[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, my name's Ben Shanahan and I am on Wadjok country in Perth. I am a narrative family therapist and I work in a not for profit organization called Anglicare with a team called Cypress, which is a post prevention service, a suicide bereavement service for children and young people.
Welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Hi, everyone, My name is Chris Dolwin and today we're bringing you the first of two episodes where I speak with Ben Shanahan about working therapeutically with children, young people and their families impacted by the suicide of a loved one. In this first episode, Ben will speak about responding to the concerns parents and caregivers have about children impacted by suicide and helping parents to navigate conversations with children about the suicide of a loved one. He'll discuss the place of understanding and honouring the relationship between the child and the person who has died, and some other themes too. So that's some of what's ahead. We hope you find it of interest and supportive of your practice with children and young people and their families. Our conversation was recorded on the lands of the Kaurna people in South Australia and Whadjuk country in Western Australia. In bringing this to you, we pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present and emerging from the different first nations across Australia. Ben, thanks very much for joining us. I'm really delighted to be speaking with you about the Cypress service that works with children and young people and families affected by the suicide of a loved one.
Could you begin by speaking a bit about, you know, when parents and carers contact you looking for a service for their child or young person, what are some of the concerns from them that you initially hear about?
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks, Chris, and thanks for the question. That's a pleasure to be with you as well.
I guess the concerns and the priorities that parents and carers have.
I mean, there's similarities, but they're often very varied. One of the things that a lot of parents come to us with, or the dilemma that they might come to us with, particularly with younger children, is what they tell their kids about the death, about the person who's ended their own life. And there's often lots of, lots of worries and that come with the notion of telling a young person that someone that is dear to them has ended their own life. And parents often worry that if they let their children know this, then their kids might think that in some way this is an option for them at a time of distress or significant pain.
So this is one area a Common concern that parents have often, I think, just in general, you know, there's often very new territory for parents and families to navigate. So it's just really hard to know what to talk about, how much to talk about and when, because a lot of what we often find is that although families are on a journey together, that they're. Everyone in the family is on their own personal journey with grief as well. So the way that shows up and the way it looks for different people in the family can be remarkably different and quite confusing. And then what another question might be, well, what. What is grief? And what is. What's just normal childhood, you know, activities, you know, what's. What are the usual boundary struggles that we might be having with the kids? And what. You know, what. How should we. Can we. Can we pull it out? Can we put the usual boundaries in place, or should we be making accommodations? Or. So there's lots of, you know, some of those things are sort of quite common concerns that parents come with. And ultimately, parents and carers, often they're worried about getting it wrong, or they're worried about saying the wrong thing, and they just desperately want to do the very best that they can to support their children. Either they care.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Okay, so there's some significant concerns that parents have. So when they express uncertainty or worry about what to tell their children, how do you and your team begin to respond to those concerns?
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Yeah, and thank you for mentioning my team, Chris, as well, because I guess some of the things that I'm sharing with you today aren't just my ideas and practices. These are really. I'm on the shoulders of my team members, really, in this conversation with hopefully sharing some of their wisdom and ideas as well. I guess what we don't want parents and carers to feel is pressure from us to. To say something in particular to their kids or to pressure from us till they've got to tell their children, especially young children, what has happened. So it's very important to us that we create a context in our conversations that help parents and families decide how they want to navigate this. And often that's through providing lots of different options. Often it's through providing little anecdotes or resources that describe the experiences that other families have had navigating this territory, the worries that they've had about doing it, what they've learned from it. There's a wonderful book called Tell Me what Happened and which is written by, in collaboration with families who have experienced a loved one ending their own life and have had to find ways of Talking about this with children. It's a resource that's produced by the Jesuit Social Services.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Okay, well, perhaps we can put those details in the podcast show Notes. So besides sharing those kinds of resources, how do you, like, create a context to help parents decide how to navigate this?
[00:05:38] Speaker A: We're often having conversations about what some of the. What the context of the suicide was. There's often a lot of struggles that have led up to a person making this decision to end their own life. Sometimes it comes out the blue, which can be even more confusing for family and for kids. It's very hard to make sense of. But some of the things that we. Some of the questions that we might ask is what ideas they have already about what they'd like their children to know, what they would like their kids to know, what they don't want their kids to know, what they would be worried about.
A lot of kids might be aware that the person has ended their own life, but they don't know how. So the means of suicide can be a very, very sensitive topic, of course, to navigate.
