Mutual aid groups for suicide survivors, a "light in the dark"

• Suicide grief Fight against pain, stigma and loneliness

• Interview "No one decides to raise the flag of suicide prevention"

• Accompanying "Let me talk about my loved one's suicide"

Suicide still remains a

silenced

reality

. The lack of social support that usually surrounds this type of loss can drag those who suffer it into an even more difficult grief to overcome. It is common for survivors to hide the reason for their death, as well as for acquaintances or friends to walk away in the face of a disturbing reality, about which they do not want or know how to speak and that the name of the person who has died stops being pronounced. It is made invisible and with it also those who are left fighting against pain.

This is a confused death.

Survivors are relentlessly

haunted

by

whys and emotions such as anger, guilt or feelings of abandonment

.

They need to give shape to what they feel with the word to be able to accept it and be heard

without judgment or advice

, but due to cultural, religious and social taboos they have fewer opportunities to do so.

You have to authorize feelings, they are very mixed and of deep violence because we are very affected

Carles Alastuey, vice president of 'After Suicide'.

His nephew died at the age of 19.

Family support and specialized professional care by psychologists and / or psychiatrists are a key help to be able to integrate the loss into the new life, but there is another space of enormous therapeutic value that is becoming increasingly important in this recovery process. , the

mutual aid groups (GAM)

, an increasingly extensive support network in Spain in which people affected by the same situation share emotions and experiences.

It was in the United States in the 70s when these encounters of relatives in mourning for this tragic experience were born.

In Spain, the first association for survivors, 'After Suicide', was created nine years ago in Barcelona, ​​offering many people a place of respect and understanding towards their deep suffering.

"We carry out hundreds of individual shelters. What we do is normalize, help them

understand that it has not only happened to them

, that we have gone through that experience and authorize the feelings, which are very mixed, of deep violence because we are very affected ", explains

Carles Alastuey

, vice president and uncle of

Miquel

, a young man who decided to take his own life when he was 19 years old. When the person feels ready, they are offered the possibility of participating in a mutual help group, where a

"game of mirrors is fundamental"

and in which others "talk about the same thing that happens to you".

The WHO defends in its program on suicide prevention (Supre) the innumerable benefits of this shared space: it offers a person going through very intense emotional pain an

environment of empathy

,

compassion

, the

hope

of regaining 'normality' and

control

about your life,

resources

to face difficult anniversaries or special occasions, new

ways of facing

problems, a place where you can express

fears and concerns

and where you accept the free expression of pain

without being judged

.

Associations, phones and other resources for grieving family members

Drop down

- Guide for relatives in mourning for suicide in the Community of Madrid

- PREVENSUIC: Smartphone application aimed at family members, professionals and people at risk.

- APSAV.

Association for the Prevention of Suicide.

Green Hugs.

Asturias.

- AFASIB (Familiars i Amics Supervivents per suïcidi de Les Illes Balears (Balearic Islands)

-AIDATU.

Basque Association of Suicidiology

- APSAS: Association for Suicide Prevention and Survivor Assistance.

(Gerona)

- APSU: Association for the prevention and support affected by suicide (Cdad. Valenciana)

- ASAM: (Burgos).

- BESARKADA-Hug: Navarra.

- BIZIRAUN: Basque Country

-BIDEGUIN: Basque Country

- After the Suicide: (Barcelona)

- Alaia Foundation (Madrid)

- Metta-Hospice Foundation (Valencia)

- Goizargi: Navarra

- Survivors of León Group.

- There is Exit, Suicide and Duel: (Cantabria)

- Papageno (Andalusia).

633 169 129 survivientes@papageno.es

- Ubuntu (Seville)

- Association Light in the dark (Tenerife)

-Re-Live Association (Tenerife)

- National Network of Expert Psychologists in Suicide Psychologists Princess 81 SLP: 657650594.

- Telephone Against Suicide- Asociación la Barandilla (Madrid): 911.385.385.

- Telephone of Hope: 717.003.717.

- Suicide Prevention Telephone (Barcelona): 900.92.55.55.

In mutual aid groups, it is a person who has suffered the death of a loved one in these circumstances, a survivor who is called a 'facilitator', who becomes an

"invisible" guide to

grief. This work is what

Cristina Romero

delivers

from Seville every month for two hours in a meeting promoted by the

Ubuntu

and

Papageno

associations

and in which a psychologist does a professional accompaniment without directly acting as a therapist. Support is not limited to these spaces but is offered whenever a member of the group requires it.

David, playing during his childhood. He had an enormous sensitivity, which he expressed especially playing the piano. He took his own life at the age of 30. FAMILY ALBUM

One word that is repeated when listening to survivors participating in these meetings is that they offer

"light in the dark

.

