Survivor Guilt After Suicide Loss: How to Reframe, Heal, and Let Go

In this raw and emotional episode, Lisa and Gretchen unpack the deep and often misunderstood feeling of guilt that follows suicide loss and suicide attempts. Through vulnerable storytelling and insight, they show how guilt can be reframed into grace, healing, and renewed strength.

 

🎥 Watch the Video Podcast on YouTube: A video version of this episode is available here: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheSurvivorsPodcastChannel

 

 

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From suicide loss survivor content to lived-experience blogs, interactive tools, and professional support, The Help Hub meets you where you are—and helps you move forward. 💙 Because your mental well-being matters. 💙

 

 

📝 Episode Summary: Lisa and Gretchen dive into one of the most unspoken emotional burdens after suicide loss and survival—guilt. They offer two different yet equally powerful perspectives: Lisa as someone who lost loved ones to suicide and Gretchen as a suicide attempt survivor. Together, they explore the complexity of this emotion, share personal stories, and offer practical, compassionate tools for reframing guilt into healing.

 

 

💡 Lessons Learned:

• Guilt after suicide loss or attempt is common, but not always justified.
• Naming your guilt and processing it out loud or through writing can release its grip.
• Support systems, therapy, and peer connection are key to healing.
• Survivor stories help others feel seen, heard, and less alone.
• Grace and self-forgiveness are essential parts of recovery.

 

 

⏱️ Episode Chapters: 00:00 – Introduction & Trigger Warning 01:14 – Understanding the Weight of Guilt 03:00 – Gretchen’s Story: The Attempt, Silence, and Shame 06:29 – Reframing Weakness as Strength 08:45 – The Impact of Guilt on Loved Ones 13:37 – Lisa’s Experience as a Survivor of Suicide Loss 18:36 – What It Feels Like in a Moment of Crisis 20:00 – Writing Letters to Heal 22:11 – “Fact-Check” Your Guilt 23:14 – Journaling as Therapy 24:56 – The Power of Talking to Other Survivors 26:32 – The Lifesaving Role of Therapy 28:44 – Final Reflections: You Are Not Alone

 

 

📚 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/

 

 

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🎙️ See You Next Week! Stay strong, keep going, and remember: You are enough. 💜

 

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
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.
See, when you pick up your mug like that, right before we start recording now

(00:24):
I have to pick up my two of a Kind survivor
mug to make sure that I'm doing what you're doing. Listen,
I had to clean mine, but now that it's clean, I'm gonna drink from it.
Okay, well, you drink. You drink and I'll talk. So welcome back.
If you're a survivor's fan, we're
always happy to be back. And I

(00:46):
know I'm really glad you're here. I know that she is really glad you're here
because she told me a few minutes ago that she was really glad everyone is
here because we're talking about something that doesn't get enough
airtime, I don't think. And it's that
really heavy, suffocating feeling
of guilt after a suicide loss. And

(01:08):
I know we've talked about guilt in certain contexts, but we're going to
talk about this in a very specific way today. And I'm coming at it
from the perspective of the survivor of loss and the
guilt that I have have maybe felt. And you're
coming at it from an entirely different perspective, which is
someone who is an attempt survivor, has had those

(01:30):
ideations and didn't talk about it. And the guilt that you
might have felt after the fact,
feeling like you should have been more open and
transparent about how you were feeling. Is that a pretty accurate way of putting it?
100%. Okay, so
what I'm talking about is the whole, what if

(01:54):
I had walked to the bottom of the stairs that
morning, guilt and jumped in bed with my dad like
I had tried to do, but my mother stopped me
or why didn't I see the signs
sooner? I give myself a lot of grace for that one. And we've talked about
that because I was 10 years old, so I didn't know that anything was going

(02:16):
on and I couldn't have. So
let's talk about it. Let's. You know what? I almost want to start with you
because I'm actually. I know we've talked about my end of it plenty.
I want to talk about your guilt
that you might have felt. Oh, there was a ton of
guilt. A ton. So, like, for

(02:38):
me, I had been contemplating for
probably two or three weeks before Christmas Day rolled around.
But when I actually was able to open
up to people and let people know what was going on, I felt guilty.
But I also felt the same stigma and shame
and weakness that I couldn't figure my own shit out. I felt

(03:01):
bad that I couldn't open up and tell people what was going on, because
for me, number one, I didn't understand what was going on in my head. I'd
never felt like that way before. And I couldn't put a voice
to what it was. As I talked to more and more people the day
after Christmas, they were just mad. They were mad
that I hadn't opened up. They were mad that I

