I had good intensions of writing something light-hearted this week, in celebration of the beginning of summer and the launch of my new program, A Full-Bodied Life. The first lesson in that program is about embracing joy, so it seemed fitting to write something joyful. But then something hard happened, and those plans were set aside because it felt more important to write about this. Sometimes, that’s just the way life is. Sometimes the hard gets mixed in with the happy (which is all part of what I teach in A Full-Bodied Life). Maybe next week I’ll be back with something light-hearted.
A few days ago, my day took a complete detour from where I expected it to go. On my morning walk, I came across a young woman getting up off the ground with her bike near the river’s edge. She was stumbling and I thought she’d fallen off her bike. I stopped to ask if she was okay and needed help.
She wasn’t okay, she told me. She’d been trying to end her own life.
I said I was sorry to hear that and asked her if there was someone I could call to be with her. She told me her mom was in the hospital in a coma, her grandma lived far away, and there was nobody else around who cared for her.
Not sure what to do next, I asked what her name was and whether she’d consider continuing my walk with me. (I’ll call her Debbie for the purposes of this story, though that’s not her real name.) Debbie agreed to walk with me and I learned about her hard life on the streets. She is HIV positive. It was the anniversary of the miscarriage of a baby boy she really wanted. She’s two years aged out of the foster care system that she was placed in because her mom tried to sell her for drugs when she was ten. She has lost several siblings to drug-related deaths.
I found Debbie at the edge of the Red River, not far from the place where Tina Fontaine’s body was pulled from the water. She told me that the day before, she’d ridden her bike out to Brady Road landfill site, intending to end her life there, but she couldn’t get in. The landfill site is where Linda Mary Beardy’s body was found back in April. I don’t know whether either of those things have significance for where or how she was planning to end her life, but I couldn’t overlook the connection.
She didn’t want me to call 911 or take her to a hospital because she doesn’t have a history of being treated kindly by people in the medical system in our city. “I have PTSD from it,” she said. I honoured her request and instead made a couple of calls to try to find someone with a vehicle who could help me get her to somewhere safe. In the end, my daughter Julie met us with my car.
Debbie was barefoot, and it was Julie who first clued in to the fact that her first need might be for a pair of shoes. We didn’t have any at our house that would fit her, so I drove her to a thrift store to buy her a pair. Then I bought her breakfast, and then took her to a social services agency where she said she had access to mental health support. We spent about two hours together, chatting about our families. I told her that I, too, had lost a baby boy that I really wanted. I asked her if she liked music. “Taylor Swift?” I asked “Or Harry Styles?” She smiled and nodded vigorously and I turned on one of my daughter’s playlists.
I don’t know whether anything I did for Debbie was the “right” thing. I don’t know whether she found a way to carry out her plan later in the day (or tomorrow, or the next day). I don’t know whether she’ll find a place in the world where people treat her with the kind of dignity that she has been offered so little of in her life. To be honest, I don’t feel a lot of hope on her behalf, so I didn’t walk away feeling like I’d done anything heroic in helping her choose not to die that morning. Life has been unbelievably cruel to this young woman and I don’t know how she can hold as much pain in her body as she does.
I saw the way people looked at her when she walked into the thrift store barefoot, and I don’t disbelieve anything she said about the ways that people in health care and social services have mistreated her. My heart feels broken on her behalf. This lovely young woman, whose face broke into a grin when I offered to buy her second-hand shoes (“They’re New Balance!”, she bragged to the support worker later, before I left her), who wanted to know all about my life too when I asked about hers, who gave me the best hug before I left… she deserves so much better than the world has offered her.
No, I don’t know if anything I did was right, but if nothing else, I wanted her to experience a little kindness on a day when she was grieving her dead son (just as I once grieved mine). She deserves at least that.
A couple of days later, there is much about this experience that is still alive in my heart and my body. This is not my first experience with someone who wanted to end their own life. Just down the road from where I met Debbie is the hospital where I rushed my former husband the second time he tried to die. He was also there the first time, fifteen years earlier. There’s a hill outside the hospital where I cried some of the most hopeless tears of my life. I know something about how much people can be failed by the medical and mental health systems because I’ve seen it up close and personal.
