Customer Reviews

Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

In December my 43 yr. old Mother comitted suicide. Words cannot describe the shock, guilt and loss one feels. I certainly know that I have never felt anything that painful. I don't have any siblings so it fell on me to make all of the arrangements and to try to somehow sort this out. This book explained everything I was feeling was 'okay' and 'normal' from the sleep loss to the nightmares to the guilt I feel every single day. It continuously helps me feel not so alone. The hardest part is that due to the nature of my Mom's death I am very hesitant to talk about it which does, in my opinion, limit the greiving process. I looked for books about this topic at my local bookstores and couldn't find much, KUDOS to Amazon.com for having such a wide selection and to the author for providing insight and comfort in my time of need. I recommend this book as a must read for survivor's of suicide.

Those left behind in the wake of a suicide do not need nor cannot take in a mass of psychological jargon, statistical abstracts or pie charts and graphs. What they need is the reassurance that they are not alone, that there is a community of compassionate, sensitive people which will welcome them as they try to absorb and accept their loss. "Silent Grief" provides a real service in helping the reader to sort out his feelings and to begin to make sense of the senseless.

Authors Lukas and Seiden provide many real life examples of the behaviors of suicide survivors. These should be helpful to anyone who has lost a loved one to suicide, no matter how long ago the event occurred, no matter how close emotionally the survivor was to the deceased, even if they were not family.

Although they do not mention Elisabeth Kubler-Ross by name, Lukas and Seiden do detail her famous five stages of grief, (from her 1969 book, "On Death and Dying") and explain that these emotions and behaviors can and often do run deeper in suicide survivors than in those mourning the death, say, of an elderly person who dies of natural causes. The stages of grief and the order in which they are experienced are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. Not everyone goes through all the stages, regardless of the intensity or nature of their loss. But there are suicide survivors who get stuck in one stage of grief never to leave it, not for years or even decades. "Silent Grief" discusses not only why this happens, but the ways in which the suicide survivor can become "unstuck," and finally achieve acceptance of his loss.

To work one's way through the process of grieving can take years. I lost a brother to suicide in 1995. He was only 31. The authors discuss deep, unrelenting depression as a primary cause of almost every suicide. This my brother experienced for years, and it seemed resistant to treatment. Now, although there are days when I feel his presence acutely, and other days when it seems as if his death just occurred, I did eventually reach the acceptance phase, but it took about six years. (I don't know if this was a long or short period of time, nor even if there are any meaningful yardsticks.)

I don't believe it is the intention of Lukas and Seiden to encourage the reader in accelerating the grieving process. Rather, their many real-life examples make it easier to understand the complexities, the patience and the backtracking that will inevitably mark the road to recovery. It has been said that while a suicide survivor will never get over it, he can eventually get used to it. Only by completing this process can acceptance of this unimaginably painful event be achieved. "Silent Grief" offers hope that one day acceptance can be achieved, and that the process may be arduous, but reaching this vital last stage of the journey does not mean abandoning the memory of or forgetting the one who died.

Those who need to read "Silent Grief" know who they are, but it may be very difficult for them to pick it up. Perhaps a loved one can introduce them to its wisdom, compassion and hope. The survivor needs all of these, and "Silent Grief" is a safe and comforting place to begin.

In 1989, my baby brother committed suicide. It has been said that, "Death is Final!" Death by Suicide never ends for the survivors. I have a wonderful friend, who gave me Silent Grief. It was a constant friend, which walked me through some very heartbreaking times. It is like a friend who holds your hand and lets you know that it is always there, and you are not alone. The way the book is presented is a great help. People are different and need different support. Once you read it, you can pick it up and zero in on the areas that can be of more help to you as an individual. With the help of this book, I've realized that even though the haunting of Clyde's death will be forever with me, life does go on and the pain eases. Thank you to the author for such a great contribution to our world.

