August 20, 2025 • 30 mins
This episode dives into the transformative power of therapy and support groups when navigating the grief of suicide loss or surviving a suicide attempt. Hosts Lisa Sugarman and Gretchen Schoser open up about their personal experiences and highlight the safe, accessible mental health resources that help us keep moving forward—even on our hardest days.
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🎙️ Episode Sponsored by TheHelpHUB.co
This episode is proudly brought to you by TheHelpHUB.co
Struggling with your mental health? Feeling lost, overwhelmed, or just… alone? Well, you're not. Welcome to TheHelpHUB—your online destination for mental health resources, content, and tools to help you navigate whatever mental health challenges you face.
At TheHelpHUB.co, we offer individualized resources tailored to your unique needs and community, with over 16 different categories to find exactly the kind of personalized help you need when you need it most. Even though we all deal with many of the same challenges, we don’t always experience those struggles the same way.
So, we've got you whether you're looking for crisis support, downloadable resources, or an extensive archive of mental health-related articles and videos. From episodes of The Survivors Podcast for suicide loss survivors and lived-experience blogs to interactive tools and professional connections, The Help Hub meets you where you are—and helps you move forward with strength and support.
💙 You don’t have to do this alone. Visit https://www.thehelphub.co today. 💙
📖 Episode Summary
In this raw and compassionate conversation, Lisa and Gretchen open up about the vital roles therapy and support groups have played in their healing journeys. They discuss how community spaces like SafePlace and online support networks are life-changing for those navigating the complex, isolating grief of suicide loss or the aftermath of an attempt. With humor, honesty, and wisdom, they offer listeners hope and guidance for finding the help they deserve.
🧠 Lessons Learned
- Suicide loss and suicide attempt grief are complex and uniquely isolating.
- Therapy and support groups offer more than healing—they provide safety, validation, and community.
- You don’t need to talk to benefit; just being in the room can be transformational.
- Free and low-cost mental health resources exist and are accessible online and in person.
- Support is self-care, and healing starts when you allow yourself to receive it.
⏱️ Episode Chapters
00:00 – Sponsored by TheHelpHUB + Trigger Warning 01:20 – Why Suicide Grief Hits Differently 03:00 – Finding Community in Support Groups 07:00 – The Power of Talking It Out 10:50 – How Therapy Changes the Game 13:00 – Breaking the Stigma: Living with the Truth 16:15 – What Support Feels Like for Suicide Attempt Survivors 19:10 – Therapy as Radical Self-Care 22:30 – Accessing Free & Affordable Mental Health Support 26:00 – What to Expect from Your First Therapy Session 28:00 – Group Support: Healing Through Shared Stories 30:00 – Final Reflections & Hope for the Healing Journey
📚 Resources for Mental Health & Support
🔹 The Survivors Podcast Website – https://thesurvivors.net/ 🔹 The HelpHUB™ – Mental health resources, tools, and support networks – https://www.thehelphub.co/ 🔹 Schoser Talent and Wellness Solutions – Mental wellness coaching & support – https://schosersolutions.com/ 🔹 Sh!t That Goes On In Our Heads – A raw, award-winning mental health podcast – https://goesoninourheads.net/
📲 Follow & Connect With Us
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🎙️ See You Next Week! Stay strong, keep going, and remember: You are enough. 💜
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
The Survivors is brought to you by our friends at the Help Hub. This
podcast mentions suicide, mental illness, grief and loss and may be
triggering for some listeners. So please take care of your mental well being
by pausing or skipping any sections that feel uncomfortable to you. And if
you or someone you know is struggling, please call 988 for support.
(00:24):
Hi. Hi. What are you doing? Hey. You want to know what. What
we're gonna talk about together today? I gotta hardly wait.
Tell me. Let's see. You're so enthusiastic. We're talking about something that I
believe in very deeply, that I know you believe in very deeply,
both personally and professionally. And that's the
role that therapy and support groups, because
(00:46):
we don't talk a ton about those, the role they play in helping
us grieve something like a suicide loss.
Because, as we know, because we've been talking about it
now for two seasons, that grieving a suicide loss
isn't like any other kind of grief.
(01:08):
It's different. It hits different, it's messier, it's a lot
lonelier, a lot of the time. And if you've lost
somebody this way, maybe it's a parent or a
spouse or a partner or a sibling. You know that
already. But here is the
thing. Even though suicide
(01:30):
grief is so big and ugly and
complicated, we don't have to carry
it alone. And that's something that I
think everyone at some point
feels like, oh, my God, I'm in this all by myself. I'm
isolated. I'm in my headspace without
(01:52):
any other input or influence or perspective in there.
But there are spaces that are built for us. There
are places that survivors can
go, and those spaces can be life changing.
Absolutely life changing.
Sorry, I accidentally put myself on mute and didn't know how to come off.
(02:16):
Wow. And you're the more technical one of the two of us. That's horrifying.
I am. It's all good. And something else we need
to remind people is that even if you don't have
money, you can still go to support groups. Support groups are free.
Yes. Yes. And I'm just going to give a shout out right now
to the organization that I
(02:39):
volunteer at. I do a lot of volunteering in a lot of different spaces.
And one of the spaces that I'm very grateful to
be a part of is based here in the
Boston area, on the south shore of Boston. It's
at Samaritan's South Coast. It's through that organization,
and it's an online virtual support
(03:02):
group called safeplace. And what Makes it so
unique is that it's a support group
specifically designed for survivors of suicide loss.
And that's because suicide loss
is such a different kind of grief. And
(03:24):
I think that's an important place to start this conversation because we're
talking about support groups and therapy
for this specific kind of grief. I think it's important that
we say that out loud, that it is really unusual and
different. Somebody who's died by suicide, it comes with
an awful lot of baggage. If you're grieving someone who's died that way, it comes
(03:46):
with a lot of baggage that does just does not exist with
someone who died of cancer or someone who had a heart attack or died in
an accident. And these layers and layers
that are added to suicide grief are
things that people just don't understand unless they've lived it.