There are more stories. There were other times I sat in other emergency rooms in this city with other people close to me who could see no reason for carrying on their lives. Some of those stories can still flood my body with anxiety over the memory of them.
When I shared this story on social media a few days ago, some people asked for more, and I could sense in their questions some desire to know what to do should they ever find themselves in that position. I can’t claim any suicide prevention expertise (and don’t, to be honest, entirely resonate with the terminology of “suicide prevention”), but I can share some of what feels true for me now, having lived some version of this story multiple times. Know this… I share these things partly because, in the past, I have done completely the opposite and later wished I could go back and change things.
1. Don’t deny or gaslight anything they share with you about how hard their life is. The pain is real. Treat it like it’s real and don’t belittle them for having a moment when it feels like too much to manage.
2. Don’t try to sugar-coat how good their life might be if they choose to hang on a little longer. Don’t even pretend that you know that they are better off alive than dead. You don’t know that and there’s no point in lying about it.
3. Place their dignity and autonomy at the centre. They get to make their own choices and you are not in control of what they choose. You might not like what they choose, but it’s their life and their choice.
4. Offer them kindness, presence, and listening. Ask them questions that honour their humanity and let them know that, if nothing else, in this moment they are being seen.
5. Consider it simply as one moment and one choice in that moment. Maybe they can choose not to die in this moment. Maybe they can hang on for one more moment. Maybe they can go for a walk with you and you can chat about your families for awhile and that is enough for this moment. The rest of their lives is beyond the scope of your conversation.
6. Be brave enough to open your heart to them, at least a little (if/when appropriate). You’ve found them in a vulnerable position, and they will likely be sensitive to judgement. Let them know that you are as human as they are and your life is full of imperfections too.
7. Shut down your inclination to try to be a hero. You are not the star of this show. Do what you can, and, if possible, try to get them to somewhere safe where support is available to them, but keep your ego in check and don’t try to fix their life. It’s not yours to fix.
8. Find other people who can help, if possible, but be prepared to stand up for the person’s right to their autonomy and dignity. Some people will be inclined toward judgement and/or trying to control the situation, and you might serve the hurting person the most by being an advocate for their right to be treated kindly.
9. Pay attention to how you’re being triggered by what’s happening and do your best to soothe yourself so that your own fears, grief, anxiety, trauma, etc. are not projected onto the situation. For the moment that this person needs you, try to make it about them, and then make sure you look after yourself later.
10. When the moment is over, give your body and heart heaps of tenderness and soothing (and reach out to others to talk about it if you need to) so that the trauma of that moment doesn’t settle into you. If the person chooses to end their life regardless of what you did or said, don’t take that on – you did the best you could and they made their own choice. Don’t be afraid to get professional help to figure out how to deal with what happened.
Friends, I hope you’re never faced with such a situation, but if you are, I hope that you will trust that whatever kindness you are able to offer is enough. And don’t forget to extend that kindness to yourself as well.
The first time it happened, I was five months pregnant with our first baby.
It started with panic attacks. My then-husband was starting a new job with greater responsibility and, coupled with the expectancy of fatherhood, he was feeling overwhelmed and anxious and started missing work. We tried to get him help – I took him to a psychologist and checked him into an overnight mental health facility when the panic attacks got really bad. I thought things were shifting, but I was wrong.
One morning, after a couple of weeks of stress leave, he got ready for work in the morning, kissed me good-bye, and headed to the office. I was relieved. Maybe this rough spot was finally over. I left for work, assuming we were shifting back into “life as normal”.
A couple of hours later, I phoned his office to check how he was doing. “He didn’t come in today,” his boss told me. “He phoned earlier and said he couldn’t do it.”
I panicked. Where was he? Why had he told me he was going to work when he wasn’t? What was he hiding?
The rest of that long day was a blur of phone calls and tears and hand-wringing that included a car ride out to his favourite fishing hole with my mom to see if he was there. He wasn’t.
Some time that evening, I got a phone call that he was at the hospital. After multiple suicide attempts (that involved a knife and bottles of pills), he’d woken up in his car, realized that, if all of that effort hadn’t killed him, perhaps he was meant to live after all, and drove himself to the hospital. He was rushed into surgery to patch up the damage he’d done and to make sure that none of his internal injuries would be fatal.