(03:24):
kept all this to myself. But what you have to understand is when you get
to that state, you just don't know what to do.
You don't. I was terrified, but I also
was hurting really bad mentally. And I just
couldn't figure out how I could tell anybody what
was going on, because as you and I talk about all the time, there's still

(03:46):
so much stigma out there and there's still a ton of shame.
And you run these
scenarios through your head of like, I shoulda, coulda, woulda,
but didn't. And part of
me is, you know, when I had that. When I had the phone in my
hand, I was calling 988, I kept

(04:08):
thinking about all the people that I would have left behind
and all that love and care. And then
I felt selfish. And it was really difficult for me to have that
conversation with my wife because she was mad.
She was really mad at me. But as time wore on,
she started to understand that

(04:29):
at the time, I didn't know how to explain what was going on.
I have a question that I don't think I've ever asked you. And it relates
back to what you just said about picking up the phone and talking to a
988 counselor. I don't think I've ever asked you this before,
and tell me if you don't want to answer my question,
but when you were talking to the counselor,

(04:52):
did you consciously talk about
your feelings about how
people would react if you completed a
suicide? Did you talk about that? Do you mind me asking that? I
think I did. I think the one thing that I remember
the most is that they gave voice

(05:14):
to what was going on inside of me, because that's the
part I didn't understand at all. And
I was 59 and a half at the time. I lived a pretty long life
until I Got to that point and it's hard to
answer it really. It's really hard to answer that because, number one, it
was two years ago. A lot of, A lot of things have happened since then.

(05:36):
But they, you know, I, I
do remember talking about stigma and like feeling weak
and feeling shame for even getting to this point. I
felt like I should have been able to fix everything because I've been a fixer
my entire life, but I couldn't fix myself. You know what
I find to be so interesting is that there's so much focus.

(05:58):
Something you just said made me think of this. There's so much focus
on, oh, it's weak. It's weak if you
can't handle your life. It's weak if you can't manage all your
responsibilities. It's weak if you can't show up. All the
reasons why we find weakness or all the places
I should say where we find weakness. When are we going

(06:20):
to start shifting that narrative and flipping it around
and saying, it is so strong to pick up the phone
and call 988. It is so empowering
to express how you feel. It is such
a show of resilience and
fortitude and all the other words that

(06:42):
you wanted to try and find a way through what you
were feeling. Like, am I the only one out here who is. Really
sees it that way? Like, I see what you did as such an
incredible, incredible act of. Okay, now I'm going to list
the words bravery and self love
and awareness and strength.

(07:04):
Like, I could keep going, but you get the point that
I just wish that more people felt that way
because everybody's out there talking about, oh, weakness, weakness,
weakness. And that's such a. I will tell you
that, you know that the one thing that the person on the
other end of the phone told me that she was grateful that I picked

(07:26):
up the phone and called her. When I went down the stairs and talked to
my wife, she was grateful that I had the fortitude
to actually pick up the phone. By the time everything came to a
head, I was just broken. Broken in ways that
I couldn't even describe. And
part of me was like, I felt guilt for

(07:50):
not helping people realize, like, why I was feeling the way I
was. And not to laugh. It's just.
It was a really surreal moment in my life
that I don't ever want to relive again. Just don't.
But I also learned a lot about myself in
a really, like, short period of time. Like, like you said,

(08:13):
I was brave. I was all these things
my Hand was literally shaking when I was talking on
that phone. I could barely dial the number.
But as I'm dialing the number, all these other thoughts are coming in my head,
like, what's the family going to think? What's your wife going to think? What are
your friends are going to think? You should be thinking more about them

(08:35):
and not about yourself. And, yeah, there was a ton of guilt that
went into that phone call and a ton of guilt that went
into days and months after that. I still feel
guilty. I feel guilty for not opening up. But once
again, I didn't know how to explain what was going on because I didn't understand
it. And I think a lot of people out there have the same thing because

(08:56):
they don't understand what's going on in our heads. That's the whole
nature of being dysregulated. That's what is
happening. You're not thinking clearly. Mental
illness and depression and anxiety,
they hijack our
capacity and our ability to think clearly

(09:18):
and rationally and make good decisions. So
it's not surprising at all that you didn't know what the hell was going on
or. Or how to navigate through it or how to put
a name to any of it, because that's just where you were at. That's where
anybody who is in that type of a
headspace is at. So it does make perfect