(04:07):
Yes. You're trying to find a powerful way to say that.
I can say it. I'm trying to find a powerful way to say it. The
other side of the coin, though, is what I felt
prior but during my suicide attempt
and making sure I had the right support. So there's
(04:27):
not only support groups out there for people that are
suicide loss survivors, but there's also
people support groups out there for people like me
who are suicide attempt survivors. I did go to a couple of
groups. It was very helpful to be able to talk to other people that were
kind of in the same situation that I was. And what I found
(04:49):
really interesting about it is that a lot of these people
just didn't have any money, but they wanted help. They wanted
to feel less alone with these thoughts that they had in
their head and wanted to talk it out. And I think talking it out
is huge. Oh, it is absolutely huge. I'll give you one
example from a recent group that I
(05:11):
facilitated. There was someone
who attended this group for the very first time. They had
never joined us before. And keep in mind, most groups function
in the way that ours functions. For those of you who are listening, who have
never tried a group and are a little just
reluctant because you don't know what to expect, Most groups function the
(05:34):
same way that they will not put you on the hot seat. You are
not expected to do a deep dive into what brought you
there. You're not expected to give all the details
and even to talk. I mean, quite honestly,
we have plenty of people who just want to be surrounded
by people who understand what suicide loss is,
(05:57):
feels like, looks like, sounds like what they've gone through.
Because granted, circumstances
will always be unique to the person who Is
grieving. And the person who took their life and
the circumstances around that death are going to be
unique. But the elements like
(06:19):
the shock factor, which can be huge, the.
The trauma of how a person may have taken their life,
the unanswered questions, the shame, the guilt, the
what if? What should I have done? What could I have done? Why didn't I
see it? The why? And that judgment, that
(06:39):
silent judgment from other people, just being
around other people who have experienced that, who understand what that
feels like, is so unbelievably cathartic.
It's the same for people with attempt survivors.
There's no shame, there's no guilt. There's nothing like we're all
(07:00):
talking about how to
just make it to the next day. And in a lot
of cases, it's just airing out with
somebody that has been in a similar situation
and knowing that you're okay and that you're not broken and that there's
no shame in what you went through and you are not weak, and
(07:23):
it makes a world of difference. Well, I want to circle back to what I
was just telling you about this person who attended this recent group,
because I think it's so valuable. Like I said, they had absolutely no idea what
to expect. They had never been to a group like this before.
They were at the beginning stage of their journey
through this kind of grief. It was a fairly new
(07:46):
situation that they found themselves in. And
they had no preconceived ideas of what a group like this would be
like or what they would even say if they went to one.
And as it happens, this
person started talking,
(08:07):
started sharing, naturally got emotional
and all the things that come with it. And an hour later
was still sharing and talking. And this was
this person's very first ever experience in a
group like this. And this is not to say that that's how it happens all
the time or that that is the expectation, because it absolutely is not. You can
(08:29):
literally go to a group and maybe just say your name and
say, I'm really here because I just want to be surrounded by other people who
understand this kind of loss and call it a day, and you just listen and
that's that. But this particular found
that being in an environment where people truly understood, and
in the case of this group that I moderate, the Safe Place
(08:49):
group, they actually
require us to not only be trained as facilitators, but
they require all of their facilitators to be survivors of
suicide loss so that we understand that breed
of loss. And
I'll tell you, at the End of that meeting,
(09:11):
this person shared with us how
unbelievably valuable it was to just get this
stuff out of her head into a
place where the people receiving it
understood it. It wasn't about them trying to get answers. It wasn't about
this person saying, okay, help me get to the next stage
(09:34):
and the next stage and what do I do and where do I go and
how do I. It wasn't like that at all. They just needed
to express what they were feeling in a I say
room, I'm using air quotes. It was a virtual room where
people had also felt what she had felt and
the impact that it had on this person. You could
(09:56):
see everything shifting in her. You could just see
how it impacted her
in positive ways to be in an environment like that. So sometimes you don't have
to say anything at all and sometimes you're compelled to say all the things. Either
way, there's value in either one of those.
(10:16):
The other thing that helped me a lot
just with processing everything was therapy. I had
the money so I could go to therapy. It was so welcoming to be
able to talk to somebody about it that
was non judgmental because being judged about
your decisions or things you've gone through
(10:39):
sucks. I didn't wake up one day and be like, I'm going to take my
life today. It just was a matter
of a whole bunch of stuff happening in
a really short period of time. So
I'm a firm believer in therapy. Yeah. Because like it
or not, and we talk about this often, there is so much
(11:01):
stigma attached to suicide. We have come such a long way
and yet there is still such an enormous amount of
stigma still attached to this thing that we all need to be
talking more about. And it's scary. People don't know what
to say. They don't know how to say it. So most people say
nothing, which, okay, you don't want to say something
(11:24):
hurtful, it's better to not say anything at all. But then that
silence that comes from so many people
creates a whole sense of isolation. And that's why
finding someone like a trauma informed therapist or
a group that is specific to people who have
attempted suicide and not been successful, or people who have lost someone
(11:46):
to suicide, people who can seek out and
find that kind of support, who understand that kind
of grief is so valuable and it's so
unbelievably important.
I think for me, the best thing that happened was I
didn't feel like my therapist was walking on eggshells. And
(12:08):
the same thing with the support Group. Nobody was walking on
eggshells when they were talking to me. They were very open and honest about
what we were talking about. And that made me
feel better that I could let my true self out
and not have to
pick my. Pick my words for me. I don't think I would have
(12:31):
healed as well without it.
