Q: Who Can I Talk to About My Father's Suicide?

Posted by Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen Jul 16, 2009

A reader recently lost his father to suicide, and asked this question on my Recent Research on Suicide article: "Can someone who knows about this stuff please help me?" He's struggling with pain, guilt, loneliness, and a need to talk about it.

Here are a few suggestions for when you're depressed, mourning, and struggling to deal with a suicide in your family:

Talk to a counselor who has experience with suicide. This reader mentioned seeing a counselor - and it's helping - but he needs more. But, the first step is to talk to a counselor or psychologist.

Do not put your email address on the internet. In his pain and need to talk about his father's suicide, this reader put his email address in the comments section of the "Recent Research on Suicide" article. I removed the email address because it's never a good idea to publicize the fact that you're in pain along with your email address! There are too many people who can take advantage of you, harm you, or make your pain much worse. These people may not even deliberately want to harm you -- they just may not have the experience to help someone who lost their father to suicide.

Find a suicide support group. One of the best ways to deal with any type of pain is to talk about it with people who have experienced the same thing. If there's not a suicide support group in your area, then look for any type of group that focuses on coping with death.

Figure out what you need. The reader wants to know the details of his father's suicide, and mentioned many unknowns. If you feel you need to know the details, then talk to people who can provide them: the police, the people who found him, the people who were closest to him at the time of death. If you can't find those people, then you have to work on accepting that there will always be mystery surrounding your father's suicide.

Avoid speculating or obsessing about it. If you can't find any information about your father's suicide, then you have to let it go. If you keep speculating about what you think happened, why, when, how -- you will drive yourself mad! You have to accept whatever details you have, and let it go. The more you rehash and wonder, the longer it will take to heal -- because you're not dealing with reality. At some point, you have to accept that you will never know for sure why your father took his own life.

Write about it. Write down all your questions, accusations, destroyed hopes, and feelings of depression, guilt, anger, or sadness. Don't worry about spelling, sentence structure, or grammar -- the point is to get it out of you as much as you can.

Read How to Let Go of Someone You Love for more help on dealing with loss through suicide. It's written with a relationship breakup in mind, but the ten tips are totally applicable to any type of loss -- even your father's suicide.

My heart goes out to all people struggling with their father's or any loved one's suicide. I'm very sorry for you.

If you have any thoughts or questions, please comment below.