A Parent's Guide for Suicidal and Depressed Teens Read Online Free Page A

head.
Fear
All parents fear losing their children, some probably more than others. This is a normal fear. We have put so much energy into their lives. Whether we've been "good" or "bad" parents, all of us have given much. The process of raising children makes us attached to them, whether our relationship is smooth or stormy. We are attached and involved.

 

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At the time I think my fear was more intense because I'd lost my younger brother to an overdose when he was twenty. Nobody knows if his death was a suicide. The grief over this loss has often made me fearful and overprotective of my love relationships. I've heard it said that after the first death there is no other. That is true, but it may also be said that after the first death, you want there to be no other.
I had to grieve the loss of my brother in order to keep the fear of death from controlling my behavior with my daughter. In the process of this work, I discovered that she had romanticized my brother's death. She saw death as a hippie heaven where people sit around in the clouds drinking tea and listening to Cat Stevens. I shuddered to think that this fantasy had descended down the generations, that the true cause of his death had become a family secret. I was the only one in my family willing to talk about his life and death. The rest of them remained silent.
A year into Rachel's and my work in therapy I told her, "You may think I miss my brother and that's true. I never get over missing him. But I'm also mad at him. I'm mad because he left me. He was the one person in the family most like me. I'll never stop missing him because he's not here. And if you choose to die I will not romanticize your life, I'll be pissed."

 

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Take some quiet time and ask yourself about your fear of death. What experiences have you had with death that may add a charge to your present fear?
Anger
My anger at the idea of losing Rachel feels healthy because I can express and release it. But often anger is like a shotgun feelingwhen we're angry we may not know what it's all about. You may be angry at an ex-spouse who hasn't supported your child. You may be angry at the ''system." You may be angry at your suicidal son or daughter for scaring you.
If you're walking around angry at everything without expressing, focusing, and releasing these feelings, anger is going to prevent you from dealing appropriately with your child's pain. When you're angry you need to explore the other feelings that are linked to it and feel them, then deal with each issue one by one so the anger doesn't block your response to other events in your life.
Fear of Failure: Shame
Parents of suicidal teens suffer a double-dose of shameful feelings. On the one hand, much of our sense of self-esteem is connected to the idea of

 

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being good parents. On the other hand, suicide is often seen by our culture as a failure of the parents. We stand to lose not only our own esteem, but also that of the society at large. That's how I saw it. I felt that if Rachel killed herself, surely I had failed to fill some huge void in her that I had not even known about. At first I thought, ''How can I live if she dies? How can I ever do anything again?" But then I began to feel it was a reflection on me. I felt ashamed when she even talked about suicide. It seemed like a complete repudiation of my life and values. Gradually as my daughter got help, and as I learned how to talk about suicide directly, the shame around the issue diminished. It had less power over me. Now when we deal with emotional issues, shame is not a dominant part of my response to her.
Religious Perfectionism
I was raised to be a good girl in a rigid, religious family. This religious perfectionism led me to think a person has to keep going no matter what. In short, good girls don't kill themselves. One might say my family of origin was religiously abusive: it praised perfectionism, excessive self-sacrifice, denying one's feelings, and living how