Yeah, I agree that I'm snapping fingers
that universal. I agree. Because
I know in my own experience, therapy itself has been
a humongous part of my healing.
(12:52):
And even just it was funny. I actually have said this
a couple of times over the last two seasons. I did not
identify as a trauma survivor. I just
didn't. Don't ask me why. I just didn't.
And I had gone to therapy early in my life, in my
mid-20s, when I took a gap year from school, and I didn't know what I
(13:14):
wanted to do with my life. And I really talk about my father because I
didn't know that my father had taken his life. I didn't know that for 20
more years. So I. I
did see the value of therapy, but for a different
purpose. And then I went 30 years
without seeing a therapist again and became a mom
(13:34):
and was married and was working and was juggling life and all of
those things and putting everybody in the world before
myself. So I wasn't gonna go get
therapy before. I was gonna make sure everybody else is okay. So all
of a sudden, I get to a point 30 years later
where I say, oh, my God, I have got such
(13:57):
a bag full of things that I need to unpack now.
And you and I are very, very unbelievably fortunate.
We have incredibly supportive partners, loving partners, who will hold
the most unlimited amounts of space. And in my case, I have two daughters who
are also been there to hold space for
me. And I'm very grateful. My mother. I'm knocking on
(14:20):
wood when I say this. My mother is here, and I talk to her every
day. But still, you
need something else. You can benefit from
something else from an unbiased opinion. And
after I found out the truth about how my dad really died, I was flooded
with just so many emotions. I did not know what was
(14:41):
happening. I was angry. I was super
confused. I was a little bit shameful in some ways. Kind of
felt betrayed, felt sad, felt guilty, and everything was just like, layer, layer,
layer, layer, layer. And therapy gave me the space
to hold all of that without having
to clean it up, which is, I think, what you just kind of said about,
(15:02):
like, oh, I didn't have to worry about picking the Right. Words and how to
articulate Struggling with your
mental health? Feeling lost, overwhelmed, or just alone?
Well, you're not. Welcome to the HELP Hub, your online
destination for mental health resources, content and tools
to help you navigate whatever mental health challenges you're facing in the moment.
(15:25):
At the HELP Hub, we offer individualized resources tailored to
your unique needs and community, with over 16 different
categories to find exactly the correct kind of personalized help you need
when you need it most. Because even though we all deal with many of
the same challenges, we don't always experience those challenges the same
way. So whether you're looking for crisis support,
(15:47):
downloadable resources, or an extensive archive of mental
health related articles and videos, we've got you from episodes of
the Survivors Podcast for Suicide Loss Survivors Lived
Experience blogs to interact with interactive tools and professional connections.
The Help Hub meets you where you are and helps you move forward with
strength and support. Remember, you don't have to do this
(16:10):
alone. Visit thehelphub.co today.
Yeah, when I spoke up in group, I was super,
super nervous, super shaky, but I wanted
to share my story and
everybody around me was super supportive. And the
(16:33):
same thing when I went and saw my therapist for the first time. First time
in my life I'd been to therapy, but
they didn't judge and they made me feel comfortable in my own
skin. Yeah. And that was super important to me.
Yeah, for me, it was the
ability to be messy. And you know me, you know that I'm a pretty linear,
(16:55):
organized person. Some might say a
perfectionist. I don't know. Pick your words
carefully. Friends might be ocd. Oh,
totally. Oh, my God, I'm so ocd, it's ridiculous. It's almost comical how OCD I
am. But I. I understand that. And I. I celebrate that. And I also work
on that every single day. But being able to go into an environment
(17:16):
where I could completely break down, I could be completely imperfect. I could say, I
don't have the answers. I don't have it all together. I'm completely
effed up in the head right now. And have the person in front of me
say, yep, okay, that's cool. Yep. Let's just take it one thing at a
time. It helped me to
understand my own emotional responses to things. And that, that
(17:38):
was really big for me. Like, why are you acting like that? Why are
you feeling uncomfortable like that? Where is that discomfort coming?
And it helped me to process
all of this trauma about
my dad that I never perceived as trauma. It's
so weird. I understand what I mean by that. I know I lost my father
(18:00):
when I was a child. And anyone would say, okay, you had childhood trauma. I
just didn't think of it that way. Like when he was walking around saying, you're,
you know, a survivor, childhood trauma, it just
didn't, wasn't like that. So I just never connected those dots.
But man, when I did, woohoo,
(18:21):
that was a moment. And for me,
I've been, like I said, I'm a fixer. I tried to fix myself,
but I couldn't. There's only so much you can say back and forth
to yourself that's gonna make you feel better. And
there was only so much I could say back and forth to
(18:42):
my wife or my friends or colleagues.
It wasn't helping. I needed
something else so I could keep putting one foot in front of the other.
And once I found that safe space, it was the best thing
I ever did for myself because it was something I actually did
for me and not for anybody else. It was the
(19:06):
absolute best self care, self love
ever. I love that you just said it that way because this is how I
know we were always destined to be friends, because you said that the way I
always say it, going to therapy was
perhaps the greatest act of self care that I have ever gifted to
myself. And that is exactly how I say it every single time I ever have
(19:27):
this kind of a conversation anywhere. Because
I was always the one doing the listening. I was always doing the
holding of the space. I was always trying to, like you, fix
everybody else's stuff all the time. And so my
stuff, by virtue of just me and me alone,
was always kind of shoved in a corner and was never really addressed.
(19:50):
But I learned through therapy how
to consider myself. I learned through therapy
how to really reflect on
what was behind the behavior. So one of the things, and I think I've
talked about this hypervigilance side. Did I talk about
that? I think in season one that I discovered I
(20:13):
never understood. There was never a word to it. And my
therapist said, for those of you who are only listening
to the audio of this, I'm making gestures with my hands.
