Category Archives: guilt

Guilt Triggers

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Daddy, depression, Easter, explaining his death, guilt, powerlessness

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While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. (Luke 24:36-37)

This was part of our Sunday school lesson yesterday. Jesus has appeared alive after being crucified; now the disciples are holed up in a room talking about it. Our teacher yesterday described how all of the disciples must have felt at this time. They all had betrayed Jesus in one way or the other by not speaking up.

That was about as far as I could listen before my throat started getting thick and my bottom lip began quivering. These end parts of the Gospels hit too close to home for me. Yesterday, I gathered up my belongings and said with that voice I hate that’s all quivery and weak, “I apologize, this is just too hard.”

Last week, I left early, too, only I didn’t apologize because last week I tried to push everything down and pretend I was fine. That resulted in having a full-assed panic attack right there in the middle of the Sunday school class. I ran out with the church’s bible still in my hand. Afterward, I was embarrassed and thought myself a drama queen.

The above verses are a guilt trigger for me. I know exactly how they felt—they blamed themselves. I don’t think about failing Jesus when I study that passage. I think about how I failed my father who killed himself seventeen years ago. I still suffer from the guilt of not understanding how depressed he was, not insisting that he get help, not doing something. I think there is terror in that kind of guilt because it digs in like a diseased tick.

I am glad I went to church yesterday and heard this verse. Even though it hurt like all hell, I learned something. I’m triggered by feeling like a disciple, and not by the resurrection of Christ, which is what Easter is all about, that Jesus died and came back. Jesus was human and is God as well. It is complicated, and it is simple. Jesus isn’t my dad. My dad isn’t a God. Maybe I can work on untangling them in my mind now.

The death of someone I love cracked a hole in my heart and my soul. Stuff gets jumbled up. My dad killed himself just a week or two after Easter. I fear that holiday and the days afterward when disciples feel so guilty.

Yesterday, I also heard that Jesus said “peace be with you” to his miserable and frightened followers.

Therefore do not let anyone [I think includes myself] judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. (Colossians 2:16)

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Police Panelists Discuss Suicide Prevention

08 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by in guilt, police, suicide

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I sat right up front at the seminar, but I didn’t ask one question while a panel of police negotiators discussed their side of what happens when called out to a suicide attempt.  I was at a special program put on by a suicide support group.  What I heard filled me with a new respect for the police.  In some ways it helped lighten my guilt and yet burdened me with even more.  I learned that it took more than one person to talk someone out of suicide, and it took a lot of connection.
Thoughts deviled me that I didn’t do enough to connect with my father.  It was always hard to give him direct attention.  In his depression, his indifference was a barrier.  I didn’t know about assessment questions then, and probably wouldn’t have had the courage to ask them if I had.  But, I knew something was wrong, didn’t I?  Guilt ate at me like termites.
My recent anxiety came, though, because I sat in the middle of crisis prevention counselors.  Their focus topic on how to stop a suicide was altogether different from mine, the aftermath of a suicide and how to get past it.  One policewoman said it was better to err on the side of too much attention.  Sitting there listening, I felt emotionally engaged to my father’s death realizing the things that I or someone else could have done for him.  I quietly ached with my self-imposed blame that I didn’t “err on the side of too much attention.”
The negotiators all agreed that if someone completes the effort of suicide then that is the time that the police have to emotionally disengage.  Each agreed that negotiation was all about control and connecting psychologically with that person.  I shook my head and thought “for me it’s all about letting go and disconnecting.” 
Has my guilt been more self-made than actual?  The police negotiators said that “it takes a group of about ten people to negotiate successfully” someone out of a suicide attempt.  I was but one person. 

Nothing To Give

06 Monday Jun 2011

Posted by in boundaries, conflicts, grief, guilt, Post-Traumatic Stress, PTSD, reactions, relationships, suicide

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At its best our mother/daughter relationship was an intense flip-flop thing.  One moment we bathed in each other’s love and attention, sharing laugher and friendly conversations.  Then—flip, one of us penetrated the other’s skin-thin edges and we got mad, or hurt, or both.  Sharp words crystallized into sudden swords stabbing.  Then—flop—we would start a conversation about Daddy or gardening or birds, the whole time smiling those there-you-go-again grins.  It had always been like that for us.  We were close. 
My mother and I shared the brunt of finding my father’s body.  The first year after Daddy’s suicide, we reminded each other of that day just by eye contact.   Traumatic shock affected our relationship. 
  I felt angry and guilty toward her.  I didn’t want to talk to her about my father after his death, good or bad.  She had trust-issues and leaned on me for too much emotional fuel.  I erected reinforced wall-boundaries. When she crawled over them, I felt angry that she wouldn’t seek support from anyone else.  Sometimes I even hated being around her.  Then I felt guilty—thought myself uncaring.  To keep from hurting her with these feelings, I kept an emotional distance.  And truth be known, I think she felt the same way around me.
I wished that our relationship would snap back to its original innocence and felt a spinning anger at my father that his action had set Mom and me haywire.  At least we still had gardens and birds to talk about.
           Some things shouldn’t be measured in terms of good or bad.  They are as they are.  Suicide takes its toll in relationships and each person is responsible for their own grief.  When the well is empty, does it apologize to the dropped bucket?