And a lot of families will often decide that they don't want the young children to know the means of the death early on, but they might. They will have a story about how the person died, but they won't like them to have a story about the means of their die because they don't want that to be an image that they have to sit with, that they don't want them to have that image in their mind. And that may be something that comes later, but it may also be something that is causing tremendous distress for a young person to not know what the means was. So it may be that the young person's distress at not knowing a particular detail about the death outweighs or, you know, is a bit of a tipping point where families decide, actually, I think it's, we can't hold out anymore. This is causing too much harm. And at least if we're having this conversation, we can help the young person to support that. So sometimes we'll support those conversations.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Okay, so you're really supporting parents to evaluate for themselves some of those different options by exploring the context of the suicide, you know, what they want their child to know, and also how the not knowing might be affecting their child.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's really key that we don't impose our own views about what should happen. Sometimes, you know, people will say, well, what. What's the research say about this? And I could circuit. We could tell people what the research says, which is that often it's useful to have conversation, let children know about the suicide, that a person has taken action to end their own life. But it's really. It's a little bit more fuzzy when it comes to the details, and it's a little bit. It's even more fuzzy when it comes to what is going to be the right or the most useful or fitting story for this particular family at this particular time. Because what works for one family may not be necessarily useful for another or may not fit with their values and the way they want to. Want to do things. There are some wonderful books out there as well, to help children make sense of a loved one's death. And perhaps we could put some of those in the show notes as well.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, we could do that. That would be wonderful. And when you say that these books can help children make sense of the loved one's death, could you say a bit more about that? I guess, because making sense of it might be a bit hard to come by.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: You know, one thing that we might.
You know, people want. Kids want to know why. Well, why do they do this? Why do they leave me? You know, they might be worried that they weren't enough for the person to stay around or.
I'm often finding myself having conversations with families around there being particularly painful experiences that might have led a person's thoughts to become really muddled and that might have made it. That might have sort of made it hard for them to see other things that were really important that might have separated them from their better judgment, in a way.
I had a conversation recently with a mother and daughter around.
It was the young person's dad who died. And the father had quite significant struggles with alcohol. And we had talked about what the alcohol was doing to the dad's life, what it. What it tricked him into believing about himself, what it got him into thinking about himself as a dad. And then a series of events which sort of seemed to happen in a bit of a cycle. And as we drew it together, I'm making a circle with my hand, which isn't very good for a podcast, I know, but. But we could see sort of visually that there was something, a cycle that was going round around. And I said, well, do you think that this cycle was this cycle getting stronger and stronger, faster and faster in the last year or so of dad's life? And they both agreed that this was happening more and more. And so what do you know that goes around really, really fast and gets faster and faster? It's very powerful and quite destructive Is this, you know, is this anything, you know, that is similar to that? And the 10 year old girl said, well, I know tornadoes do this. And so there was, we talked about the idea that this tornado was. Had her dad got stuck in a tornado in the last, last year of his life. And I said, we said, so what sort of tornado, tornado do you think this would be, you know, if we were to give this a name? And because I'd said, you know, do you think that this tornado always told your dad the truth about himself or did it sometimes lie to him? And they were both very clear that it lied to him, it told him awful lies and tricked him into believing things that just weren't true about himself and about his worth as a dad. And I can't remember the exact name, but it was something like the mean lying tornado. And this became a means to understand what happened to dad. So I mean, so often we're thinking about metaphors. We're thinking about trying to not make the person who died the problem necessarily. We're looking to try to identify some of the things that impacted on their life and in ways that dignify the person who has died. But we might look at the things that pushed them towards this, believing that this was the only option and in some ways that perhaps having them believe, pushing them towards believing that this was an action that would be of benefit to others.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Okay, so you're bringing forward the context that was impacting on the life of the person who died. And you spoke about doing this in ways that dignify the person. What is it you're sort of hoping for by having conversations in that way?
[00:11:48] Speaker A: I guess my hope is that these conversations are not only dignifying of the person who died, but also dignifying of and honoring of the relationship that people have with the person who died. That I guess by contextualizing some of the factors that contributed to the person making this, you know, making the decision to end their life in ways that don't make the person the problem or make it, you know, that I think that make room for other stories about this person and about their relationships and about some of the precious memories and, you know, that a person has of being with that loved one. You know, I guess the relationship lives on in, you know, many ways that people have with the person who died.