Like I'm running around trying to catch things that are falling. So that's what I
have done my entire life. Always running around trying to catch the. Okay, okay, you
got it. You got it. Everybody good. Everybody good. And I never really understood,
(20:35):
I mean, aside from being a caregiver, like, I understood it to be that and
that that's my love language, but it was deeper than that. Why was I so
compelled to always be considering everybody Else.
And it was because when my father died, I
developed a hyper vigilant side of my
personality that that had to make sure that I
(20:57):
controlled every situation. Not in an I'm a control freak. I mean I
definitely probably am, but not in the way that you
might think. Not in a like I have to have control dominating kind of
thing. It's more just like I have to always know that my people are okay.
I have to always make sure that everybody's in
a good situation, in a good headspace. Not needing help,
(21:19):
support. And that was born from
not being able to control that somebody I loved more than anything in the world
was gone in the blink of an eye. And
I had to make sure that I was like, I mean, it sounds kind of
silly when I say it like this, but it's kind of what it is. I
(21:40):
had to be the goodest little girl. And no one was saying that to me.
It wasn't like my mother or anybody else in my life was saying that. But
it was like I felt like when I think of it now, it's like I
had to be such the goodest little girl to make sure that everybody
was okay all the time. And
that was a very, very eye opening
revelation for me that I don't think I would have found if I hadn't been
(22:02):
in therapy. And
if you are listening and you and you don't have money,
there are so many free resources out there.
Go online, find something that works for you
because I will tell you, talking about it actually does
(22:22):
help. Keeping inside does not help.
It's true. And just
jumping off of what you just said about people who have to consider the
financial piece of caring for their
mental health, we take it for granted. You whip out your Blue
Cross card or your Anthem card or whatever card you have
(22:45):
and you pay your little copay and you go and have your session
and you don't think about the millions of people out there
who cannot afford to do that. It is too
prohibitive. And we're very
lucky that we live in a digital world where the majority of humans these days,
especially in this country, have computers and have Internet access and
(23:09):
can join these groups that are free. Community
centers also all around the country in every major
city have support groups that are in
person. No one is ever going to charge you to go to
a support group and if they do, don't go to that support group because you're
being scammed. So there are so
(23:31):
many other free resources.
There are online mental health
platforms like one of our big partners,
yours and Mine is Calmry, and they are making
online therapy affordable for people who
couldn't otherwise afford it. And there are places like Talkspace and
(23:53):
BetterHelp, and. And they're all working together to create
more affordable models for people to get the care
that they need. So we'll put all of the information
that we have in our show notes for places
like my virtual support group, SafePlace, and
all of our partners and affiliates who. Who
(24:17):
work to provide therapy at reasonable costs. And all of those groups that we.
That we know about, we'll. We'll definitely drop them in the show.
Like, for me, because y' all know I don't have insurance
right now. I. I have my HSA card, so I had to scale
back on my therapy. But what I did in replace of that is that
I just go to more support groups now just to make sure that
(24:39):
I'm okay. Because I put a whole lot of work
into the last two years. I don't want to go backwards. All
I want to do is keep moving forward and putting one foot in front of
the other, whether it's a good day or a bad day. But
somebody that's been where I'm at, where I've been,
it makes all the difference in the world. It
(25:02):
absolutely does. And like I
said before, we're very fortunate that we live in a world where you can go
somewhere in person as easily as you can
go to a virtual group. And I'm just
thinking now of all of the virtual groups that I know about
that are supported by and
(25:24):
facilitated by all of these bigger organizations like the American foundation for
Suicide Prevention and Samaritans. And on
my own mental health resources platform, the HELP
Hub, we have an extensive online mental health
resources page that will
put you in touch with or connect you to a lot of these
(25:48):
groups and organizations. So it's out there. It's out there for
you if you're looking for it. And I think this
conversation in the last few minutes that we have, it might be worthwhile to just
talk for a second about what to expect when you
start therapy. Because a lot of people are really
scared to try therapy or to try a group because they have absolutely no
(26:10):
idea what to expect. So I think a minute or two
demystifying, that might really help.
Yeah, for sure. In my case, because I had never been to therapy, they
made it a safe space, very safe space. And I
had a lot of emotions going into it. I had a lot of emotions
coming out of it, too. But
(26:33):
I felt at peace. And I mean,
it's hard to talk about it without getting super emotional. That's okay.
But for me, I got
to see myself through a different lens. Through a different lens.
And when I looked at my therapist, she didn't see me as a
(26:53):
failure. She didn't see shame, she didn't see weakness.
She made me feel human. So if you're talking about
therapy, what. Here's what to expect. Here's like the boom, boom, boom.
Three things to expect. You get to set the pace.
You don't have to talk about everything right away or at all.
(27:15):
And any good therapist is going to listen to you. They're not
going to lecture you. Like G said, they're not going to judge you.
And you're going to get tools. Not. Not
just a place to go to kind of vomit up everything that's happening.
You're also going to get actual tools
to help you navigate whatever
(27:36):
crisis you're in or whatever you're struggling with. And
on the other side, if we're talking about support groups, what to expect
in those, we've talked a little bit about it. But you're in a space
with other people who have been through a similar loss,
whether it be a suicide loss or maybe specific, you've lost a
spouse or you've lost a child or you've lost a parent.
(28:00):
That's the first thing. The second thing is that you get to share when you're
ready or not at all. Like I was talking about with the group that I
moderate, people can come and just listen and
just passively engage in the group or they can share as much
as they want. And the other thing that's so powerful about
groups that it doesn't exist quite in the same way in a therapy
(28:22):
office, one on one, but when you're in a group, you're going to hear stories
that are going to help you normalize what you're going through. And that
is absolutely huge about being
in a group. But in both places, whichever one you
choose, therapy or a support group environment, you're going to learn
that you're not out there alone dealing with
(28:44):
this isolated, awful thing by yourself.