The second time it happened, I was “pregnant” with a different kind of baby – I was just about to quit my job to start my own business. Fifteen years had passed (years which included the births of our four children and the loss of one of them), he’d gone back to school to get a university degree, and was finally in a job that looked like it would be permanent enough to support our family while I launched a business.
Once again, a new job with new responsibilities caused the panic attacks to start happening. Once again, we tried to get help. And once again, I got the phone call that he’d taken a lot of pills and needed to be taken to the hospital. (This time, there was no knife involved.)
This time, instead of recuperation time for his physical injuries, there was a very difficult week’s stay in a psychiatric ward. And this time, I had to juggle the needs of three children, trying to keep their lives as close to normal as possible, while driving back and forth to the hospital to support him.
At this point, if you’ve been reading my work long enough, you might be thinking that I’ll be offering “tips on holding space for someone with mental illness”, but that’s not what this post is about. Instead, this post is about me, the former caregiver and advocate of that person with mental illness. And it’s about all of those who, like me, have had to hold space for people with mental illness.
Because when/if we hold space for people with mental illness, we have to practice radically holding space for ourselves too.
It’s taken me a long time to process the impact that those two suicide attempts (as well as the many times when I was worried it might happen again) have had on me. It wasn’t, in fact, until the marriage ended five years after the second attempt, that I finally acknowledged the toll it had taken on me.
Last week, when social media blew up over the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, I, like many others, was triggered by the stories. They brought back a flood of memories, accompanied by grief, fear, self-doubt, anger, and all of those other big emotions that are part of what a caregiver/advocate has to carry. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t have time to write a blog post last week, because it would have been a more triggered version of what I want to say. This one comes with a little more reflection.
Both of the times my former husband attempted suicide, my adrenalin kicked in and I went into warrior/mama-bear mode. I protected, I nurtured, I fought flawed health-care systems, I ran the household, I negotiated with psychiatrists, and I made endless calls trying to get the right kind of support.
While most of us are familiar with the fight, flight, or freeze responses associated with stress/trauma, there’s another reaction that has recently been added to the literature, and that’s what I was experiencing (though I didn’t know it at the time). It’s the “tend and befriend” response that is found more frequently in females than males. “…compared to males, females’ physical aggression and fear-related behaviors are less intense and more ‘cerebral’–they are displayed in response to specific circumstances and are less tied to physiological arousal. So while both sexes share the capacity for fight or flight, females seem to use it less.”
Researchers found that, during tough times, stressed females spend significantly more time tending to vulnerable offspring than males.“They reasoned that the adaptive value of fighting or fleeing may be lower for females, who often have dependent young and so risk more in terms of reproductive success if injured or dislocated. And females of many species form tight, stable alliances, possibly reflecting an adaptive tendency to seek out friends for support in times of stress.” (Both quotes are from this article. And here’s a link to a research paper about it.)
There’s a tricky thing about trauma, though, that I didn’t understand back then. If the trauma isn’t adequately released at the time, it roots itself in the body and, from then on, whenever a stimulus brings up a body memory of the trauma event, the body responds exactly as it did during the trauma. In other words, though there were only two suicide attempts in our twenty-two year marriage, there were a LOT of stimuli that triggered my “tend and befriend” response (as well as my less prominent fight/flight/freeze). The mental illness of my partner didn’t simply disappear in the in-between times, so any time there were hints of it showing up, although I didn’t consciously think “he’s going to attempt suicide again”, my body responded as though that were true.
Though “tend and befriend” might seem like a more gentle, healthy response to stress than fight, flight, or freeze, I can tell you that it often is not, especially when it’s a triggered response and is unnecessary in that moment. When it showed up, for example, when I was exhausted and yet still had to go into warrior/mama-bear mode on behalf of my children, it drove me to burnout. And when it showed up at the expense of my own well-being (ie. protecting my then-husband rather than looking out for my own interests), it nearly killed me and left me vulnerable to abusive behaviour and manipulation.