So we're wanting to, I guess our intention is to find ways of having conversations that can make room to honour that relationship.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Is that an important idea that shapes your work, you know, to be finding ways to honour that relationship that continues to live on.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. You know, I'm often finding myself having conversations with people and imagining what the person who died would be thinking about, what we're talking about, what they might be thinking about in terms of developments that have been happening in this person's life. When I'm talking with people about the things that really matter to them, the things that are important to them, and then I ask about, you know, how. How do these things come to be important to you? There's, you know, so often there's this connection to the person who died. So I think there's can be something really profoundly sustaining for people to be feeling connected in some way to the person who died. Of course, this depends on the sort of relationship that the person had with the person who died as well. So there can be a lot of complexity sometimes to relationships. There could be aspects of relationships that are very precious and that people want to hold onto, and there could be other parts of relationships that people would prefer not to stay connected to. So, you know, sometimes we'll find ourselves having conversations with people about the parts of the person or the parts of their relationship that they want to hold onto and keep close. And often when I'm talking with kids, they might have had some really very painful memories of a parent who has died, for example, an older sibling, or. It's not that they won't talk about that or that they, you know, that I won't make room for that. But often their preference will be to focus more on the things that, you know, those sort of precious memories, those things that are important to them and often what they choose to focus more on. So we can amplify some bits of a relationship and those memories, and then we can, you know, it's not that we're trying to cover up or replace the bad memories, but we're amplifying the paths they want to hold onto.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: So that sounds significant as well, you know, to be understanding those relationships and researching the place of that relationship in the child's life and the complexity, you know, in all of that.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I guess and involving other people in that research as well, Chris, in whether it's with teenagers, whether it's with younger kids, there are often other stories that other family members will tell about that person and about what observations they've had about that person, conversations they've had about that person and their relationship with a child that might not be known to some of the children or young people in the family. So being able to share some of the stories that people have is very powerful and especially if it's a very young person that we're working with, they may not have an apparent has died or whoever the person is that has died may be very important to them but they may not have a clear memory or a lot of memories, you know, because they were so young and they may have been very young when the person died.
So I work with a six year old boy whose mum passed away when he was 2, so he doesn't have any memory of mum. But I guess in some ways our work together has been about making memories and about helping him to get to know his mum through his granny's eyes and through other people's eyes, you know, the eyes of his older sisters and to be speculating about various decisions that his mum made and things that she did when he was little that were very thoughtful and very much centered on her wanting the very best for him and helping him to understand and hear some of those stories can really important to shaping his relationship with his mum. And so, you know, we might find ourselves having in those sorts of conversations.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Thanks Ben. Yeah, I appreciate how you've spoken about your intentions to understand the relationship and honour the relationship and some of the complexity that may accompany that at times too. So with those intentions and others, when you are meeting with a child and the family for the first time, how do you even begin those consultations?
[00:16:48] Speaker A: I think for me I'm often interested to understand what conversations people have had about coming to meet, whose idea it was to come, what the child or young person thought about the idea, what made them open to coming because they, you know, they could have really dug their heels in and not decide not to come and you know, if they've had any, you know, I guess, I mean always interested in knowing who they do they're talking with about important things and about, you know, I ask sometimes about how those, I'm getting an understanding about other relationships that people have in their life, other supports. I wanted to understand what's, what's been helpful about those conversations. Have they been able to talk with those, you know, these, these significant other people about the reason we're meeting about, you know, about the impact of their loved one ending their own life.
Sometimes I have, sometimes they haven't. So we, you know, we do a bit of talking about talking in a way and then I'm often, I'm interested to get to know people a little outside of the reasons why we're meeting.
So I'm often, I ask if it's okay. Look I'd really like to just know a little bit about the things that are important to you. Things about the things you like to do.
You know, would it be okay just to. For me to ask some questions about that? And so I, you know, I get some. And I'm getting information about metaphors in. Or that useful. The things that people are choosing to do means that these are things that matter to them. So Whether that's watching YouTube, I might ask, well, what do you watch on YouTube? Or whether it's doing, you know, sports or, you know, whether it's gaming, whatever it may be. I'm often interested to understand a bit about that. And I'm. I guess I'm sort of parking lots of these things and just making note of some of these things, which I may sort of begin to talk more about in this first meeting or I may. So we may come back to. I circle back to. In later meetings. I'm often interested in asking people how they've been supporting each other, what's been helpful, what's been really tricky. You know, it's not unusual for, you know, I guess in counseling or therapy situations for people to talk about goals and talk about, you know, what. What their hopes are for meeting. This doesn't sort of often feel like a really fitting place to start when we're meeting with someone brief by suicide. So I'm not often having conversations about goals or hopes necessarily. There might be questions that people have that they'd like to be answered. These are some of the things that we might sort of find ourselves talking about.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Okay, so you're interested in getting an understanding of what's important to them, you know, which might provide a basis for metaphors that could be helpful down the track as well as, like, how the conversation came about, whose idea was it, what the child thinks of that, and also how they've been supporting each other. And as you said, you know that conversations about goals or even hopes aren't necessarily a feature of your work early on. So how do you come to understand what it is, you know, what the family's purposes are in accessing your service?