Yeah. And for me, when I went to my first support group,
for the first four or five times, I didn't say jack
because I was still dealing with my own trauma. But to
listen to other people talk about what they've gone through made
me feel a little less crappy about myself. Yeah. I mean,
(29:08):
therapy and support groups are not about making the grief go
away. We all wish that they were, but they're not. It's just not what
they're designed to do. They're just about giving you
a place to put your stuff, to put your
sadness. And it's a place designed
to encourage healing to begin.
(29:32):
And everybody deserves that in whatever way they choose to find
it. So the takeaways
from this conversation, from my perspective, there is support out there.
It does exist. Therapy offers us tools. It
offers us a place, a safe place and someone to
validate what we're going through. And support groups connect
(29:54):
us with people who get it, who've lived it, who feel it. And
that connection can absolutely be life saving. And
all we can say is that you don't have to carry this alone, which is
why we're here every week doing what we're doing and having these conversations.
Such a great conversation. Thank you, my friend. Thank you right
back. We'll do it again next week. All right, Sounds great. Love you,
(30:17):
Chi. Love you, man.
Thanks for joining us on the Survivors. Remember, no matter how tough things feel,
feel. You are enough and the world needs you just the way you are.
You're not alone in this journey. There's a community here and every step forward
counts. We're so grateful you took the time to listen and we hope you'll
take one day at a time. Just know there's always more light ahead.
(30:41):
Thanks for being here. Friends, just remember, help is out there
in so many different places. So if you or someone you know is struggling,
please call 988 and a trained crisis counselor like me will be there
to help. You can also find an inclusive and comprehensive directory of
mental health resources, tools. And content at
thehelphub.co. Just remember that help is always
(31:02):
just a call or a click away. We'll catch you next week. In the
meantime, keep surviving.
The Survivors is brought to you by our friends at the Help Hub. This
podcast mentions suicide, mental illness, grief and loss and may be
triggering for some listeners. So please take care of your mental well being
by pausing or skipping any sections that feel uncomfortable to you. And if
you or someone you know is struggling, please call 988 for support.
(00:24):
Hi. Hi. What are you doing? Hey. You want to know what. What
we're gonna talk about together today? I gotta hardly wait.
Tell me. Let's see. You're so enthusiastic. We're talking about something that I
believe in very deeply, that I know you believe in very deeply,
both personally and professionally. And that's the
role that therapy and support groups, because
(00:46):
we don't talk a ton about those, the role they play in helping
us grieve something like a suicide loss.
Because, as we know, because we've been talking about it
now for two seasons, that grieving a suicide loss
isn't like any other kind of grief.
(01:08):
It's different. It hits different, it's messier, it's a lot
lonelier, a lot of the time. And if you've lost
somebody this way, maybe it's a parent or a
spouse or a partner or a sibling. You know that
already. But here is the
thing. Even though suicide
(01:30):
grief is so big and ugly and
complicated, we don't have to carry
it alone. And that's something that I
think everyone at some point
feels like, oh, my God, I'm in this all by myself. I'm
isolated. I'm in my headspace without
(01:52):
any other input or influence or perspective in there.
But there are spaces that are built for us. There
are places that survivors can
go, and those spaces can be life changing.
Absolutely life changing.
Sorry, I accidentally put myself on mute and didn't know how to come off.
(02:16):
Wow. And you're the more technical one of the two of us. That's horrifying.
I am. It's all good. And something else we need
to remind people is that even if you don't have
money, you can still go to support groups. Support groups are free.
Yes. Yes. And I'm just going to give a shout out right now
to the organization that I
(02:39):
volunteer at. I do a lot of volunteering in a lot of different spaces.
And one of the spaces that I'm very grateful to
be a part of is based here in the
Boston area, on the south shore of Boston. It's
at Samaritan's South Coast. It's through that organization,
and it's an online virtual support
(03:02):
group called safeplace. And what Makes it so
unique is that it's a support group
specifically designed for survivors of suicide loss.
And that's because suicide loss
is such a different kind of grief. And
(03:24):
I think that's an important place to start this conversation because we're
talking about support groups and therapy
for this specific kind of grief. I think it's important that
we say that out loud, that it is really unusual and
different. Somebody who's died by suicide, it comes with
an awful lot of baggage. If you're grieving someone who's died that way, it comes
(03:46):
with a lot of baggage that does just does not exist with
someone who died of cancer or someone who had a heart attack or died in
an accident. And these layers and layers
that are added to suicide grief are
things that people just don't understand unless they've lived it.
(04:07):
Yes. You're trying to find a powerful way to say that.
I can say it. I'm trying to find a powerful way to say it. The
other side of the coin, though, is what I felt
prior but during my suicide attempt
and making sure I had the right support. So there's
(04:27):
not only support groups out there for people that are
suicide loss survivors, but there's also
people support groups out there for people like me
who are suicide attempt survivors. I did go to a couple of
groups. It was very helpful to be able to talk to other people that were
kind of in the same situation that I was. And what I found
(04:49):
really interesting about it is that a lot of these people
just didn't have any money, but they wanted help. They wanted
to feel less alone with these thoughts that they had in
their head and wanted to talk it out. And I think talking it out
is huge. Oh, it is absolutely huge. I'll give you one
example from a recent group that I
(05:11):
facilitated. There was someone
who attended this group for the very first time. They had
never joined us before. And keep in mind, most groups function
in the way that ours functions. For those of you who are listening, who have
never tried a group and are a little just
reluctant because you don't know what to expect, Most groups function the
(05:34):
same way that they will not put you on the hot seat. You are
not expected to do a deep dive into what brought you
there. You're not expected to give all the details
and even to talk. I mean, quite honestly,
we have plenty of people who just want to be surrounded
by people who understand what suicide loss is,
(05:57):
feels like, looks like, sounds like what they've gone through.
