If you or someone you love is in crisis, call the suicide prevention lifeline at 988 or text the crisis text line at 741-741.
Anne Moss Rogers interviews Stacey Freedenthal PhD, LCSW in this webinar Q&A style. At the end, we answered audience questions.
If you want to see the questions and pick and choose which parts you want to hear, go to go to YouTube and the “chapters” are laid out.
- Visit the video here
- Click the description and you’ll see the time stamps next to the questions
- Click the time stamps (the numbers like 28:30) and it will go to the Question and then the answer.
Stacey’s bio: Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, is a therapist, author, and educator who specializes in helping people with suicidal thoughts. Her new book is Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts: What Family, Friends, and Partners Can Say and Do. Dr. Freedenthal also authored the book, Helping Someone with Suicidal Thoughts: Tips and Techniques for Professionals, and she created and maintains the website Speaking of Suicide. Dr. Freedenthal is an associate professor at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work and a psychotherapist in private practice. She lives in Denver, CO, with her husband and their collection of cats.
In this recording we address these burning questions:
- What makes people more likely—and less likely—to become suicidal?
- I’m so afraid of asking about suicide. Will I give them the idea? What if they say yes? What if they get angry? What if I say the wrong thing?
- What do I do and how do I figure out the right thing to do when my loved one is in crisis? It’s so hard to figure out.
- I’m afraid when my loved one is talking about suicide. And I’m afraid when they are not. It’s like I’m always waiting for the shoe to drop, and I can’t find any peace. How can I get myself out of this cycle?
- How could they even consider suicide if they have kids and a loving family? Sometimes I feel like I’m worthless or don’t matter at all. Isn’t it a choice?
- Why isn’t my love enough? Can’t they see how much I love them?
- My loved one lives with persistent suicidal thoughts. Is there any hope they can lead a normal life? How does someone get used to that?
- I go through all these motions, drop everything for the current crisis, and then everything is fine. It’s exhausting and I’m starting to think my loved one has gotten addicted to saying they are suicidal. How can I know I’m not being manipulated, or they are just trying to get attention?
- If my loved one goes to a therapist, what should I expect in the way of deliverables?
- Stacey, you talked about “brave listening” in your book, Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts. What is brave listening and why is it important? What is reflective listening and why is that important?
Audience Questions:
- My partner is in constant chronic pain from complex health issues. How do I cope with the guilt of being his reason for saying alive?
- Is there a website you can recommend with up-to-date suicide statistics?
- My daughter is 18 years old and attempted suicide Sunday night. She is getting inpatient treatment right now. What can I expect when she comes home? Any suggestion for me and my family to prepare as she returns home?
- Trauma-informed therapy is hard to find. HOw do we advocate for our person to get them that kind of treatment?
- When someone tells him his/her/their suicidal thoughts, it should mean they consider me safe enough to share with me. Yet if I don’t feel like having the right energy myself to support them, how could I help them without making a mistake and worsening their situation?
- Can you put the link to Anna Weider’s letter in the chat so it’s easy to find?
We just have to understand that someone may be going through any type of condition at any time and needs love and support.
I think this is true Rachel
What makes me so sad though most of all is how some of these people come across so unkind to us we stayed with nice people mostly though but there is only so much torment you can take until you can’t no more.
I do agree though I was told when you see the world behaving a certain way or you find people like that it is because they are battling their own mental emotional physiological physical social issues the best thing to do is kill them with kindness that will help them because we know they have challenges to we just don’t know what. Everyone suffers from something. So when I suffered from mental illness like this I thought see what it is like to be in another persons shoes no body will no what it feels like until they are in the shoes.
Truth quote – we never know what could be going on in someone’s life in anyway there could be one little thing or a million other things we just don’t know what so always be understanding.
Many emotional problems could be going on with many people that could be the cause of human behavior.
Personalities conflict with each other , people are different from each other , people have things that they – fear , disgust , detest , make them sad , everyone has differences the question is whether we let our emotions and thoughts take hostage of us in this way or we fight back against them and find solutions.
I have learned it takes a strong person to be kind and that is the only thing we can do to help others.
Like I said before only causing and creating trouble will bring more of it. That is an examples of why we hope and wish people would not ridicule illness
I wish they didn’t ridicule illness either. We humans spend a lot of time interpreting other people’s behavior and most of the time we have it wrong. If we only connected more.
