Transcript for
Working with children affected by suicide – part one

Ben Shannahan (00:00): Hi, my name’s Ben Shannahan and I am on Whajuk country in Perth. I am a narrative family therapist and I work in a not-for-profit organisation called Anglicare with a team called CYPRESS, which is a postvention service, a suicide bereavement service for children and young people. 

 

Narrator (00:23): Welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast. 

 

Chris Dolman (00:30): Hi, everyone. My name is Chris Dolman, and today we’re bringing you the first of two episodes where I speak with Ben Shannahan 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. 

 

(01:03): So, that’s some of what’s ahead. We hope you find it of interest and supportive of your practise with children and young people and their families. Our conversation was recorded on the lands of the Kaurna people in South Australia and Whajuk 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. 

 

(01:29): 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 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? 

 

Ben Shannahan (01:50): Yeah. Thanks, Chris, and thanks for the question. It’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, with all the dilemmas 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 worries 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. 

 

(02:45): Often, I think just in general, this is 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 everyone in the family is on their own personal journey with grief as well. So, the way that this shows up and the way it looks for different people in the family can be remarkably different and quite confusing. 

 

(03:14): And then what another question might be, “Well, what is grief and what’s just normal childhood activities? What are the usual boundary struggles that we might be having with the kids? And can we put the usual boundaries in place or should we be making accommodations?” So, there’s lots of, some of those things are 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, kids in their care. 

 

Chris Dolman (03:58): 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? 

 

Ben Shannahan (04:10): 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 practises. These are really on the shoulders of my team members really in this conversation with hopefully sharing some of their wisdom and ideas as well. 

 

(04:28): I guess, what we don’t want parents and carers to feel is pressure from us to say something in particular to their kids, or pressure from us to 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 learnt from it. There’s a wonderful book called Tell Me What Happened, which is written in collaboration with families who have experienced a loved one ending of 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. 

 

Chris Dolman (05:26): Okay. Well, perhaps we can put those details in the podcast show notes. So, besides sharing those kinds of resources, how do you create a context to help parents decide how to navigate this? 

 

Ben Shannahan (05:38): We are often having conversations about 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. 

 

(05:55): But some of the questions 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. They’ll have a story about how the person died, but they won’t like them to have a story about the means of they died, because they don’t want that to be an image that they have to sit with. They don’t want them to have that image in their mind. 

 

(06:45): 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 of not knowing a particular detail about the death outweighs or is a bit of a tipping point where families decide, “Actually, I think 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 people to support that. So, sometimes we’ll support those conversations. 

 

Chris Dolman (07:13): Okay. So, you’re really supporting parents to evaluate for themselves some of those different options by exploring the context of the suicide, what they want their child to know, and also how the not knowing might be affecting their child? 

 

Ben Shannahan (07:28): Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s really key that we don’t impose our own views about what should happen. Sometimes people will say, “Well, what’s the research say about this?” And we could tell people what the research says, which is that often it’s useful to have conversations, 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 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 do things. 

 

(08:17): 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. 

 

Chris Dolman (08:29): 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. 

 

Ben Shannahan (08:41): One thing that we might … Kids want to know why, “Well, why did they do this? Why did they leave me?” They might be worried that they weren’t enough for the person to stay around. 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’ve made it hard for them to see other things that were really important, that might’ve separated them from their better judgement in a way. 

 

(09:19): 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 her dad’s life, 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 we could see visually that there was a cycle that was going round and round. 

 

(09:58): And I said, “Well, do you think that, 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 I said, “What do you know that goes around really fast and it gets faster and faster, it’s very powerful and quite destructive? 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, we talked about the idea that her dad got stuck in a tornado in the last year of his life. And we said, “What sort of tornado do you think this would be, if we were to give this a name?” Because I’d said, “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. 

 

(10:52): 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, it’s often we’re thinking about metaphors, we’re thinking about trying to not make the person who died the problem necessarily. We are 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 pushing them towards believing that this was an action that would be of benefit to others. 

 

Chris Dolman (11:35): Okay. So, you are 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 hoping for by having conversations in that way? 

 

Ben Shannahan (11:49): I guess, my hope is that these conversations are not only dignifying of the person who died, but also dignifying and honouring of the relationship that people have with the person who died. That, I guess, by contextualising some of the factors that contributed to the person making the decision to end their life in ways that don’t make the person the problem, or I think that make room for other stories about this person and about their relationships and about some of the precious memories that a person has of being with that loved one. I guess, the relationship lives on in many ways that people have with the person who died. So, I guess our intention is to find ways of having conversations that can make room to honour that relationship. 

 

Chris Dolman (12:42): Is that an important idea that shapes your work, to be finding ways to honour that relationship that continues to live on? 