It was so present, in fact, that it took several years longer than it should have for me to end the failing marriage. I was so afraid that the marriage breakdown would cause him to attempt suicide again and that my children would have to bear the grief of that, that I held the marriage together much longer than I should have. I was so used to assuming that I was responsible for his emotions and the way they impacted my children, that I couldn’t imagine the world functioning any other way. It took a lot of work for me to release myself of that responsibility. Even three years later, I can be unreasonably triggered by a simple text message from him.
Several years ago (before the marriage ended and after my mom died), I was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue. I was exhausted. My heightened state of alertness and responsibility meant that my adrenal glands had been overproducing for so long that I could barely function anymore. I started taking supplements and tried to change my diet and sleep patterns, but it wasn’t until my marriage ended and the stimulus was largely removed from my day-to-day existence that I finally started to feel like sleep was replenishing me and I wasn’t among the walking dead anymore.
It’s not gone, though. There are still stimuli that trigger the same response in me. When, for example, my children’s emotional meltdowns or panic attacks are similar to their dad’s, I get triggered into the same anxiety and the same tend and befriend response. I rush too quickly to fix things and I don’t always wait for those involved to take responsibility for doing their own emotional work. I’m getting better at recognizing it and finding ways to self-sooth so that it’s not destructive to me or my children, but I’m not foolish enough to think the problem is fixed. I’m still actively working to heal it and release it from my body.
How then, do we as caregivers and advocates stay in the work for people we love without burning ourselves out or resorting to destructive patterns? How do we hold space for ourselves when we find ourselves holding space for those with mental illness?
Here are some thoughts on that…
Recognize the trauma/stress that you are carrying. Unfortunately, it can often be our own strength, and our internal narratives of how we “can handle anything” that contribute to our downfall. If we don’t recognize the impact on our bodies of the trauma that’s being caused by a loved one’s mental illness, it roots itself in our bodies and can become an unhealthy, subconscious response to even the slightest stimuli. This denial can cause burnout, addiction, and destructive behaviour if not addressed.
Care for your body. This is important, because your body is the container that holds the trauma. Go for whatever body treatments help you to release what you’re holding – massage, reiki, craniosacral, EMDR, acupuncture, etc. And take care of yourself with healthy food and movement. Pay attention to the signals your body sends you, because your body may be letting you know that you’re carrying too much. (Take it from someone who’s wrestling with how my weight may be a signal my body’s been sending me about the trauma.)
Resist the urge to take on responsibility for anyone else’s emotional or mental health. You can not fix them. You can not make them happy. You can not even ensure that a person will not attempt to take their own life. You can support them and hold space for them (if you are not becoming too damaged in the process), but the outcome is not on you. Even if, in your desperation, you said what you’re pretty sure was the WRONG thing just before the suicide or attempt (which I did), the outcome wasn’t your fault. Let that go.
Get help. Don’t be ashamed to reach out to friends, family, professionals, etc. You can’t do this alone and you shouldn’t. Sometimes it’s as simple as having a friend who will let you cry in their presence so that you can release what’s bottled up inside. Or asking a family member to step in to care for the person with mental illness. And don’t hesitate to hire a trauma professional to get to the deeper place of healing (or look for social services support, if you don’t have the financial resources).
Know when to walk away. For those of us with a strong tend-and-befriend reflex, it’s really, really hard to walk away from someone who’s hurting, even when we’re being destroyed in the process. But consider the possibility that the person you’re supporting may actually be better off on their own, learning to walk in the world without the crutch you’ve offered them. Consider that your triggered tend-and-befriend response, though it’s comfortable and familiar to them, might actually be to their detriment as well as your own. And also… consider that they may be manipulating you (knowingly or unknowingly) to get you to stay.
Create and hold the boundaries you need in order to stay healthy.Again, this is especially hard for anyone caught in the tend-and-befriend patterns. We want to make sure everyone else is cared for before we care for ourselves, because that’s what we believe will serve our overactive nervous system. But an un-boundaried life will destroy you. Practice saying no to the small things so that you can work up the courage to say no to the big things.