(09:39):
sense, and you shouldn't feel guilty for that now.
And I'm saying this as a friend, I'm saying this
as a human. I'm saying this as somebody who spends an awful lot of time
listening to people say what you just said on crisis lifelines. And I
answer it the same way. I say, it's not your fault.
You just were dealing with what you were dealing with, which is

(10:01):
relative to everybody. Everything is subjective. It depends on. Depends on who you are and
what you're navigating through. But the fact
is that you don't know what you don't know,
and you can't fault yourself for that. I was just
broken. I really was just broken. You know, I've also
had, like, on the other side of that. So I've had friends that have taken

(10:23):
their life and felt that immense guilt
of. I should have listened better, I should
have paid more attention. I should have called this person.
I should have texted them. There's a ton of
survivor's guilt that goes into that. And,
you know, a lot of that kind of correlated, like, with my own attempt.

(10:46):
Should have opened up more. Yes, we talk a lot about the
losses that I've had being on the survivor of loss
side of all of this. And there are three of them
that I'm directly impacted by. When my cousin
died, who was the very first one, he was 18, I was nine.
Like, what did I know? And we were such

(11:09):
different ages and we were
really never together unless it was family thing.
So there wasn't that relationship. There wasn't the ability
to understand what someone was going through because
we were having deep conversations or I worked with them or
we were close friends. It wasn't like that. So that's not something

(11:32):
I have ever felt guilt for. Obviously great
sadness, but not guilt. Then flash forward to
my dad, who, for those who don't know,
died when I was 10. I was told it was a heart attack, but I
found out 35 years later by accident that he had actually taken his life. So
I had to kind of rewind. And last

(11:54):
week we talked about grieving in reverse, which is exactly what I
had to do, which was to grieve every single thing that I had already grieved
before all over again through a different lens.
And while I gave myself the same amount of grace, most of
most of the same amount of grace that I gave myself
when I was nine, losing my cousin, I was 10, losing my dad, who

(12:17):
again, did not present like he was anyone who had any issues
whatsoever. Super joyful and full of life and
beautiful marriage and such a great dad. So
I don't feel that guilt. I feel guilt that I've mentioned
before in a more recent episode this season, and I
alluded to it when we first started talking. I

(12:39):
almost was the one to find him that morning. And
it was only because my mom kind of intercepted me when
I was about 5ft away from jumping into bed with my dad,
who was, I'm sure, already gone. I think I
didn't jump into bed with him. Instead, I ran back up to the kitchen so
I didn't get punished. And

(13:02):
I now, as an adult, rethinking that whole thing,
have discovered a lot of guilt, thinking, well,
shit, what if I had gone into bed? What if
I had seen something was wrong? What if he was still alive? Like,
that's the only way I can say it. That's what hits me. I almost
fell off the chair in my therapist's office when I said that for the first

(13:25):
time and was like, oh, my God, what if he was still alive?
The truth is that when somebody dies by suicide, those of us who are left
behind feel some sense of responsibility in some way.
And the irony is we're really not responsible. In most cases, we
are not responsible. And so why is that?
Why do we feel that way? Because suicide's

(13:48):
traumatic. Because suicide is confusing most
people. Like you're looking at somebody like my dad or
my friend who we lost only a few years ago. It's not expected.
Nobody is presenting like there's anything wrong.
So when we don't have that, why, we start
manufacturing one. And it's almost usually at our own expense,

(14:10):
don't you think? Oh, for sure. There's just so.
There's so much that goes into it. So much. Yeah. And
for those who did notice signs or who did
try to help, which. Which wasn't the case
with my own personal experience. Cause we didn't know anybody was. Was sick.
You know, that guilt can feel a lot more complicated if I guess you know

(14:32):
that there are issues that exist already.
So then it becomes a. What else could I have said? What else could I
have done? You have
to remember that the person who's choosing this, if they've been
successful or even if they aren't successful
there, the choice they are making is not a choice made in

(14:54):
clarity. You're making it in chaos. Yeah.
Total chaos. Right. There's. Because there's so much going on in your
head. Right. And trying to
navigate, even dialing the phone number, dialing that
number. The hardest thing in the world, it's dialing
the number, thinking about all the other stuff that's going

(15:17):
on. How are people going to
view me if I don't do this or if
I do do this? So much. So much.
Yeah. Yeah. And then. And then, too, though, you. Okay. I feel like
what you just described is true
for a great number of attempt survivors out