Do it for yourself. I didn't know what to do when my teenage son died. People don't understand suicide and it carried so many stigmas I was afraid to talk about it. With no family support and my husband unwilling/unable to discuss this issue I found this book was my companion and consolation. It helped me understand emotions that had me so confused. It gave credence to my own emotions which I tried to hide. No one ever "gets over it", but I did learn to cope with the help of sage advice from books like this. Another healer for me was, "After Suicide", but "Silent Grief" was the best. After such a tragedy trying to focus on reading was really difficult so be patient. I found this book is so easy to follow. It related to me when no one else could.

I hope it helps others just as much as it did me. I realized what is was to "bargain".

I was somewhat puzzled by the thrust of the authors' chapters on what they call "Bargains." They seem to think that these feelings and thoughts, which I would regard as quite natural to anybody whose loved one had died by suicide, are harmful. True, they say that these "bargains" have positive and negative effects, but it seemed as I read that Lukas and Seiden didn't really accept the authenticity of the feelings and focussed more on why they were dysfunctional.

The first "bargain" is what they call "Scapegoating." This would be anger at people and institutions that might have contributed to the loved one's decision to end his life. Somehow this (and many other books) ask us survivors to squelch our anger. The only person to blame is the dead victim himself, they say. Thus the families who sue schools for allowing indiscriminate bullying are somehow "wrong." Doctors who ignore danger signs or prescribe dangerous drugs are not in the least to blame, according to Lukas and Seidin. Family or friends who leave firearms or poison around a suicidal person are not to be blamed.

I encounter this "magnanimous" (to the guilty) advice in other self-help books on grief, but it seems to me a form of censorship. Why should we, as survivors of a brutal loss, suppress our anger or turn it against the suicide victim himself, who can no longer defend himself or his reputation?

The next half-inappropriate response is prolonged mourning. I'm not quite sure how this is to be avoided. If there is a huge hole in the survivor's life, it would be nice if the authors offered consolation instead of just saying it's wrong to mourn for a long time.

The next "bargain" is feeling guilty. So, as well as considering how our actions could have prevented the death, we also have to feel guilty about feeling guilty!

Then we have "cutting off." This is apparently anhedonia, lack of the energy to move forward. I grant you that this is a damaging state of mind, but no advice is offered to avoid it, except talk therapy. However, in the talk therapy, we must beware of expressing anger, extended mourning, or guilt, if I'm reading the earlier "bargains" correctly. Maybe I'm playing devil's advocate here, but the authors seem to want us to trim our emotional response and don't seem to allow much leeway to feelings that I think are quite natural.

Suicide is the next inappropriate "bargain," and here I'm entirely with the authors, except that if in talk therapy you are told repeatedly that you aren't supposed to be angry at people you regard as guilty, you're not supposed to mourn for a long time, and you're not supposed to feel lackluster as a result of depression, what the heck are you supposed to talk to the therapist about?

The final bargain is what they call "running," and I think this must be the opposite of prolonged mourning. You aren't supposed to change things in your life, run away from a bad family situation, a harmful job, or a town that reminds you of your bleakness and loss. You're supposed to man up and face these things. But my experience with a number of friends who have lost spouses is that "running" -- i.e. moving into a new circle of friends, new job, new city even -- is what enables the person to have a decent life with some hope of future happiness.

So, I may be overstating these objections, but I'd like to see more understanding and less disapproval. For heaven's sake, if we feel angry, why shouldn't we be allowed our feelings? If we are allowed neither to wallow in guilt nor try to batter through and find a new life, where are we? If we aren't supposed to repress our feelings and at the same time we're not supposed to lie around depressed, what is the alternative?

Mind you, I've been in talk therapy, and while my therapist doesn't condone my going on a rampage to avenge my dead son, she also does not tell me that I "shouldn't" be angry at people who threatened to kill him and who destroyed his self-esteem. She allows me to have my feelings. These feelings are valid, not a way of covering up the "real" feelings, whatever on earth those might be.

This isn't the whole book, of course. I was very touched by the accounts of survivors, although sometimes I felt the authors in their commentary were being censorious of the survivors' reactions.