But I think I should actually feel for people at the same time to we never know what could be going on in that persons life. There was constant bullying and abuse going on in my school and class everyday it was constant. Emotional mental physiological social spiritual – non stop aggression rage nasty expressions body language facial expressions like that so much. Mental illness was also on the rise in our school to. In the neighborhood living near that threatening man on the same street. Kids and teenagers who would bully in the neighborhood. Strangers who would be nasty to us to some days more some days less. It was constant are school even closed a few days because there were groups of kids making threatening remarks gestures facial expressions body language notes and intentions to kill and injure and harm everyone. There was constant harassment and demeaning on the internet to same goes for above. I told everyone if no one does anything about this people will continue to mistreat each other like this it is not ok.
When I am being harassed online I think about what that person must be going through to push them towards such awful behavior.
I came here today reading your articles thanking you so much for your help and support I have taken so much pain from depression hallucinations trauma suicidal thoughts homicidal ideation physical mental social spiritual pain of all kinds delusions paranoia anxiety anger and rage bitterness destructive behavior thoughts of harming myself and others hiding isolating myself completely from the outer world major eating disorders and not leaving my home at all.
There are days where I just lock myself in my room all day and night and I avoid social time or anything because I feel so mentally harmed and when I do go out and spend social time I constantly try to hide behind a smile and not show any signs of vulnerability my friends and family and people in my life never know how crazy I am inside because I never told them I have kept it secret from society if I had a spouse I would do the same. At some points I get so tired of living different true selves that I worry people will see what is really behind me. That is why I just avoid people and never talk to anyone stay all alone.
I sometimes even tell myself with the voices in my head I be better off dieing all the time than living. I also have strong thoughts that the world only is doing evil to me because the way I am and I feel like i rather die than continue to live in the world like hell. That is why I socially isolate myself completely from others I never share show express do be who I am I am constantly trying to hide and switch true selves to blend in with society hoping that no one will find out how disturbed I am. I am still a happy outgoing person being happy is the best weapon of resilience when it comes to never ending anxiety depression thoughts of suicide those thoughts still come in but I learn to function and live with it as if it were not there. The best thing I try to do and sometimes it works is distract myself and as long as I am occupied this will not get to me. I have had a very hard past though years of depression then anxiety after my first husband after college was killed. He was a very nice man very gentle very kind very sweet. I had this strange feeling though I could not overlook no one believed me when I told them but I always had a feeling in my gut that something doom related was going to happen to my husband sooner or later.
In my neighborhood me and him remembered encountering this man who was quite not right his behavior was just odd I was able to read his body and facial expressions the first day something was just not right. My neighbor friend Darlene also complained about this man harassing several neighbors and residents complaint he was watching them that was strange behavior. He did this for a while and I thought to myself oh he probably is just a bit odd he will move away just get curtains I was told but I was smart enough to know that they told me oh just go get curtains like you think it is going to deter no it is like medicine that numbs the pain and then it comes back worse later find a solution. I was so frustrated no one believed me when I told them these things who knows why? Then I blamed myself and started thinking it was my own mental Illness but truly my gut told me this is something clearly wrong.
Then 4-5 years later my husband was killed no reason at all I found him he was alone in a place where a person could do that to him. The one reason I went into a spiral of insanity I was so upset I lost my sweet caring kind husband number 1. Number 2 – I thought who could do such a thing I am traumatized by it. Number 3 – I spiraled into revenge fantasies feeling so Boiling angry I literally did not know what to do but hold it back because I know if I let it out I could risk more danger more violence more injury and worse reactions from people.
The truth I know though is anyone who would take advantage of an innocent vulnerable kind person like him is thier behavior at the worst and anyone who loves and truly cares about humans would never do sick acts like that. I told myself maybe those people in my life that were toxic caused me all this mental pain and suffering I constantly distrusted and blamed everyone and projected all my issues onto the world because I know if my body was not in a constant state of alert it would happen again. I have lost my mind trying to find ways to deal with worse case scenarios. But things like this do happen in society and mentally I’ll people are actually targets just like anyone else who is in the vulnerable category list. What angers me even more though is a person with mental Illness has already had enough in thier life enough torment enough pain enough nasty people who want to harm them so it’s like someone who takes extra advantage by harming mentally I’ll people who already are under enough stress is even worse.
I have learned from when I left these people in my life only returning violence with more violence will cause more problems if people want to act that way that’s there problem. So after all this I learned to isolate myself. Like my mind told me no more dealing with people. There was also this nasty kid in the hallways at school who would make me afraid everyday I would even feel afraid and start shaking in school just to walk to the bathrooms or hallway because he was there or I would take endless routes short cuts or other ways to avoid him if I caught him I would look down sometimes I made eye contact back but he really only behaved more aggressively.
One time in class a teacher had to evacuate everyone from the room because he became physically aggressive do you think he could be going through something like I am to?
Do you thinks everyone is going through something?