Pay attention to how seemingly healthy responses may actually be unhealthy ones. Whenever I kicked into tend-and-befriend response, I always thought I was doing the right thing, tending to and protecting those I was responsible for, and sacrificing my own interests for theirs. But those responses were masking what was going on underneath and they were setting patterns into play that have taken years to release.
There is nothing easy about this, and if you find yourself in a place where you must hold space for someone with mental illness, know this… I see you. I witness how hard you are working. I know the tears you cry into your pillow at the end of the day. I get it and I hope that you will find the support you need so that you will not be destroyed by this.
Please, take care of yourself. The world needs you.
There is much being said in the media and in our social media feeds about suicide and mental illness. Some of it is pure lament, some of it is an attempt at having more open conversations about these hard things, some of it is honest sharing about what it’s like to be on the precipice, and some of it is completely wrongheaded and cruel.
And then there is the stuff in between the good and the bad – those feeble (and admittedly often wrong-headed) attempts to be helpful, to fix this and somehow put the world back in order. To convince those in the darkness that we really want them to live.
“Suicide is selfish.” “Choose life.” “Choose joy.” “Think of the people you’re leaving behind.”
For those who’ve been anywhere near the place where Robin Williams was earlier this week, these statements can trigger you and do exactly the opposite of what they’re meant to accomplish. You know how useless it is to assume you really have any rational choice when the darkness takes over your mind. You know you can’t just “snap out of it”. You know you’re not really being selfish when you’ve become convinced the world would be a better place without you.
As one of those people who’s said some of those wrong things in her life… can you please find it in your heart to forgive us? Forgive us, but don’t let us off the hook. Tell us what we should say instead. Tell us how we should show up for you. Tell us how we can show our love in helpful ways.
Because some of us are desperate. Some of us are standing on the shore, holding the only thing we think might be a lifeline, making every feeble attempt we can to toss it into the raging current to pull you back to shore.
Sometimes we throw the wrong lifeline and we hit you on the head instead.
When my beloved first slipped into the darkness that had no name, I had no idea how to handle it. Five months pregnant with our first child, and completely unprepared and ill-equipped to support someone who didn’t himself understand what he was going through, I can tell you this… I said a whole lot of wrong things.
I tried to bargain with him. I tried to make him feel guilty. I tried tough love. I tried anger. I tried desperation. I tried dropping him off at an overnight care facility. I tried hiring the best psychologist I could find. I even tried to hide the phone when I thought he was making the wrong choice and then threw it at him and ran away when I realized I had no control over the situation. Yes, I threw things.
And then the next day, after I’d spent the day driving all over the countryside trying to find him, when he was lying in the hospital bed about to be wheeled into surgery to try to save the life he’d tried to end, I STILL said the wrong thing. Instead of saying “I’m so glad you’re alive. I love you.” I said “Why did you try to leave me? How could you do this to me and our baby?”
Because I didn’t know what else to say to convince him to stay. Because I didn’t want to be alone.
Fifteen years later, when he slipped back into the darkness, we thought we were better prepared. We thought he couldn’t possibly slip so far again. We got help. He talked to the right people. He promised he would never, ever try to end his life again.
And then one day I was rushing him to the hospital in another desperate attempt to save the life he tried to end. Again.
And STILL I said the wrong things. Because I was angry. Because I was desperate. Because I didn’t know better. Because I loved him.
Despite all of my mistakes, he found a way to forgive me. And he got better. And he worked, once again, at staring his demons in the face. And we worked at patching our marriage back together.
Because in all of that – in all of my blundering attempts to help him – he saw that it was love that made me do it. And in the mix of the wrong things, I also said some right things. And he says now that I saved his life.
It might happen again – to him or to someone I love. (Please God NO!) And I’ll probably still say some of the wrong things. Hopefully I’ll also say more right things than wrong. Hopefully love will be strong enough to tip the scales.
So I beg you – if you are one of those people being triggered by the wrong things being said – please help us. Please let us know where to stand and where to throw the rope. I know you can’t communicate it in the middle of your darkness, or you would. But if you’re currently not in the darkness and remember what it’s like, talk to us. Tell us what people said that were the right things. Tell us how to love you.
Because we love you. And we’re desperate.
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