(15:40):
there. And I also think
the same flop. Attempt survivors and those who have been
successful. I also think it's fair to say
that just as many people are out there who have either
tried or succeeded in taking their lives
are not thinking in the least bit about the people that they're

(16:03):
leaving behind. And it's not for lack of love or lack of
concern or lack of
wanting to protect. It is because when
you're in that suicidal, dysregulated mindset,
you're not thinking about a goddamn thing. You're not. You're thinking
about one thing and one thing only. And that's the pain that you are in

(16:26):
that is so insurmountable that you have to do the only
thing you can do to make it stop.
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(16:48):
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(17:10):
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(17:32):
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thehelphub.co today.
So much truth to that. It's. It's just. It's a
terrifying place to be and
8 million things going through your mind of. And like

(17:52):
you said, not about the normal everyday stuff, but
it's more personal.
It's more trying to find the word
thinking. Give me a second. It's gonna take all the time we got all day.
We're here all week. Because I'm old, I don't remember things. It

(18:13):
was. It was a thought process
that I never really had before. I hadn't
taken the time to think about all these other things. And then at
crunch time, I liken it to
somebody that actually sees their life flash before their

(18:33):
eyes. That's what I saw. That's interesting.
I don't think you've ever said that to me. Yeah, it's hard
to explain, but it's like if you think about. If
you're about to be in a really bad accident, you see it coming. You can't
stop it. That's how I felt. Okay, that's
fair. And I can only imagine those people who are listening

(18:56):
to this can identify with that. Like, we've all had the near miss
and we've all done the white knuckle thing on the steering wheel and the heart
goes a million miles an hour and I get it. Yeah, I understand. That's a
good way of putting it. So now we've
talked all about different perspectives on
guilt. How do we reframe it? What are the

(19:18):
tools that we can use to reframe it?
And I can speak for myself
and others that I've worked with just in terms of crisis
counseling, you know, that help you untangle
from that guilt. I'm Curious what you think, because
I know this first one is something that you have

(19:40):
either done. I've done it. But I think you've done it. Writing a
letter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To the person who you. Who
you lost, saying all the things that you
wished you could say but didn't get a chance to say. And
that's the whole bleeding the radiator perspective.
It's. Get everything that's filling you up and making you

(20:03):
want to blow out. Get it. Get it out into
a safe place so. So that the pressure
is relieved. Well, I have a different
perspective to that. So I wrote a letter to myself, to
my. To my past self, to myself
that was there that day to

(20:25):
show them how far we've come.
And it opened a lot of doors and it opened
my eyes to some things that I. I could have done better. Love that you
did that. I. Again, I don't think you've told me that either. Do we ever
talk, you and I? There's a lot of, like, things
like I keep to myself because it's just

(20:48):
my way of, like, dealing with all
the sadness and there's some grief and there's a whole bunch
of just really second guessing myself. But when I did
that, it made me realize that
maybe if I just opened my mouth just a tiny bit,

(21:09):
I wouldn't have felt so guilty. If I had let on
that I wasn't doing okay instead of my great,
awesome, extroverted mask. Which is great. It really is. But when
you're depressed, it is not the best thing to have. Like, I wish I
had taken my mask off sooner
rather than later because I paid the price. Yeah, well,

(21:33):
I'm the one who really suffered, right? And thankfully
for all of us who have you in our lives,
you figured it out. And now you're sitting in
a position of being able to either
remind or encourage other people to do the same thing. And that's
a powerful place to sit. So

(21:57):
as far as as other tools, we. We
want to not only talk about the problem or the issue, we want to talk
about how to fix it or how to work through it. Have you ever heard
of this concept, fact checking your guilt? Have you ever heard of that?
No. So, okay. Fact
check your guilt. Ask yourself.

(22:19):
Is the thing that I feel guilty about something that I
really, truly had control over? If the answer is no,
the guilt belongs to that grief and not to you.
That's an interesting concept, isn't it?
I think the other thing people can do too is like

(22:40):
journaling about,
you know, your grief and your Anger and just all that, all those things.
That helps a lot. It did for me. And I wasn't a big writer until
all the shit went down, but
super helpful. Even with me writing my book, because I went back through the
journal and everything that was a negative

(23:05):
and just didn't have any. Have any value. I rolled it up into a little
ball and I threw it away. And if it was fire
season, it would have gone in the fire pit. But I. That helped
me also, because guilt sucks. And it, like, it
eats you alive. Yeah, it does. It absolutely does.
But talking about it or writing about it

