Connecting with Those Bereaved Through Suicide

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Connecting with Those Bereaved Through Suicide
Connecting with the experience of loss Dr Judith
Murray Connecting with stories of hope Dr Sheila
Clark
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Reminiscence
I hear your whisper on the wind I hear your voice
just as it has always been Your laughter fills
the air around me And I turn with a smile to
laugh with you But when I turn there is
silence There are only echoes in my mind I know
this, and yet, often they are so loud So clear,
so real, that I just cant believe youre not
here Karen Gerry in Words of Sorrow Words of
Love
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Reminiscence

Reminiscencesa space, of moments and
discontinuities. For even if months and years
appear here, it is in the form they have in the
moment of recollection. Walter Benjamin
Reminiscence is its pain and joy is the thing of
suicide bereavement. Today we will spend a little
time within this place of trying to understand
the experience that comes with reminiscence for
both the bereaved and those who care for them..
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LOSS The Essence of Suicide Bereavement
Dr. Judith Murray The University of Queensland,
Australia
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ECHOES IN MY MIND

• Postvention, or suicide bereavement, or whatever
  else we might call it, is about the agony of
  losing someone
• .
• Living with the echoes in the mind and learning
  to live with the echoes in the mind

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ESSENCE

• Essence is defined as
• The intrinsic or indispensable properties that
  serve to characterize or identify something
• The most important ingredient the crucial
  element.
• The inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or
  class of things.

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THE ESSENCE Of POSTVENTION THE EXPERIENCE OF
LOSS

• Experience is not an unstable irrational and
  emotive concept but rather it is the world, it is
  knowing.
• Lumby (1994)
• Understanding the experience.
• An Emic rather than an Etic approach

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WHAT IS LOSS?

• Loss is produced by an event which is perceived
  to be negative by the individuals involved and
  results in long-term changes to ones social
  situations, relationships, or cognitions.
• Miller Omarzu (1998) (p. 12)
• Grief is the reaction to loss
• Grieving is about healing.whatever models we may
  use to try to describe it

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Recognizing the importance of the experience

• Health Literature eg., Sensing versus perceiving
  Pain Existential aloneness of dying
• Counselling Literature eg., Common Factors
  Healing ability is its capacity to provide a
  corrective emotional experience
• Neurobiology
• While the cortex may provide the sensory
  experience and the logic to an event, it will be
  the limbic system that provides the emotional
  overlay to the experience. Not dependent on the
  higher cortical verbal centres of the brain, the
  limbic systems response to threat, the fear, may
  be deeply real, deeply and fully experienced, but
  may be least amenable to explanation by logic and
  in words.
• Lewis, Amini Lannon (2000)

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LOSSES RARELY EXIST ALONE

• And.
• Each one may demand to be grieved in its own
  right
• And..
• It will be the meaning of each loss to that
  particular person that will determine its power
  to hurt
• (Neimeyer, Prigerson Davies, 2002)
• And..
• It is the lived experience of each that matters

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Loss that never seems to end because IT doesnt

• The experience of loss is integrated into the
  basic psychological functioning of a person, even
  from the earliest experiences. Therefore there
  exists both the potential for personal growth and
  personal deterioration.
• It can be so very scary having the world you know
  totally turned upside down..

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THE CORE

• No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear
• C.S. Lewis A Grief Observed

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THE ONLY ANTIDOTE TO FEAR
There are only two feelings. Love and fear. There
are only two languages. Love and fear. There are
only two activities. Love and fear. There are
only two motives, two procedures, two
frameworks, two results Love and fear. Love and
fear. Michael Leunig (2004)
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THE ONLY ANTIDOTE TO FEAR
Link between love and fear is not new...
Religion has always known it There is no fear
in love, but perfect love casts out fear. I John
418 Yes! whoever submits himself entirely to
Allah and he is the doer of good (to others) he
has his reward from his Lord, and there is no
fear for him nor shall he grieve. Koran 2.112
Conquer the angry man by love. Conquer the
ill-natured man by goodness. Conquer the miser
with generosity. Conquer the liar with truth.
The Dhammapada
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THE ONLY ANTIDOTE TO FEAR
Now Science verifies it Overlaying experiences
with emotion in the mid-brain are both fear
(prime area of the amygdala) and attachment
love (in the limbic system) From birth to
death, love is not just the focus of human
experience but also the life force of the mind,
determining our moods, stabilizing our bodily
rhythms, and changing the structure of our
brains. The bodys physiology ensures that
relationships determine and fix our identities.
Love makes us who we are, and who we can
become. Lewis, Amini Lannon (2000), p. vii
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THE IRONY OF LOSS AND GRIEF

• Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or
  the joy of breathing or walking on a bright
  morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth
  all the suffering and effort which life implies. 
  
• Erich Fromm
• Humankind has always known that a great pain has
  often held a great treasure at its root..
• Do we use that ? Or do we simply concentrate on
  the deficit?

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SO HOW DO WE CARE FOR THE FEAR?

• When one brings toempathy, warmth, respect,
  concern, valuing and prizing, openness, honesty,
  genuineness, transparency, intimacy,
  self-disclosure, confrontation- it becomes
  apparent that they constitute love in the highest
  sense or agapeWe already have in essence, the
  answer- the answer that has been reached through
  thousands of years of human experience and
  recognized by the great philosophers of various
  times and cultures.
• (Patterson, 1974, p. 89-90)
• Agape Lovea nonerotic pure love that seeks
  nothing in returnaligned with altruistic love,
  in which an individual can care for a complete
  stranger, as if that stranger were family
• (Stickley Freshwater, 2002, p. 251)

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LOVE AND COMPETENCE
Individuals who care for those in need must first
be professionally competent they should be
properly trained in what to do and how to do it,
and committed to continuing care. Yet, while
professional competence is a primary, fundamental
requirement, it is not of itself sufficient. We
are dealing with human beings, and human beings
always need something more than technically
proper care. They need humanity. They need
heartfelt concern. Pope Benedict XVI, 2006, p.
52
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Connecting with stories of hope remembering the
past, revisioning the future
Dr. Sheila Clark
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Remember
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Remember
Re-member
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Remember
Re-member
Re-vision
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Remember
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Re- member
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Re-vision
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