"

And Cristina Romero radiates it. She is perceived by those who know her through the tenderness of her eyes and her smile, in her intact passion at 69 years of age to learn, in her full attention to listening, in her dedication to the other without conditions and, especially, in her immense

ability to accept pain

. And yours has been immense. She feels that she has always been

"embraced by life and death."

At 46 years old and with two young children, she "began to feel bad" emotionally and at 52 she was diagnosed with a depression for which they had to give her total disability.

Suffering consumed her, physically and mentally. The idea of ​​"wanting to die" was always present. She never tried and now she is deeply grateful that she did not do it because thanks to that she was able to take care of her youngest son,

David

. At the age of 25, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and she found the strength to "regain control" and help him. He did it body and soul. They were years of much pain and love shared. They survived the disease together, with immense complicity and affection. Because of her depression, Cristina knew what it meant for her son to feel unable to cope with life and she was by his side to try to make it easier for him. But David couldn't go on. And she, who already thought she had gone through hell with her own illness, had to face a worse one.

As in so many other families, hers was silenced about suicide when her youngest son died, but she

"needed to talk about David

.

"

He sought that space in therapy and in the GAMs, which he already knew, having previously found support in one of them due to the mental illness that he had been diagnosed with 10 years earlier. Today she offers active listening and understanding to others who have suffered the suicide of someone they love.

"Being victims there is a greater closeness. We know what it is about," he explains.

And as far as it goes, is that one suffers a huge grief for which there are no deadlines, that you have to

overcome the "panic to feel the pain"

to move forward and that a lot of "patience" is required: "People want to do the dueling career in two days, not two years. "

'Emi' hugs her sister Sara as children.

She has always had a deep admiration for him.

He died at the age of 20. FAMILY ALBUM

"When you have an event as traumatic as suicide, you

block the pain and you do not want to feel it and you disconnect from yourself

, from your essence. Some say 'is that what I want is not to suffer, why am I going? to go around 'and other people

get scared because they don't know what they are feeling,

"describes Cristina Romero. His group is made up of 14 women and one man. Some colleagues feel that they lead a

"double life"

being broken inside and in need of crying and, at the same time, having to "swallow the pain" and play "another role."

During these encounters, it is about helping them to give "space" to their suffering.

There are people in the groups who did not do it at the time of death and 15 years later they have the need to process it again to heal.

"Success is not a matter of the number of people who attend, but of

how much they have been helped on their way

to become new people after the suicide of a loved one", summarizes the WHO, which specifies seven key points in this place of meeting:

Tell his story.

One of the first objectives is to motivate each person to express their experience and that of the person who died without being forced.

Look back

.

Make the participants aware of how they were when they came to the group and how they are now.

Reach out

.

One sign of progress is feeling the need to help others who have had a similar loss.

Don't 'get bogged down' with unanswered questions

.

All the survivors have doubts that they will never resolve.

The most difficult is why did he do it?

With no time

.

Each survivor requires their time in this grieving process.

Give hope

.

It helps to see that others have managed to mitigate that devastating anguish.

Tears

.

Crying is frequent and welcome in support groups because it helps heal.

The hugs too.

Survivor associations such as 'After Suicide' (Barcelona) or 'Live Again' (Tenerife) usually promote these heart-to-heart meetings so that people who are already in a more advanced phase of mourning are encouraged to form their own support networks and extend them throughout the country.

The

Telephone of Hope

is also involved in this work

, a symbol of listening for 50 years in the country.

Last year 160,646 people dialed

717 003 717

, 38% more than in 2019. Suicide is one of the reasons for seeking help, either because they assault ideas of death or are already on the verge of it or because some family member has taken his own life. Many survivors do so because they knew that their loved one had previously obtained support in a phone call in a time of crisis and now they are the ones who are lost in grief. It is an anonymous service and that helps them to talk about a reality that is still stigmatized without fear of being pointed out. The name does not matter but "

the suffering of the person

", explains

Magdalena Pérez

, psychologist, volunteer at the Esperanza Telephone Line and responsible for the suicide prevention area at the national level.

The conversations reflect the

great weight of guilt and shame

they feel and the person who attends them tries to "help them get out and manage it" and guides them so that they can find resources for the grieving process.

"It is essential to validate the feelings, the experience, listen without judging," he

says.

All the talks you have with another survivor feed you and give you strength

Carlos Soto.

He lost his daughter Ariadna at the age of 18.

Suicide grief is within a type called "

unauthorized

" and suffers limitations in its development "because it can be easily denied or hidden."

"The percentage of survivors who commit suicide is not high because there are many other factors" that influence the act of taking their own life, but there is a "very high experience of mourning and suffering for a long time," explains this grief expert.

The fact that this wound is shown makes the pain lessen over time.

And the survivors' associations have, in his opinion, a "great value" in this path of healing.

Ariadna and her father, Carlos Soto joke on camera.

They had a special connection.

She died at the age of 18.