(23:27):
helps you process it. It also helps you when you
get it from that place of being lodged in your brain and in that
quiet, isolated space in your head and you start saying it out loud, even sometimes
saying something out loud, you'll be like, oh, that's dumb.
Why am I even. Why am I holding myself accountable for
that? Or why am I giving myself grief

(23:50):
over that thing? Once you breathe life into
it, you realize that it really doesn't have the power that you thought that it
had. So. And honestly, that's
why. So there's another tool, and this leads into the other
tool. That's why it's so incredibly powerful. The
tool of talking to other. Not

(24:12):
just people talking to other survivors. In your
case, it would be a survivor of someone who was ideating or had an attempt,
or for me, it would be talking to people who have lost other people
that they love to suicide. And just hearing
somebody say, I feel that too,
or I did that to. Or I said that too,

(24:36):
makes such a world of difference, because
as someone who has not made an attempt, I
can sit here and listen to you all day long and I can feel for
you and I can sympathize with you,
but I can't empathize with you because I don't feel that same thing that you
felt. So there was a disconnect. I can be as supportive

(24:59):
as I can be, but it doesn't change the fact that I haven't experienced what
you have experienced. But when you talk to somebody
else who has, I'm curious is, are you then in
a place where you're just, like, comforted by that? I am.
Yeah. Yeah. And it comforts them, too, because
now it all goes back to sharing your story. Every

(25:21):
time you share your story, you unlock somebody else's prison. But
now they don't feel so alone, and they felt seen and felt heard.
And that's how I feel. I felt seen and feel
heard. And there's so Many
different reasons why people have suicidal
ideations, but it all

(25:43):
boils back down to the messiness in her head
and the dysregulation. And in my case, I just.
I had a lot of really horrible things happen in
a really short period. Yeah. And that actually is
another good segue to the last tool in managing
the kinds of guilt that we've been talking about.

(26:06):
Therapy, Therapy, therapy, therapy.
Especially with somebody who understands trauma. So if you're someone
experiencing trauma, if you do not already have a trauma
informed therapist, go seek one out because it is
a game changer. It can be incredibly powerful
in helping you to reframe feelings of

(26:29):
guilt, which are really, really hard things to reframe.
It is. And my therapist, I, man, I. I love
that girl. She's the third one I. I'm with, but she's. She's the
best and she listens to me. She's not judge metal.
That's the other thing. When you're talking. Sometimes when you're talking to friends that just
don't get why you got to that place, they can

(26:51):
become very judgmental. Here's what happens when you go to
therapy. You don't get that judgment. And you
can. You can talk about this. You can talk about what you're really feeling and
how you got to that part, that point in your life. And thankfully for me,
my friends were amazing. Did I
lose a few friends because of all that went down? Yeah.

(27:14):
But my friends didn't judge. They were just
thankful that I'm still here. Like I am. I am
thankful I am still here. Yeah. It's
true. So the bottom line to all of this is
that guilt after a suicide loss or guilt after
a suicide attempt is common. It doesn't mean

(27:36):
it's justified. Doesn't mean that you should feel guilty, doesn't mean you needed
to feel guilty. Doesn't mean I need to feel guilty. Because
you were dysregulated in your
attempt. I loved the people that I lost
and didn't in most cases even know that they were suffering.
And what happened on either side wasn't anyone's fault.

(28:00):
So there's the remembering that
we're not alone in this and we don't have to carry guilt forever.
That's a big realization. You don't have to
carry it. It is possible to heal
even when those old thoughts creep in. And I think that one of the big
takeaways is if the thoughts creep in, let them creep. Let

(28:23):
them creep. Guilt is normal. It's normal. It's often
misplaced okay, sure. And it is an absolutely
appropriate response to a suicide loss. And. But just
because you feel responsible or you feel guilty doesn't mean you are
responsible or you are guilty.
So give yourself grace, patience and grace. It goes

(28:45):
a long way. We're doing the best we can at surviving. Am I
right? Amen, sister. Right on, baby.
Hey, thanks for going deep. You're welcome. I love you.
I love you. I'll see you next week. Yes, you will.
Thanks for joining us on the Survivors. Remember, no matter how tough things
feel, you are enough and the world needs you just the way you are.

(29:08):
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.
Thanks for being here. Friends, just remember, help is out there
in so many different place places. So if you or someone you know is struggling,

(29:28):
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
just a call or a click away. We'll catch you next week. In the
meantime, keep surviving.