 

Ben Shannahan (12:48): Absolutely. Yeah. 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, “How do these things come to be important to you?” So often there’s connection to the person who died. 

 

(13:19): So, I think there 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. 

 

(13:48): So, 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’ve had some really very painful memories of a parent who has died, for example, or an older sibling. It’s not that they won’t talk about that or that I won’t make room for that, but often their preference will be to focus more on those 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 the relationship and those memories. It’s not that we’re trying to cover up or replace the bad memories, but we’re amplifying the parts they want to hold onto. 

 

Chris Dolman (14:35): So, that sounds significant as well, to be understanding those relationships and researching the place of that relationship in the child’s life and the complexity in all of that. 

 

Ben Shannahan (14:46): Absolutely. And I guess, involving other people in that research as well, Chris. I mean, 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 the 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 and a parent 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, because they were so young and they may have been very young when the person died. 

 

(15:39): So, I work with a six-year-old boy whose mum passed away when he was two. 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, 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 centred on her wanting the very best for him. And helping him to understand and hear some of those stories became really important to shaping his relationship with his mum. So, we might find ourselves having those sorts of conversations. 

 

Chris Dolman (16:31): 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? 

 

Ben Shannahan (16:49): 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 could have really dug their heels in and decided not to come. 

 

(17:12): I guess, I’m always interested in knowing who they do their talking with about important things, I ask sometimes about how those … I’m getting an understanding about other relationships that people have in their life, other supports. I’m wanting to understand what’s been helpful about those conversations. Have they been able to talk with these significant other people about the reason we are meeting, about the impact of their loved one ending their own life? Sometimes they have. Sometimes they haven’t. So, we do a bit of talking about talking in a way. 

 

(17:53): 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, about the things you like to do. Would it be okay just for me to ask some questions about that?” And I’m getting information about metaphors or 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 sports, whether it’s gaming, whatever it may be, I’m often interested to understand a bit about that. And I guess, I’m sort of parking lots of these things and just making note of some of these things, which I may begin to talk more about in this first meeting or we may come back to, circle back to in later meetings. 

 

(18:56): I’m often interested in asking people how they’ve been supporting each other, what’s been helpful, what’s been really tricky. It’s not unusual for, I guess, in counselling or therapy situations for people to talk about goals and to talk about what their hopes are for meeting. This doesn’t often feel like a really fitting place to start when we’re meeting with someone bereaved 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 find ourselves talking about. 

 

Chris Dolman (19:35): Okay. So, you’re interested in getting an understanding of what’s important to them, which might provide a basis for metaphors that could be helpful down the track, as well as 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, 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 the family’s purposes are in accessing your service? 

 

Ben Shannahan (20:07): Yeah. Yeah. I think we 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 word purpose is important. One of the ideas that sometimes people come into counselling with, not just in this suicide bereavement space, but I guess, it’s a 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 … They’re driving the ship, so to speak, and that they can decide what they talk about and what they don’t. 

 

(20:58): 

So, I think the purpose of us meeting is that I might talk to them about how other young people have used the space, because it’s a bit of a strange space to be coming into. It’s an unusual context to be meeting with someone. And I think it’s something that gets crafted and we understand more with each conversation. And that there might be different purposes to each conversation that we have, depending on what’s come up the week before, depending on the questions that I ask, depending on little activities that I introduce or things that we’ve been drawing, or stories that they might be telling me about their loved one. 

 

(21:38): 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? He has younger siblings, and it was his dad who passed away. And he said that he wanted to find a way of holding onto 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 to be able to share this with my siblings, because they’re much younger and they don’t have the same memories of Dad that I do.” “Okay. Well, shall we have a go? Here’s some ideas that we could do for that.” 

 

(22:28): So, we spent, every time that we would meet, he’d bring some photos of him and his siblings and his dad when they were growing up. We would ask questions 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 a memory or memories. I’d sit next to him and we’d type these stories, and we’d stop here and there and we’d talk about what was happening, what was going on. Sometimes we’d 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 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. 

 

(23:20): So, I think it’s really, we’ve got to be guided by what people want to 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 back from them. So, that’s another important part to the work. 

 

(24:03): 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’ve 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 CYPRESS is a free service. It’s funded by the Mental Health Commission. And we’re a long-term counselling programme in that there’s no time limit to how long young people can remain with the service in the knowledge that suicide bereavement is not a linear process, and it often goes in waves. Kids have sometimes come for a little discrete period of counselling, they go away for a year or two, then 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. 

 

(24:49): So, 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. 

 

Chris Dolman (25:03): Yes, which I expect will be really significant for the families to have that flexibility available to them. 

 

(25:08): 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 practise in that episode too. So, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks again to our guest, Ben Shannahan. And we look forward to your company next time. 

 

Narrator (25:37): Visit our website at emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practise. 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 Youth Mental Health Program.