Grief Following Suicide
When someone dies by suicide, the sense of loss is both devastating and hugely confusing for those left behind. One of the most difficult tasks is reconciling the person we knew and loved, with the way in which they died. In my experience, the most important part of processing suicide is understanding that it results from emotional overwhelm and illness: the person did not choose to leave, but rather, they were caught in a fog that clouded their perception of life, themselves, and the world around them.
Suicide can be likened death by heart failure – but it’s the brain that malfunctions, rather than the heart. Whilst we accept that physical illness has a mortality rate, we find it more difficult to accept when it’s mental illness, despite our mind being controlled by the brain, which is no different to any other organ in our body. Malfunction can be sudden or progress slowly over time. Sometimes there is no warning, other times the signs are there. We can try our hardest to treat, but we are not always successful.
Suicide and Fog
Emotional overwhelm, whether it comes on slowly or as a sudden explosion, is like a dense fog, so thick that you can’t see your hand in front of your face. The landscape that you’ve known for all your life suddenly becomes unfamiliar, disorienting, frightening and bleak. Your goals, your love for others, what you used to know others felt about you, your view of yourself: all of it becomes lost. You feel trapped and confused as to where to step next. At times of emotional overwhelm, life feels like this fog – something to flee from.
When someone dies by suicide, it’s helpful to remember that they were lost in this emotional fog. The choices they made weren’t reflections of their true selves or their love for the people around them. Instead, their decisions were shaped by a mind that could no longer see clearly. In those moments, the person we loved was still there, but they were caught in a fog that took away their ability to see any other way forward.
Guilt and Anger: Destructive Emotions
In the wake of suicide, it’s natural to feel guilt. We often ask ourselves: “Could I have done something differently? Could I have stopped it? If only I had…” But guilt is a trap. It is important to realise that, just like the person lost in the fog, we couldn’t see what would happen. No one is to blame for something so complex and overwhelming as death by suicide. No one could have known the depth of their struggle, particularly if they were trying to shield everyone from seeing it. The fog that clouded their judgment also obscured our view.
Anger is another common and understandable emotion after a death by suicide. It’s easy to direct anger toward the person for leaving, for not reaching out, or for causing so much pain to family, friends, colleagues, neighbours – people that they never would have thought would have cared as much as they do. However, that anger, though valid, needs to be refocused. Rather than being angry at the person, we need to be angry at the fog—the mental illness, the emotional turmoil – because it’s that, not the person, that killed them. The fog of despair that clouds both reason and hope is the real culprit, not the person we loved.
Staying Compassionate: Focus on the Person, Not the Illness
By separating the person from the emotional fog that consumed them, we can hold onto compassion and the person that we loved. The person who died by suicide is not defined by their death, nor by the illness or pain they suffered. They were the same person we loved before they were overtaken by that fog—a kind, loving, funny, determined, trustworthy human being. Their death is not a reflection of their worth, nor does it say anything at all about their love for others. It’s simply the tragic result of a mind that, in the end, was blinded by fog. The person would never willingly have caused any level of pain to the people they loved. They wouldn’t have wanted to upset their old schoolteacher, colleague, neighbour, or GP, and would never have wished the pain caused to the family they loved: to their little brother, sister, mum or dad.
Therapy: getting help with processing Grief
Grief after suicide is complicated. It brings not only the profound sadness of loss but also the emotional turmoil of guilt, anger, confusion, and often isolation. In these moments, therapy can be an invaluable tool for loved ones. Here’s how therapy can help:
1. Processing Complex Emotions: Therapists can help you work through the intense emotions of grief, guilt, and anger, and guide you toward understanding them in a way that is healthy. Therapy can also offer a safe space to express all the feelings and thoughts you might be struggling to understand or verbalise.
2. Addressing Guilt and Self-Blame: A therapist can help you recognise that suicide is the result of a complicated emotional state of overwhelm, that may be part of a depressive illness, that has been silent or otherwise. Whatever the history, no one could fully predict or prevent what happened. Therapy can support you in working through the misplaced guilt and teach you how to let go of feelings of responsibility.
3. Understanding and Reframing Anger: Through therapy, you can learn to redirect anger away from the person and toward the illness, pain, or emotional state of overwhelm that took them away. This can help release resentment and foster compassion for both yourself and your lost loved one.
4. Rebuilding: The void left after suicide can seem overwhelming. A therapist can guide you through finding new ways accept the death, and to gradually move forward in your new normal and unwanted situation, learning the principles of psychological flexibility and how to forge a new path when the one that you both wanted and loved has fallen away right in front of you.
5. Preventing Isolation: The stigma of suicide often causes both those who have been bereaved to withdraw – but also others around them to withdraw too. Others may not know what to say, fearful of causing damage by saying anything at all. So, they remain silent. At the time you most need help, it can seem like there are very few people who feel confident to offer help at all. Therapy helps you understand how to reconnect with friends, family and others who were in your life before this, learning how to communicate your grief to those who may not understand it. Therapy can also help you connect with others, including support groups, with those further down the path being able to help give hope that there is a way through grief.
Conclusion
Death by suicide often feels like an inexplicable tragedy. Yet, understanding it as a consequence of a fog—whether due to an explosive emotional overwhelm or a longer-term mental illness —helps separate the person we loved from the fog that took them away. We can choose not to direct anger at them, but rather at the conditions that clouded their vision and robbed them of hope. We can choose not to burden ourselves with guilt for not being able to see through that fog ourselves. And most importantly, we can turn to therapy and other supports to help guide us through the grief, so that we can remember the person we loved, without feeling stuck in the trauma of the way they died.