I SPECIALIZE IN SUICIDE BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT, EDUCATION, COACHING & COUNSELING FOR LOSS SURVIVORS, WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON PARENTS.
Suicide is a death like no other, and those who are left behind to struggle with it must confront a pain like no other.” –Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast
I’m an experienced practitioner of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) and former board member of the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Association (SFBTA), a psychotherapist authorized by the Department of Regulatory Agencies to practice in Colorado since 2017, a professional health coach and chronic pain self-management specialist formerly on staff at Longmont United Hospital, as well as a Certified Positive Psychology Coach (CPPC), qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher, and Contemplative Group & Retreat Leader. I have two master’s degrees, one in science and one in adult education. Since 2005, I have worked with hundreds of people suffering from physical, psychological, and social pain.
More importantly, I’m a father and suicide loss survivor.
In July 2018, I lost my 28-year-old daughter, Beth, a Peace Corps volunteer, to suicide. Since then, I have reoriented my entire personal and professional life around understanding suicide, and working mindfully with suicide bereavement (a form of traumatic social pain). Recently, I finished writing a book about my daughter’s life and death, seeking to answer the question every suicide loss survivor faces, sooner or later: “Why did this happen?”
I am particularly interested in supporting and working with parents who have lost a child (of any age) to suicide, and especially fathers, for whom few resources exist at present.
Many men don’t feel entirely comfortable either in mixed groups with women, or working with female counselors or therapists. Men may grieve in quite different ways than women. Few of us have been socialized to emote or express ourselves like women. Often, there’s no safe place to explore the excruciating reality of this sort of loss. Sometimes, men just need the company of other men. Especially those who have suffered a similar tragedy.
For more about my unusual background, education and experience, please visit my public profile on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jayevalusek
SUICIDE GRIEF IS DIFFERENT
If you’ve lost a loved one to suicide, you know: grief after suicide is unlike anything you’ve ever suffered before. It strips your whole world down to the bones. Your soul is hollowed out like an abandoned building. Light can barely get in. Few people can imagine what you’re going through, or what you may need to survive and rediscover a life worth living.
I get it. I’ve been there. It’s why I do this work.
Of course, any death can be devastating. Is there any real difference? Studies, surveys, interviews, and clinical experience say yes. While suicide bereavement shares common elements with other traumatic losses–especially sudden, unexpected, or violent death–at least four aspects are unique.
- Choice. For one thing, we wrestle with the mind-numbing fact that someone we loved actually chose to die. It didn’t just happen. Whether impulsive or carefully considered and planned, they acted deliberately and decisively to end their own life. The role of will or choice does not apply to accident, disease, homicide, or any other cause of death. This, perhaps more than anything, makes suicide grief fundamentally different than all other losses. We’re haunted by the elusive, yet utterly rational question: Why did they refuse all other options?
- Stigma. Another complication that clouds the unspeakable tragedy of suicide loss is social stigma. For centuries, suicide was considered a crime or a sin, a blot on the person’s character and, by extension, their family and friends. Often, those who are bereaved by suicide are subtly shunned or awkwardly avoided. Many receive less sympathy and social support than people grieving a natural death. To protect the image and reputation of our loved ones, we may deny or conceal the cause of death, which severely complicates the normal mourning processes of celebration and memorialization, further increasing our sense of shame and social isolation.
- Prevention. The widespread assumption that “suicide is 100% preventable” can greatly amplify our suffering, if we believe that we could or should have prevented this particular suicide. We may take on an unbearable burden of guilt and self-blame, or search for the one thing we should have done to forestall this tragedy: If only. If only. The reality is, there are always multiple, interlocking causes. And, after 50 years of research in risk assessment, even psychiatrists cannot predict suicidal behavior much better than a guess or the flip of a coin.
- Diagnosis. Surprisingly, few mental health professionals have training in ordinary grief and loss, much less suicide grief. Unless they know the literature on suicide bereavement, even grief counselors can pathologize otherwise normal emotions–shock, fear, disbelief, yearning, relief, guilt, rage, numbness, feelings of rejection or abandonment, even magical thinking. Many therapists don’t realize the intensity, form, and longevity of these reactions are not abnormal, given the circumstances. Diagnosing grief after suicide as a “mental disorder” can be humiliating and harmful–a condition known as “iatrogenic” (physician-caused) harm.
On several occasions, I found that professionals who had not lost a loved one to suicide were quite damaging to me.” –Participant, research study on men and women bereaved by suicide
My approach to grief draws upon both personal experience and years of work as a pain self-management specialist. Suicide grief is an intense form of psychic pain, which utilizes much the same neural circuitry as somatic pain. Healing, therefore, must mobilize many of the same biological, psychological, and social strategies required to endure and live with any kind of chronic pain.
If no one seems to understand your needs, or your unique ways of grieving and mourning–if your support networks are failing and people are pushing you to “get over it” and “move on,” if you’re struggling with The Why Question, or just taking out your pain and frustration either on yourself or other people–let’s talk.
You are not alone.
To schedule a free 20-minute phone consult, please email me and we’ll find a convenient time to talk. I work with people in person, by phone, or via Zoom. If you live out of state, I cannot work with you as a therapist, but I can engage with you as a grief coach and educator, under a slightly different set of rules and informed consent. Just ask.
Note: For Open Path members, my rate for individual clients is $60/hr (or $80/hr for couples). If your income doesn’t qualify for Open Path membership, I can work with you at my standard rate of $95/hr (or $115/hr for couples). Sorry, I cannot accept insurance.
Visit my website @ bpshealth.org.