Carlos Soto

and his wife,

Olga

, took two years to read a book again after the death of their only daughter,

Ariadna

. Seeing that another person who had gone through a situation similar to theirs had already been able to recover some activity from their previous life made them hope that this suffering would diminish in intensity with the passage of time.

"All the talks you have with another survivor feed you and give you strength.

If there are people who have been grieving for a longer time and have been doing it a little better, it leads you to see that a day will come when you are not desperate, sad but not desperate. And it is a fundamental difference. ”These meetings are often a meeting point, but the bonds that are created are so strong that the support network extends beyond a place and a time.

Sara Bote claims the therapeutic benefit of these meetings that she started in Tenerife: a person who has suffered a loss by suicide in his own skin

"has more sensitivity than any professional"

, "knows how to keep silence" and will never " to have malpractice because they know how to accompany ". In the exchange of experiences and emotions, a network is created with which they support each other to get ahead and even almost family ties are formed. 'Live again' is a hand stretched out against loneliness, so that the name with which he baptized his association five years ago has full meaning.

As a 'facilitator' of the GAM, Cristina encourages the rest of the members to identify their "needs" and fears. "She guides each one to" walk with a bit of certainty that they are doing well "and asks questions of those present to "

open their eyes

, let them see their emotions and question how they see their relationship with the deceased person": What do you feel guilty about? Could you have done something else? What do you get by crushing yourself? Why Do you not value what you have achieved?

The group helps to focus on progress

, however small they seem and that the survivors do not usually perceive.

Cristina tries to make "victimhood, guilt, anger" take on less and less weight in their lives.

And he pulls, when he can, with a sense of humor to "walk farther"

The problem is the lack of acceptance of what happens to me and what happens to another

Cristina Romero.

His son David committed suicide at the age of 30.

Grief, like suffering, is unique to each one. Each survivor takes time in this process of pain and recovery. In his opinion,

personality

also marks the way of living it. "If you are proactive, you will have more capacity to face the facts and that must be achieved from the moment one is born working on empathy and emotional intelligence. If you are timid, it will cost you a lot of work. There are people who withdraw into themselves and they don't want to go out, "he explains. She has always assumed the reins of her life and her suffering, without holding anyone responsible. Seeing in the groups that other people have managed to mitigate that devastating anguish gives hope that it is possible to get there one day.

They yearn for Cristina's capacity for gratitude, which overrides any iota of anger. With David the meaning of her life left and she has had to rebuild little by little with the deep emptiness left by his absence. There is one word that occupies everything when he speaks of him, of his sensitivity, of his need to "thrill" her by playing the piano, of his long talks on psychology, and that is gratitude. "If your son tells you the best thing in the world is you, what else can I hope for?" She says with the fullness of feeling the intense connection she had with him.

Cristina has always been aware of others.

And on this path of mourning, there is a question that surprises him.

There is no talk of the suffering of the person who has taken his or her own life.

Everything revolves around one's own.

"Why do we never think about the pain that is gone?

" He wonders.

The problem is the lack of empathy and acceptance, he says, "of what happens to me and what happens to another."

Association 'Back to live' (Tenerife).

The absence of both can lead to very deteriorated family ties after the tragedy. "Suicide grief is so toxic that we tend to see it only in ourselves and we lose the perception that others have also lost that person. We distance ourselves because we are very fragile and we close ourselves off," says Carles Astoley. In 'After Suicide' they try to have a "non-homogeneous" representation with the participation of people who have lost their father, mother, son, brother ... so that it

is a reflection of each member's own family

and power discover different points of view.

The support offered by the associations is an "essential resource that is not being covered by the institutions," laments Magdalena Pérez. "There is more and more awareness, but much is lacking at the public and institutional level," he warns. Ten people die a day in Spain by suicide and it is the leading cause of unnatural death, but despite this there is no national prevention plan and the main initiatives to address it are regional or local. As an example,

there is only one public

suicide

prevention telephone number

(900 92 55 55) set up by a Barcelona City Council. For a long time, experts and those affected have demanded the creation of a telephone similar to 016 to assist victims of sexist violence.

How does a person know when to stop attending meetings?

The WHO recommends trusting your "own instinct". If attending the group has become routine, not helping you better understand your feelings and emotions, it is time to move on on your own. The march should be shared with the group as positive evidence that the process is working.

Another sign of healing is

feeling the need to help

.

"If mourning evolves positively in this rebuilding process from absolute ruin, a very generous attitude is usually produced with the people around us, we become very sensitive," explains Carles Astoley.

The most human dimension arises from a huge tragedy by taking refuge in the gratification of being able to help to move forward.

That is the essence of Cristina.

"I have felt the caretaker of my son and now I say to myself, why do I live if I lack a reason," she explains.

He has found him in his group and he always says it to him with affection:

"You are the engine of my life".

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