My father committed suicide and I am feeling terrible – what can I do?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
We have a close family member such as her father commits suicide because not adequately taken care of and then we also feel guilty about it not able to move ahead with it what can we do? Suicide is an extremely traumatizing event it is in fact there is I was recently talking with some people in the US Army who had now come for practicing yoga and everything so there is something called the survivor’s guilt that means if you are in a close encounter and your colleague dies and you survive so you feel guilty that maybe I could have done something by which he could have been saved or why did I have to why did I live and he die? so maybe I could have done something to save him so that kind of survivor’s guilt is a serious problem and a similar problem comes up even in the case of suicide where people around the one who has committed suicide constantly keep feeling could I have done something to prevent that? and then we start replaying all that we have done maybe at this point I could have done this, maybe at that point I could have done that so there are broadly three things in which you could divide this first is that you know what we as souls can do now what they as souls have done at that time and what we as souls can do for them now one is we can do for ourselves, do for them and what they have done so certainly if somebody is ending their lives they must be in great pain and the pain becomes so unbearable that they choose that option but we also know that there are others who may go through similar or greater pain and may not do the same thing so it can seem a little hard hearted but if we want to move forward in our lives we need to know that we can’t own others problems it’s not that we don’t care but a part of caring is helping others to deal with their problems not dealing with their problems on their behalf because everybody is a soul with free will even Krishna doesn’t take away our free will Krishna doesn’t control us so if somebody has made a particular choice and for whatever reason you don’t want to be hard hearted but each soul will choose its own trajectory based on the choices that it makes and the Bhagavatam says all of us are alone in our journey so we can’t change that foundational reality now what has been done has been done it’s deeply regrettable, it’s horrifying but in this life at the physical level there is not much you can do for that person and even after that some choices are revocable so this is a revocable choice so now there are two aspects although we are not connected at the physical level we all are connected at the spiritual level and that means that if we pray to Krishna if we pray for the departed soul then Krishna is present in our heart Krishna is present in their heart and that connection is something by which they can be benefited wherever they are so if we can find out if we can do some tangible devotional service and dedicate it to them so that way we can even address what what they we may have felt that I didn’t do this for them at that time now I’ll take this time and do something for them so you could do something like that by which at a spiritual level you are doing for them what you may not have been able to do at a physical level but along with that so that is what you can do for them now what you can do for yourself that means that just as there are physical wounds there are emotional wounds and emotional wounds also need to need their time for healing say somebody gets a fracture then initially when they have that fracture they need to keep the hand in a cast by which they don’t get a accession they don’t get any they don’t worsen the condition so basically stop the movement of the hand initially and eventually they have to begin the movement of the hand again it’s only when they resume that movement that they will be able to move forward and it may be annoying and painful initially when you keep the hand motionless and it can be annoying and painful when you eventually move the hand also but either way that’s what you need to do so when you have an emotional wound the first thing is that you have to see what phase helps the best that means sometimes you just have to may have to move out of that scene and get a change of and stop thinking about that situation or at least stop being exposed to the stimuli that make us think about that situation and that way give ourselves an opportunity for healing then if you want to if those kind of thoughts are coming memories are coming repeatedly then another thing that can be done conceivably is that you try to find out if there is a way to process those emotions that means you could write some things down maybe certain thought patterns keep coming again and again if only I could have done this then write it down and treat the source of those repeated emotions to be like a child and you become the counselor of that child that means you write down only if I could have spoken this if only I had done this at this time but then after that just when you have write it down and vent it out and once you have vented it out in some journal or something like that then after a day or two look at it and say if you had a friend who was going through a similar situation who had whose loved one had done something like this so how would you advise that person how would you what would you suggest to do for that so that way you wouldn’t just tell them get over it but you would also not appreciate their wallowing in the in the past constantly so you try to gently but firmly encourage them so you might how they can address it you might give them some pointers and that way take things forward so you can do the same with in this situation also and maybe if you want a sense of closure maybe you write something like a letter to that letter to the deceased person expressing your appreciation for them in your life for what they did and then expressing your generally there are everybody needs a sense of closure so on my website there is an answer about how a person who is about to die how we can help them get a sense of closure by giving them by giving them appreciation so basically we can what they have done for us in our lives how we appreciate them how we appreciate them how much we what basically ways in which we can appreciate their value and we can help them to move forward so if you have this you do the same thing now he is not there with you but if you feel very much trouble you can do it then you can also help so basically we can express how much we love them and then we can express our thankfulness or appreciation for how they loved us and then we can seek forgiveness from them if we have offended them in any way and then depending on the relationship if appropriate we can offer our forgiveness to them then we can we can convey to them that we will miss them that their departure has created a hole in our life and it is not that that hole will just be automatically filled it is somebody who is important in our life they will have a constant place in our heart but as we move forward in life other aspects of our life we will learn to live with that like somebody gets permanently scarred initially they are very scar conscious it is not after that the scar disappears the scar may still be there but they don’t they don’t remain that conscious of the scar so like that we can we don’t want to use negative sense but that we value them and we miss them and if they had any unfulfilled desires, if they had some they had some anxieties if they had some issues which they were worried about then we can offer them assurance that we will take care of those responsibilities for them so that they get a sense of closure and by that sense of closure they can move on because if that sense of closure is not there they may keep hovering around feeling that this issue is not being addressed how will it get addressed, what can be done about it so if you do these things in a large, significant way you will find that the negativity and the anxiety will go down and overall you find that in due course the healing will take place, thank you