Therapy for Suicide Bereavement
Support after losing someone to suicide
Bereavement following suicide can be particularly painful and complicated. Alongside the grief of losing someone we love, there can be shock, anger, guilt, confusion, unanswered questions and an endless revisiting of what if? and if only. There may also be feelings that are difficult to admit to other people — including anger towards the person who died, relief, shame, resentment or a sense of abandonment.
Sometimes there simply aren't answers.
I offer psychotherapy for people who have been affected by the suicide of someone close to them. This is an area that has particular meaning for me because I also have personal experience of bereavement through suicide.
I don't believe that gives me a special understanding of somebody else's grief. Every relationship is different and every bereavement is different. But my own experience has taught me something about the particular landscape of suicide loss — including the questions that can remain when there is nobody left to answer them.
A place where you don't have to make sense of it
People sometimes feel pressure to "process" grief, find closure, accept what happened or somehow move forward. I don't believe therapy needs to impose any of those expectations.
My approach is person-centred and relational. Rather than telling you how you should grieve, I offer a confidential therapeutic relationship in which we can stay with whatever your experience actually is.
That might include sadness and longing, but it might equally include anger, guilt, numbness, confusion or feelings that seem contradictory. You may want to talk repeatedly about what happened. You may need to try to understand why. You may find yourself going over conversations, events and decisions again and again. Or you may simply need somewhere where the person who died can continue to be spoken about and remembered.
There is room for all of this.
The questions suicide can leave behind
One of the painful aspects of suicide bereavement can be the search for an explanation.
Why did they do it?
Could I have prevented it?
Did I miss something?
Why wasn't I enough?
Was there something I should have said or done?
Therapy cannot necessarily answer those questions. My own experience is that some questions following suicide may never have satisfactory answers.
What therapy can offer is somewhere you don't have to carry those questions alone.
Over time, the work may become less about finding the definitive explanation and more about discovering how you can live alongside what has happened — while retaining your relationship, memories and love for the person who died.
Grieving in your own way
There is no correct timetable for grief.
Suicide bereavement may be recent, or the death may have happened many years ago. Sometimes people seek therapy long afterwards because something has brought the loss back into awareness. Others discover that they managed practically in the immediate aftermath but begin to feel the emotional impact much later.
Whatever brings you to therapy, I would want to meet you where you are rather than where anyone thinks you ought to be.
My personal experience informs my sensitivity to suicide bereavement, but your experience would remain at the centre of our work. I would not assume that because I have experienced suicide loss myself, I know what yours feels like.
Sometimes perhaps the most truthful place to begin is simply:
I don't know how to live with this.
And we can begin there.
About working with me
I am an experienced psychotherapist and clinical supervisor working online with adults. My approach is primarily person-centred and relational, offering a warm, accepting and non-judgemental space in which difficult experiences can be explored at your own pace.
You do not need to commit to ongoing therapy before we meet. I offer a free initial one-hour session, giving us an opportunity to meet, talk about what has brought you to therapy and see whether working together feels right for you.