Family Relationships—Overprotectiveness

27 Friday May 2011

Posted by in family, guilt, overprotectiveness, worry

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           The emotional bonds to my family had always been convoluted.  Strands of affection, anger, joy, love, rebellion, untold concern, and knots of pure, seething frustration had piled up over the years like heaps of tangled rope from an unfinished project—in such a mess that I had stopped trying to sort them out. 
            The night after Daddy shot himself, I had a dream that all my family were cave-explorers.  We were linked together with nylon ropes and walked cautiously into a cavern that went deep within the earth.  On a plateau which only feet away dropped-off into a dark abyss, we pitched our camp for the night.  In my dream, I awoke to see Daddy standing close to the plateau’s edge.  He turned to look at me for a moment and smiled sadly.  Then he jumped.  His still-attached ropes nearly pulled us down with him.  I dreamt that I frantically secured my sister and mother to a rock so that we wouldn’t be carried over the edge, too.  I awoke wadded-up in bedding, struggling, screaming out instructions, trying desperately to get him back—trying urgently to secure everyone else.
            The rest of the year after my father’s death, I lived that dream.  When my mind wasn’t muddling over Daddy’s suicide, I worried over family members.  I was afraid of my mother and sister’s grief and tried to ignore my own.  I called, daily; giving out advice to adults capable of living their own lives, and never believed them when they assured me that they were ok.

“…overprotectiveness in relationships is one of the possible consequences of trauma-related guilt.”
                                                            Trust After Trauma,
                                                                        Aphrodite Matsakis, Ph.D

Before He Died

20 Friday May 2011

Posted by in boundaries, comfort, grief, guilt, suicide

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            My father wasn’t himself.  At times he seemed resentful, and I reacted defensively.  Other times, his gentleness touched my heart so much; it made me ache.  I’ve never been able to describe him easily, but there toward the last, his actions confused me. 
The Christmas before his death in April, he looked sad, withdrawn—almost vacant.  Sitting next to him near the Christmas tree, I tried to get him to laugh.  About all that I got was a pinched-smile. 
Mom took ill a month before he killed himself.  Stubbornly, she refused to go to the doctor.  His face crumpled, and in a croaking voice, he asked me what to do.  The tears scared me.  He was the one that I’d always looked to for confidence. 
Three weeks before he died, he asked, “We’re not as close as we used to be, are we?”  His question ignited a great anger in me.  Sometimes I felt I had given him my whole life—wasn’t that enough?  I didn’t say anything—not one word.   I’ve wished for that moment back so many times.
His actions and my reactions haunted me.  The week after his funeral, I tried to occupy myself with a lot of busy work.   While cleaning the inside of my car, my mind was suddenly flooded with a year’s worth of back memories.  I collapsed in the back seat crying, “I’m so sorry, Daddy.  I didn’t know.  I just didn’t know.”
Guilt sat on my shoulder like a feral cat licking blood off its paws.  I carried it with me everywhere.  Its wild, unsatisfied hunger for self-blame nearly sucked the life out of me.

Chasm

20 Friday May 2011

Posted by in boundaries, comfort, Daddy, grief, guilt, suicide

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            I found some un-mailed letters that I wrote to Daddy.  Written long before his death, they said all the things that I wanted to say in person: his emotional distance hurt me; he was too remote; I worked too hard for our relationship; he didn’t work hard enough; I wasn’t sure he cared for me, and I needed him.  It was there, written but not sent.  They were the practice letters.
            I managed to mail one letter.  Around my forty-first birthday and just before my second marriage, I told Daddy some of how I felt.  But the words weren’t the right ones, still.  They hurt him.  One day on his front porch, in front of Mom, he told me that the two of us would be ok with each other if I would never write him another letter like that again.  His voice was lower and scratchier than usual.  I swallowed hard, and stared the old oak tree.  I remembered it as a seedling.  I remembered, too, as a little girl desperate for his attention, that I ran bird-flight circles around Daddy while he staked it down. 
“Okay,” I promised, “no more letters.”  Afterwards he talked more, and hugged me tighter when I came to visit, and looked at me with different eyes.  My heart ached when I was around him.  I was still that needy kid.
            When he died, I felt I had failed him.  Yes, I knew he was the parent.  Yes, I knew what I had wanted from him wasn’t asking too much.  But how had he felt about me when I was a child?  Maybe I meant more than he could say.  Maybe, like me, he couldn’t find the right words.  Who knows the inner struggles of another if the words are not spoken out loud?
            Revealing yourself to another is a risk.  Setting boundaries, or asking for more communication are not bad things. They’re healthy and loving actions. Through the guilt-haze after a loved one’s suicide most everything feels wrong.  That doesn’t make it so.