This episode dives into the transformative power of therapy and support groups when navigating the grief of suicide loss or surviving a suicide attempt. Hosts Lisa Sugarman and Gretchen Schoser open up about their personal experiences and highlight the safe, accessible mental health resources that help us keep moving forward—even on our hardest days.
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🎙️ Episode Sponsored by TheHelpHUB.co
This episode is proudly brought to you by TheHelpHUB.co
Struggling with your mental health? Feeling lost, overwhelmed, or just… alone? Well, you're not. Welcome to TheHelpHUB—your online destination for mental health resources, content, and tools to help you navigate whatever mental health challenges you face.
At TheHelpHUB.co, we offer individualized resources tailored to your unique needs and community, with over 16 different categories to find exactly the kind of personalized help you need when you need it most. Even though we all deal with many of the same challenges, we don’t always experience those struggles the same way.
So, we've got you whether you're looking for crisis support, downloadable resources, or an extensive archive of mental health-related articles and videos. From episodes of The Survivors Podcast for suicide loss survivors and lived-experience blogs to interactive tools and professional connections, The Help Hub meets you where you are—and helps you move forward with strength and support.
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📖 Episode Summary
In this raw and compassionate conversation, Lisa and Gretchen open up about the vital roles therapy and support groups have played in their healing journeys. They discuss how community spaces like SafePlace and online support networks are life-changing for those navigating the complex, isolating grief of suicide loss or the aftermath of an attempt. With humor, honesty, and wisdom, they offer listeners hope and guidance for finding the help they deserve.
🧠 Lessons Learned
Suicide loss and suicide attempt grief are complex and uniquely isolating.
Therapy and support groups offer more than healing—they provide safety, validation, and community.
You don’t need to talk to benefit; just being in the room can be transformational.
Free and low-cost mental health resources exist and are accessible online and in person.
Support is self-care, and healing starts when you allow yourself to receive it.
⏱️ Episode Chapters
00:00 – Sponsored by TheHelpHUB + Trigger Warning
01:20 – Why Suicide Grief Hits Differently
03:00 – Finding Community in Support Groups
07:00 – The Power of Talking It Out
10:50 – How Therapy Changes the Game
13:00 – Breaking the Stigma: Living with the Truth
16:15 – What Support Feels Like for Suicide Attempt Survivors
19:10 – Therapy as Radical Self-Care
22:30 – Accessing Free & Affordable Mental Health Support
26:00 – What to Expect from Your First Therapy Session
28:00 – Group Support: Healing Through Shared Stories
30:00 – Final Reflections & Hope for the Healing Journey
📚 Resources for Mental Health & Support
🔹The Survivors Podcast Website – https://thesurvivors.net/
🔹The HelpHUB™ – Mental health resources, tools, and support networks – https://www.thehelphub.co/
🔹Schoser Talent and Wellness Solutions – Mental wellness coaching & support – https://schosersolutions.com/
🔹Sh!t That Goes On In Our Heads – A raw, award-winning mental health podcast – https://goesoninourheads.net 🔹Safe Place Virtual Support Group for Suicide Loss Survivors – https://www.samaritanssoco.org/i-lost-someone-to-suicide
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🎙️ See You Next Week!
Stay strong, keep going, and remember: You are enough. 💜
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The Survivors is brought to you by our friends at the Help Hub. This
00:00:06
podcast mentions suicide, mental illness, grief and loss and may be
00:00:09
triggering for some listeners. So please take care of your mental well being
00:00:13
by pausing or skipping any sections that feel uncomfortable to you. And if
00:00:17
you or someone you know is struggling, please call 988 for support.
00:00:24
Hi. Hi. What are you doing? Hey. You want to know what. What
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we're gonna talk about together today? I gotta hardly wait.
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Tell me. Let's see. You're so enthusiastic. We're talking about something that I
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believe in very deeply, that I know you believe in very deeply,
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both personally and professionally. And that's the
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role that therapy and support groups, because
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we don't talk a ton about those, the role they play in helping
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us grieve something like a suicide loss.
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Because, as we know, because we've been talking about it
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now for two seasons, that grieving a suicide loss
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isn't like any other kind of grief.
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It's different. It hits different, it's messier, it's a lot
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lonelier, a lot of the time. And if you've lost
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somebody this way, maybe it's a parent or a
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spouse or a partner or a sibling. You know that
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already. But here is the
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thing. