A Parent's Guide for Suicidal and Depressed Teens (22 page)

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Authors: Kate Williams

Tags: #Family & Relationships, #Life Stages, #Teenagers, #Self-Help, #Depression, #test

BOOK: A Parent's Guide for Suicidal and Depressed Teens
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Being a little kid and playing with no worries or sense of time.
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Special papers with stories, I don't have them.
When I hear her list, I no longer want to rush in and fix it. But what do we as parents do about the sorrow? First, we listen. We listen to our own hurt and to our children's. We say, "That is really sad. I wish you hadn't lost that." Then we say, "What else do you feel besides sad?" Relief? Longing? Anguish? Irritation and aggravation? Compulsion to replace? Fear of abandonment, fear that if one parent left you, another one might? Anger? I've found that a short conversation can be very revealing. One way you might begin is simply to share your own list with your child. You might talk about some of your feelings around your losses. If it's not possible or appropriate to talk about your list with your children, it's okay to drop the conversation and move on to something else. There are other ways to express the pain of loss besides talking.
 
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Expressing Sadness over Loss
After we make a list of losses, one of the best ways for getting at the feelings of sadness is suggested by the children's book
The Tenth Good Thing about Barney,
by Judith Viorst. In this short picture book, a family talks about their dead pet by thinking up ten good things about their pet. I've used this idea in my own grief work in my journal. I've also used the idea when I talk with my daughter. When we moved out of our house I said, "Let's talk about all the things we liked about this house." The birch tree we planted, the roses, and the big room where I could lie in my bed and look out the window and watch the streetlight are three that came to mind. Words bring the sad feelings to the surface because the loss is attached to the very concrete pictures we get from "the good things."
In the initial stages of expressing loss, we should never underestimate the intensity of our children's sadness. When I work in schools teaching children how to write, one of the most striking elements of their writing is its intensityand one of the most common comments from teachers and other adults is "It's hard to believe that a child could express feelings that intensely." It seems to me that in this culture we have a myth that children are basically happy-go-lucky, they are resilient and can survive anything. This has some
 
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truth to it but the intensity of grief is the flip side of the resilient child. For example, in the following poem we can feel the intensity of the loss. We can also see that the child is still experiencing the loss and afraid it will continue to be with her forever.
                               Fear 
     He walked out of my life at two 
     and came in and walked out at three. 
     Seven was when he came here and I 
     saw him last. 
     He walked out that time too. 
     I have the fear of never seeing him again. 
     At thirteen he sent a plane ticket so I could fly out. 
     One month I spent with him and all the time having 
     the fear of leaving. 
     I have the fear of him leaving my life for good. 
     I have the fear of him. 
                                            RACHEL FIRCHOW 
Writing about feelings is something that both grown-ups and teenagers can do. It is useful to find ways to express loss, especially when we are stuck at a distance from our feelings and not able to cry. As parents, we can work with "pieces of grief" with our children and let the therapists go after what we don't know how to handle. Therapists can also help us understand losses we didn't know were there.
I've noticed in our family therapy work that often working with anger will unlock the feelings of
 
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loss. If we can't connect to our own pain, maybe we can connect to anger about betrayal, change, loss, divorce, and death. It is said that anger is often a cover for a deeper feeling like hurt, shame, or fear of abandonment. When we express anger, we often cry and go deeper emotionally to feel the hurt for the first time.
Other Feelings Connected to Loss
When we think of loss, we usually think that the feeling we must get over is sadness. While sadness is the most immediate feeling identified with loss, there are other feelings and intensities of feeling as well. Think about the difference between losing a devoted grandfather through death and leaving a favorite book on a school bus. You might be mad at yourself for forgetting the book, but the book is replaceable, your grandfather isn't. Not only might you be upset that you didn't fully express your love to Grandpa, but you'd feel anguish at the thought of never seeing him again. I don't want to minimize the effect of losing a favorite book, but we have different kinds of feelings about different losses.
I've experienced other feelings that come with loss and grief too. Shame is what I consider my primary negative feeling, and it surfaces with every stressful situation, which includes all losses. In the
 
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event of any loss, I have to work through the shame of it, as well as the other feelings.
With Rachel, I see that a present loss triggers her earlier losses, bringing to the fore a fear of abandonment that she experiences as a paralyzing force. One day when we were talking about this in therapy, she said to the therapist, "Every time my mom walks out the door, I think she's never coming back." I reassured her that I will not abandon her. I'm here for her. And we're in therapy to help her escape the grip this fear has on her.
In order to fully feel loss, I also have to accept contradictory feelings. For example, when we sold our house, I had many feelings raging within me: shame, relief, hurt, jubilation. When we are experiencing such a dichotomy it helps to ask, "What am I ambivalent about in this situation?" If I can accept the conflicting emotions, I will be more receptive to feeling them. I've noticed that has given Rachel relief to say, "It's okay to have more than one feeling about things."
As Dr. Richard Obershaw, a Minnesota therapist, has said, "Grief is the process whereby an individual reidentifies who they are, following a loss/change experience."
1
He suggests asking ourselves three questions to help resolve our feelings: "What have I lost? What do I feel about the loss? Who am I now?" The framework of these questions provides a most thorough way of working through some issues that may arise.
 
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Who Am I Now?
After a loss our job is to reestablish an identity. Another way to express this is to say we need to bring resolution. We need to see ourselves as whole people without the beloved person (object, situation, or fix) in our life.
The following suggestions are some ways of reestablishing an identity after a loss.
1. After you have identified your feelings about a loss, try writing new descriptive names for yourself, like these: "I am a young woman, a child of divorced parents, who is learning how to be healthy." "I am a young man who has survived his negative feelings." When you give yourself a new name, you give yourself credit for the work you have done.
2. Write a good-bye list.
3. Write out a list of opposites: I used to be ___, but now I am ___. For example, "I used to be a twenty-two-year-old in graduate school, dropping out to take care of my husband. Now I'm the author of three books. Another example, "I used to keep my anger bottled up. Now I know how to yell and call a friend when anger overwhelms me."
4. Collect pictures that symbolize the loss. (Photos or drawings.) Throw them in the trash. Cut them up and say good-bye. Throw your

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