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think we definitely, definitely get there because I guess we want to be thinking with people about why we're doing what we're doing. So I think that, you know, that word purpose is important. One of the ideas that sometimes people come in to counselling with, not just in. In this suicide bereavement space, but I guess in lots of.
Bit of a dominant discourse that people come into lots of counselling with is that they've got to talk about all the stuff that's difficult or they're going to be asked questions about all of that stuff. So I like people to know that that's not the purpose of what we're doing, that there's space for that if people want to talk about it, but that they're in charge of, you know, they're driving the ship, so to speak, and that they can decide what they. What they talk about and what they don't.
So I think the purpose of us meeting is that, you know, I might talk to them about how other young people have used the space because it's a bit of a strange space to sort of. To be coming into. It's an unusual context to be meeting with someone.
And it's. I think it's something that gets kind of crafted and we understand more with each conversation. And then there might be two different purposes to each conversation that we have, depending on what's come up the week before, depending on the questions that I asked, depending on little activities that I introduce or things that we've been drawing or, you know, stories that they might be telling me about their loved one. You know, some. I met with one teenage boy who. We're talking about what memories he wanted to have of our work together if we were to meet together for six months. At the end of that six months, how did he want to remember this time? And he said, well, he has younger siblings and it was his dad who passed away. And he said that he wanted to find a way of holding on to the memories that he wants to hold about his dad. Okay, well, how come you want to do that? And he said, well, I want. I want to be able to share this with my siblings because they're much younger and they're not. They don't have the same memories of dad that I do.
Okay. Okay. And we'll let. Shall we have a go? Here are some ideas that we could do for that. So we spent. Every time that we would meet, he brings some photos of him and his siblings and his dad when they were growing up.
We would ask questions or, you know, to other family members and getting photos from them, things that they'd remember.
And every time we'd meet, we would just spend the whole time talking about photo or talking about a memory or memories. And I would type next, I sit next to him and we type these stories. And sort of. We'd stop here and there and we'd talk about, you know, what was. What was happening, what was going on sometimes we just sort of map it on a piece of paper, these stories. But we spent all of our time putting together these stories with photos and then made a book remote that he then gave to, gave a copy to his nan, to his dad's mum and to his siblings.
And this is what he wanted to do. So I think it's really, you know, we got to be guided by what people do. Other times people get really interested in understanding what it's been like for other young people in navigating the space. So a big part of our work is to find ways to enable contribution, to enable young people to contribute to the lives of others.
So there might be stories that we're hearing and documenting and then young people are often really interested and excited about the idea of being able to share some of their stories or ideas with other young people and then getting responses know back from them. So that's another, you know, important part to the work. But I guess there's no set purpose. We don't have a set agenda, we don't have a manual that we work with. But we're just very interested in staying very close to what it is that's most important to young people there. And then I guess an important context also maybe Chris, for the listeners to understand is that Cyprus is a free service. It's funded by the Mental Health Commission and we're a long term counselling program in that there's no time limit to how long young people can remain with the service. And the knowledge that suicide bereavement is not a linear process and it often goes in ways, you know, kids have sometimes come through a little discrete period of counselling. They go away for a year or two and they come back because developmentally things have moved on. The meaning of the death has changed. There's other questions that are coming to mind. So, you know, this is something that happens. We don't like to keep people in the service for any longer than they need to be for that period of time. But I guess it does afford us some flexibility to be able to be responding to what families need in the moment.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Yes. Which I expect would be really significant for the families to have that flexibility available to them. So folks, that brings us to the end of this first episode on working with children affected by suicide. In the next episode, Ben will speak about some of the ideas surrounding suicide that can be potentially unhelpful for families, as well as the importance of not underestimating children's wisdom and creativity in navigating difficult times. You'll hear some lovely stories of practice in that episode too. So thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks again to our guest Ben Shanahan and we look forward to your company.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Next time, visit our
[email protected] au to access a range of resources to assist your practice. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The Centre is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care under the National Support for Child and.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Youth Mental Health Program.