Because granted, circumstances
will always be unique to the person who Is
grieving. And the person who took their life and
the circumstances around that death are going to be
unique. But the elements like
(06:19):
the shock factor, which can be huge, the.
The trauma of how a person may have taken their life,
the unanswered questions, the shame, the guilt, the
what if? What should I have done? What could I have done? Why didn't I
see it? The why? And that judgment, that
(06:39):
silent judgment from other people, just being
around other people who have experienced that, who understand what that
feels like, is so unbelievably cathartic.
It's the same for people with attempt survivors.
There's no shame, there's no guilt. There's nothing like we're all
(07:00):
talking about how to
just make it to the next day. And in a lot
of cases, it's just airing out with
somebody that has been in a similar situation
and knowing that you're okay and that you're not broken and that there's
no shame in what you went through and you are not weak, and
(07:23):
it makes a world of difference. Well, I want to circle back to what I
was just telling you about this person who attended this recent group,
because I think it's so valuable. Like I said, they had absolutely no idea what
to expect. They had never been to a group like this before.
They were at the beginning stage of their journey
through this kind of grief. It was a fairly new
(07:46):
situation that they found themselves in. And
they had no preconceived ideas of what a group like this would be
like or what they would even say if they went to one.
And as it happens, this
person started talking,
(08:07):
started sharing, naturally got emotional
and all the things that come with it. And an hour later
was still sharing and talking. And this was
this person's very first ever experience in a
group like this. And this is not to say that that's how it happens all
the time or that that is the expectation, because it absolutely is not. You can
(08:29):
literally go to a group and maybe just say your name and
say, I'm really here because I just want to be surrounded by other people who
understand this kind of loss and call it a day, and you just listen and
that's that. But this particular found
that being in an environment where people truly understood, and
in the case of this group that I moderate, the Safe Place
(08:49):
group, they actually
require us to not only be trained as facilitators, but
they require all of their facilitators to be survivors of
suicide loss so that we understand that breed
of loss. And
I'll tell you, at the End of that meeting,
(09:11):
this person shared with us how
unbelievably valuable it was to just get this
stuff out of her head into a
place where the people receiving it
understood it. It wasn't about them trying to get answers. It wasn't about
this person saying, okay, help me get to the next stage
(09:34):
and the next stage and what do I do and where do I go and
how do I. It wasn't like that at all. They just needed
to express what they were feeling in a I say
room, I'm using air quotes. It was a virtual room where
people had also felt what she had felt and
the impact that it had on this person. You could
(09:56):
see everything shifting in her. You could just see
how it impacted her
in positive ways to be in an environment like that. So sometimes you don't have
to say anything at all and sometimes you're compelled to say all the things. Either
way, there's value in either one of those.
(10:16):
The other thing that helped me a lot
just with processing everything was therapy. I had
the money so I could go to therapy. It was so welcoming to be
able to talk to somebody about it that
was non judgmental because being judged about
your decisions or things you've gone through
(10:39):
sucks. I didn't wake up one day and be like, I'm going to take my
life today. It just was a matter
of a whole bunch of stuff happening in
a really short period of time. So
I'm a firm believer in therapy. Yeah. Because like it
or not, and we talk about this often, there is so much
(11:01):
stigma attached to suicide. We have come such a long way
and yet there is still such an enormous amount of
stigma still attached to this thing that we all need to be
talking more about. And it's scary. People don't know what
to say. They don't know how to say it. So most people say
nothing, which, okay, you don't want to say something
(11:24):
hurtful, it's better to not say anything at all. But then that
silence that comes from so many people
creates a whole sense of isolation. And that's why
finding someone like a trauma informed therapist or
a group that is specific to people who have
attempted suicide and not been successful, or people who have lost someone
(11:46):
to suicide, people who can seek out and
find that kind of support, who understand that kind
of grief is so valuable and it's so
unbelievably important.
I think for me, the best thing that happened was I
didn't feel like my therapist was walking on eggshells. And
(12:08):
the same thing with the support Group. Nobody was walking on
eggshells when they were talking to me. They were very open and honest about
what we were talking about. And that made me
feel better that I could let my true self out
and not have to
pick my. Pick my words for me. I don't think I would have
(12:31):
healed as well without it.
Yeah, I agree that I'm snapping fingers
that universal. I agree. Because
I know in my own experience, therapy itself has been
a humongous part of my healing.
(12:52):
And even just it was funny. I actually have said this
a couple of times over the last two seasons. I did not
identify as a trauma survivor. I just
didn't. Don't ask me why. I just didn't.
And I had gone to therapy early in my life, in my
mid-20s, when I took a gap year from school, and I didn't know what I
(13:14):
wanted to do with my life. And I really talk about my father because I
didn't know that my father had taken his life. I didn't know that for 20
more years. So I. I
did see the value of therapy, but for a different
purpose. And then I went 30 years
without seeing a therapist again and became a mom
(13:34):
and was married and was working and was juggling life and all of
those things and putting everybody in the world before
myself. So I wasn't gonna go get
therapy before. I was gonna make sure everybody else is okay. So all
of a sudden, I get to a point 30 years later
where I say, oh, my God, I have got such
(13:57):
a bag full of things that I need to unpack now.
And you and I are very, very unbelievably fortunate.
