Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
Many of you know that part of my PTSD recovery journey has been something else along with my weekly therapy and face to face support group participation. After my first 5 years of recovery, in 2001 I decided to help myself by helping other trauma survivors for a while. I did so as a hospital emergency room chaplain until 2010. It was hard at times to be around fresh traumas with my own PTSD, but it kept me committed to working on my own recovery, too. So it was a rich experience.
It was such a rich experience in part because I had a great chaplaincy teacher, my mentor. Even after my own health broke with incurable kidney disease in 2010 (partly from PTSD meds I took to do the chaplaincy job--another story) my mentor has stayed in touch.
Just now she emailed me of the sudden suicide one of my dear classmates who worked with me as a chaplain also under my mentor in 2003-2004. It's shocking. She was my exact age, 56. My classmate who just committed suicide was ordained in the same church, too, shared the same faith beliefs, worked and believed in hospice like me.
Even now after chaplaincy I am teaching community college nursing students 3 sections of a course in the care of terminally ill patients, all from what I learned literally working alongside my classmate who just committed suicide. As you know from my thread about my talks with my boss about tenure this week, I try to be open about my own PTSD and how it humbly informs my teaching.
I feel for my friend, colleague, and comrade in faith in her suicide and how much pain she must have been in even as she ministered to the pain of others. It must be hard for her family right now. It must be hard for my mentor, too, as her email to me about it mentions going now to the church memorial and also trying to be a support to those through our chaplaincy network to colleagues shaken by this suicide of one of our own.
I'm sad and shaken, so I thought I would reach out for support here now.
It was such a rich experience in part because I had a great chaplaincy teacher, my mentor. Even after my own health broke with incurable kidney disease in 2010 (partly from PTSD meds I took to do the chaplaincy job--another story) my mentor has stayed in touch.
Just now she emailed me of the sudden suicide one of my dear classmates who worked with me as a chaplain also under my mentor in 2003-2004. It's shocking. She was my exact age, 56. My classmate who just committed suicide was ordained in the same church, too, shared the same faith beliefs, worked and believed in hospice like me.
Even now after chaplaincy I am teaching community college nursing students 3 sections of a course in the care of terminally ill patients, all from what I learned literally working alongside my classmate who just committed suicide. As you know from my thread about my talks with my boss about tenure this week, I try to be open about my own PTSD and how it humbly informs my teaching.
I feel for my friend, colleague, and comrade in faith in her suicide and how much pain she must have been in even as she ministered to the pain of others. It must be hard for her family right now. It must be hard for my mentor, too, as her email to me about it mentions going now to the church memorial and also trying to be a support to those through our chaplaincy network to colleagues shaken by this suicide of one of our own.
I'm sad and shaken, so I thought I would reach out for support here now.
The first thing that popped into my mind was how sad she had not reached out for help instead. How sad it is for those, like yourself who knew her. How many lives will be changed by this one event.
The next thing that popped into my head was a story a friend told me when his 8 year old daughter was hit by a truck while playing. She was killed instantly. The thing he said helped him the most was the what the police officer said to him, "you have a choice to make and you need to make it right now, you can remember your daughter this moment as you see her, or you can remember the 8 years of joyful memories you had with her" He told the officer that he choose to remember the good times, the fun times and the wonderful memories. Obviously it was not that easy, but it really did help him.
You might be able to apply the same thing here? Choose to honor her memory by remembering the good times you enjoyed with her, the people she helped and the good work she did. Embrace all that was good about her, and how lucky you were to have known such a wonderful person.
Please also know that I am thinking about you at this time.
((hugs))
Please let me know if you need anything at all. Lots of support to you and her family.
puma peace on her soul and may your soul find healing
I had someone I knew from elementary school kill them self when I was in highschool. To quote Rush "When I heard that you were gone a shadow crossed my heart".
You have my thoughts, sympathy, and support.
Someone here asked why she did it, and from what I heard the reason was no different from what is mentioned when we discuss suicide here on DS PTSD. That she'd been struggling with depression for a long time. She leaves behind a husband and 3 children.
Muji
My condolences, Muji. Suicide is rarely a simple concept. It tends to unleash a cavalcade of mixed emotions, thoughts, reactions, and responses in those who knew the person.
I hope she's at peace, now.
It's "Nobody's Hero" by Rush, and I'd never heard it before. I went to Youtube and heard it and boy, did it fit. Not just how I felt a "shadow cross my heart" when I heard the news. Also how proud I was of her work as a chaplain when we both worked in the same hospital as chaplains back when.
My unit at the time was the severe Alzheimer's unit in the hospital. It was the hardest unit for chaplains in the hospital at the time, not just because of the severity of the illness on my patients, but because of the despair of their families. We chaplains had a custom of visiting each other's units as friends, but nobody visited my Alzheimer's unit that year.
I challenged them as to why in a staff meeting. They said they had tried to visit my unit, but couldn't muster up the courage to get off the elevator when they got to my floor. My patients' dead "doll's eyes" scared them more than any accident victim's wounds ever did, they said.
So it mattered that she was my chaplain friend when I needed one because the others couldn't be brave enough. People like to say of suicide that it's the "coward's way out." But I know she had the courage to help others, and I want to remember that. The song says, in part:
"As the years went by, we drifted apart
When I heard that she was gone
I felt a shadow cross my heart
But she's nobody's hero
Is the voice of reason against the howling mob
Hero...is the pride of purpose
In the unrewarding job"
That's a good starting point for getting on with the business of remembering her now.
Muji, (((HUG)))