect with me there.
I wish you well along the way, one survivor to another – and please know that someday, your life will no longer centre around what you’ve lost. Just keep going. It’s as simple as that, and as hard as that.
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Thank you for your insight. My teen-aged son Lucas died by suicide four years ago. His younger sister was 15 when he died. While she has been remarkably stoic about his death. I have to wonder how much of it is her repressing guilt over their tumultuous relationship. Over the years I haven’t gotten much out of her until about a month ago when we talked about it on a deeper level.
Thank you for putting words to this aspect of grief. In our Western culture, we don’t “do” death well. And the ways we “do” grief can cause more harm than good. So we need all the good teachers we can get on the topic—and you’re a good teacher.
I have mentors in this area as well—each of whom inspired me to become a hospice volunteer. Mentors like Stephen Jenkinson, Francis Weller, Gabor Maté, and Bessel Van der Kolk. And the Elders from Indigenous First Nations Peoples.