We have incredibly supportive partners, loving partners, who will hold
the most unlimited amounts of space. And in my case, I have two daughters who
are also been there to hold space for
me. And I'm very grateful. My mother. I'm knocking on
(14:20):
wood when I say this. My mother is here, and I talk to her every
day. But still, you
need something else. You can benefit from
something else from an unbiased opinion. And
after I found out the truth about how my dad really died, I was flooded
with just so many emotions. I did not know what was
(14:41):
happening. I was angry. I was super
confused. I was a little bit shameful in some ways. Kind of
felt betrayed, felt sad, felt guilty, and everything was just like, layer, layer,
layer, layer, layer. And therapy gave me the space
to hold all of that without having
to clean it up, which is, I think, what you just kind of said about,
(15:02):
like, oh, I didn't have to worry about picking the Right. Words and how to
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(15:25):
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when you need it most. Because even though we all deal with many of
the same challenges, we don't always experience those challenges the same
way. So whether you're looking for crisis support,
(15:47):
downloadable resources, or an extensive archive of mental
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The Help Hub meets you where you are and helps you move forward with
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(16:10):
alone. Visit thehelphub.co today.
Yeah, when I spoke up in group, I was super,
super nervous, super shaky, but I wanted
to share my story and
everybody around me was super supportive. And the
(16:33):
same thing when I went and saw my therapist for the first time. First time
in my life I'd been to therapy, but
they didn't judge and they made me feel comfortable in my own
skin. Yeah. And that was super important to me.
Yeah, for me, it was the
ability to be messy. And you know me, you know that I'm a pretty linear,
(16:55):
organized person. Some might say a
perfectionist. I don't know. Pick your words
carefully. Friends might be ocd. Oh,
totally. Oh, my God, I'm so ocd, it's ridiculous. It's almost comical how OCD I
am. But I. I understand that. And I. I celebrate that. And I also work
on that every single day. But being able to go into an environment
(17:16):
where I could completely break down, I could be completely imperfect. I could say, I
don't have the answers. I don't have it all together. I'm completely
effed up in the head right now. And have the person in front of me
say, yep, okay, that's cool. Yep. Let's just take it one thing at a
time. It helped me to
understand my own emotional responses to things. And that, that
(17:38):
was really big for me. Like, why are you acting like that? Why are
you feeling uncomfortable like that? Where is that discomfort coming?
And it helped me to process
all of this trauma about
my dad that I never perceived as trauma. It's
so weird. I understand what I mean by that. I know I lost my father
(18:00):
when I was a child. And anyone would say, okay, you had childhood trauma. I
just didn't think of it that way. Like when he was walking around saying, you're,
you know, a survivor, childhood trauma, it just
didn't, wasn't like that. So I just never connected those dots.
But man, when I did, woohoo,
(18:21):
that was a moment. And for me,
I've been, like I said, I'm a fixer. I tried to fix myself,
but I couldn't. There's only so much you can say back and forth
to yourself that's gonna make you feel better. And
there was only so much I could say back and forth to
(18:42):
my wife or my friends or colleagues.
It wasn't helping. I needed
something else so I could keep putting one foot in front of the other.
And once I found that safe space, it was the best thing
I ever did for myself because it was something I actually did
for me and not for anybody else. It was the
(19:06):
absolute best self care, self love
ever. I love that you just said it that way because this is how I
know we were always destined to be friends, because you said that the way I
always say it, going to therapy was
perhaps the greatest act of self care that I have ever gifted to
myself. And that is exactly how I say it every single time I ever have
(19:27):
this kind of a conversation anywhere. Because
I was always the one doing the listening. I was always doing the
holding of the space. I was always trying to, like you, fix
everybody else's stuff all the time. And so my
stuff, by virtue of just me and me alone,
was always kind of shoved in a corner and was never really addressed.
(19:50):
But I learned through therapy how
to consider myself. I learned through therapy
how to really reflect on
what was behind the behavior. So one of the things, and I think I've
talked about this hypervigilance side. Did I talk about
that? I think in season one that I discovered I
(20:13):
never understood. There was never a word to it. And my
therapist said, for those of you who are only listening
to the audio of this, I'm making gestures with my hands.
Like I'm running around trying to catch things that are falling. So that's what I
have done my entire life. Always running around trying to catch the. Okay, okay, you
got it. You got it. Everybody good. Everybody good. And I never really understood,
(20:35):
I mean, aside from being a caregiver, like, I understood it to be that and
that that's my love language, but it was deeper than that. Why was I so
compelled to always be considering everybody Else.
And it was because when my father died, I
developed a hyper vigilant side of my
personality that that had to make sure that I
(20:57):
controlled every situation. Not in an I'm a control freak. I mean I
definitely probably am, but not in the way that you
might think. Not in a like I have to have control dominating kind of
thing. It's more just like I have to always know that my people are okay.
I have to always make sure that everybody's in
a good situation, in a good headspace. Not needing help,
(21:19):
support. And that was born from
not being able to control that somebody I loved more than anything in the world
was gone in the blink of an eye. And
I had to make sure that I was like, I mean, it sounds kind of
silly when I say it like this, but it's kind of what it is. I
(21:40):
had to be the goodest little girl. And no one was saying that to me.
It wasn't like my mother or anybody else in my life was saying that. But
it was like I felt like when I think of it now, it's like I
had to be such the goodest little girl to make sure that everybody
was okay all the time. And
that was a very, very eye opening
revelation for me that I don't think I would have found if I hadn't been
(22:02):
in therapy. And
if you are listening and you and you don't have money,
there are so many free resources out there.
Go online, find something that works for you
because I will tell you, talking about it actually does
(22:22):
help. Keeping inside does not help.
It's true. And just
jumping off of what you just said about people who have to consider the
financial piece of caring for their
mental health, we take it for granted. You whip out your Blue
Cross card or your Anthem card or whatever card you have
(22:45):
and you pay your little copay and you go and have your session
and you don't think about the millions of people out there
who cannot afford to do that. It is too
prohibitive. And we're very
lucky that we live in a digital world where the majority of humans these days,
especially in this country, have computers and have Internet access and
(23:09):
can join these groups that are free. Community
centers also all around the country in every major
city have support groups that are in
person. No one is ever going to charge you to go to
a support group and if they do, don't go to that support group because you're
being scammed. So there are so
(23:31):
many other free resources.