Saying that feelings have both good and bad sides is effectively asking people to shut down their reactions. Feelings are just feelings. Trying to squelch them because they supposedly are partially bad is not going to comfort a survivor.

As to publicizing suicide and telling family members what happened, I understand that this is something that should be done. I'm not sure a five-year-old should be told, though. How and when to tell, and the compassionate details of an explanation might have featured bigger in the book.

I did like the two authors' accounts of their personal experience, but I was not sure that they should generalize and decide how others "should" feel.

The other good thing about this book is that it has a detailed list of resources. I didn't always agree with what was included and what left out, but at least there was this list.

Thomas Joiner's excellent Myths about Suicide and the more general book, Redfern and Guilbert's The Grieving Garden, were a lot more helpful. Both seemed more grounded in reality, and more empathic. The authors seemed more in touch with victims' and survivors' actual feelings and explored causes and reactions to suicide (and other deaths) without making so many value judgments and recipes for what is realistic or good Both were more descriptive and less prescriptive.

This is a thorough work on suicide and it's aftermath. It is clear,concise,comforting. Full of help for the family and friends;highly recommended.

My son committed suicide. It's very hard to accept. This book has a lot of wisdom. Suicide in such a deliberate act...as a mother it has made me question my entire life. The "why's" are never-ending. I highly recommend this book.

I am a seminary student in Minneapolis, Minnesota and was introduced to this book in a class I took that addressed the issue of Grief in Pastoral Care. For me, this book was transformative. While I have never experienced the grief of losing a loved one to suicide, I have experienced traumatic grief in my life. This book has the gift of speaking to many people who have been traumatized in their grief experience, whether suicide-related or not. I am also a Police Chaplain and have recently been called to minister to four different families who have been impacted by this type of tragic loss. This resource not only helped me in my immediate ministry with the families, but I have used it as resource material for other Police Department Chaplains as well. Thanks to the author, for speaking so honestly about this topic and for helping those of us "on the front lines" educate and by God's infinite grace, perhaps, save lives.

This slim volume was originally published in 1987, with the long-overdue revised version arriving in 2007. Authors Lukas and Seiden acknowledge that in the years between the two editions, the subject of suicide has garnered much more of a public forum, particularly with the advent of the internet. However, they maintain that what hasn't changed is the profound, traumatic effect which suicide has upon those left behind, known here as suicide survivors. This book focuses on those survivors--how they react, the bargains they make in order to survive, and how they can learn to respond and move past their grief. Woven into the book are narrative accounts of many different survivors of suicide, including one of the authors, Lukas, who lost not only his mother but also his aunt, uncle, and eventually his brother to suicide as well.

Because silence often abounds after a suicide, the authors strive to break that silence through freely sharing just what happens to the survivor after someone commits suicide. Common emotions are discussed, including guilt, shame, and denial. In the second part of the book, the authors describe in detail what they term "bargains" that survivors make with respect to the suicide. These bargains allow the survivor to go on living, perhaps reducing their emotional pain, but there is a downside to each bargain made. Examples of bargains include keeping silent, scapegoating, punishing with guilt, cutting off, and the ultimate bargain, committing suicide (estimates suggest that suicide rates for survivors are between 80 and 300 percent higher than those for the general population). In the final section of the book, however, the authors recommend ways for overcoming these bargains through both getting help from and giving help to others. They offer suggestions for talking about the suicide in addition to reviewing basic listening techniques. The book concludes with some useful resources for finding self-help groups as well as suggestions for further reading.

This book is intended specifically neither for suicide survivors nor for professionals, yet it is well-suited to both audiences. Survivors will definitely find kinship--if not comfort--in the many personal stories featured here; they are also likely to feel less isolated and more accepting of their emotional reactions upon learning that they are not alone. Similarly, mental health professionals will benefit by gaining greater insight into and compassion for their clients who are suicide survivors. Overall, a well-done, very readable work for virtually all populations; highly recommended.

Excellent help for me and my family following my fathers suicide. Helped me to understand and not be ridden with guilt.