There are online mental health
platforms like one of our big partners,
yours and Mine is Calmry, and they are making
online therapy affordable for people who
couldn't otherwise afford it. And there are places like Talkspace and
(23:53):
BetterHelp, and. And they're all working together to create
more affordable models for people to get the care
that they need. So we'll put all of the information
that we have in our show notes for places
like my virtual support group, SafePlace, and
all of our partners and affiliates who. Who
(24:17):
work to provide therapy at reasonable costs. And all of those groups that we.
That we know about, we'll. We'll definitely drop them in the show.
Like, for me, because y' all know I don't have insurance
right now. I. I have my HSA card, so I had to scale
back on my therapy. But what I did in replace of that is that
I just go to more support groups now just to make sure that
(24:39):
I'm okay. Because I put a whole lot of work
into the last two years. I don't want to go backwards. All
I want to do is keep moving forward and putting one foot in front of
the other, whether it's a good day or a bad day. But
somebody that's been where I'm at, where I've been,
it makes all the difference in the world. It
(25:02):
absolutely does. And like I
said before, we're very fortunate that we live in a world where you can go
somewhere in person as easily as you can
go to a virtual group. And I'm just
thinking now of all of the virtual groups that I know about
that are supported by and
(25:24):
facilitated by all of these bigger organizations like the American foundation for
Suicide Prevention and Samaritans. And on
my own mental health resources platform, the HELP
Hub, we have an extensive online mental health
resources page that will
put you in touch with or connect you to a lot of these
(25:48):
groups and organizations. So it's out there. It's out there for
you if you're looking for it. And I think this
conversation in the last few minutes that we have, it might be worthwhile to just
talk for a second about what to expect when you
start therapy. Because a lot of people are really
scared to try therapy or to try a group because they have absolutely no
(26:10):
idea what to expect. So I think a minute or two
demystifying, that might really help.
Yeah, for sure. In my case, because I had never been to therapy, they
made it a safe space, very safe space. And I
had a lot of emotions going into it. I had a lot of emotions
coming out of it, too. But
(26:33):
I felt at peace. And I mean,
it's hard to talk about it without getting super emotional. That's okay.
But for me, I got
to see myself through a different lens. Through a different lens.
And when I looked at my therapist, she didn't see me as a
(26:53):
failure. She didn't see shame, she didn't see weakness.
She made me feel human. So if you're talking about
therapy, what. Here's what to expect. Here's like the boom, boom, boom.
Three things to expect. You get to set the pace.
You don't have to talk about everything right away or at all.
(27:15):
And any good therapist is going to listen to you. They're not
going to lecture you. Like G said, they're not going to judge you.
And you're going to get tools. Not. Not
just a place to go to kind of vomit up everything that's happening.
You're also going to get actual tools
to help you navigate whatever
(27:36):
crisis you're in or whatever you're struggling with. And
on the other side, if we're talking about support groups, what to expect
in those, we've talked a little bit about it. But you're in a space
with other people who have been through a similar loss,
whether it be a suicide loss or maybe specific, you've lost a
spouse or you've lost a child or you've lost a parent.
(28:00):
That's the first thing. The second thing is that you get to share when you're
ready or not at all. Like I was talking about with the group that I
moderate, people can come and just listen and
just passively engage in the group or they can share as much
as they want. And the other thing that's so powerful about
groups that it doesn't exist quite in the same way in a therapy
(28:22):
office, one on one, but when you're in a group, you're going to hear stories
that are going to help you normalize what you're going through. And that
is absolutely huge about being
in a group. But in both places, whichever one you
choose, therapy or a support group environment, you're going to learn
that you're not out there alone dealing with
(28:44):
this isolated, awful thing by yourself.
Yeah. And for me, when I went to my first support group,
for the first four or five times, I didn't say jack
because I was still dealing with my own trauma. But to
listen to other people talk about what they've gone through made
me feel a little less crappy about myself. Yeah. I mean,
(29:08):
therapy and support groups are not about making the grief go
away. We all wish that they were, but they're not. It's just not what
they're designed to do. They're just about giving you
a place to put your stuff, to put your
sadness. And it's a place designed
to encourage healing to begin.
(29:32):
And everybody deserves that in whatever way they choose to find
it. So the takeaways
from this conversation, from my perspective, there is support out there.
It does exist. Therapy offers us tools. It
offers us a place, a safe place and someone to
validate what we're going through. And support groups connect
(29:54):
us with people who get it, who've lived it, who feel it. And
that connection can absolutely be life saving. And
all we can say is that you don't have to carry this alone, which is
why we're here every week doing what we're doing and having these conversations.
Such a great conversation. Thank you, my friend. Thank you right
back. We'll do it again next week. All right, Sounds great. Love you,
(30:17):
Chi. Love you, man.
Thanks for joining us on the Survivors. Remember, no matter how tough things feel,
feel. You are enough and the world needs you just the way you are.
You're not alone in this journey. There's a community here and every step forward
counts. We're so grateful you took the time to listen and we hope you'll
take one day at a time. Just know there's always more light ahead.
(30:41):
Thanks for being here. Friends, just remember, help is out there
in so many different places. So if you or someone you know is struggling,
please call 988 and a trained crisis counselor like me will be there
to help. You can also find an inclusive and comprehensive directory of
mental health resources, tools. And content at
thehelphub.co. Just remember that help is always
(31:02):
just a call or a click away. We'll catch you next week. In the
meantime, keep surviving.
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Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.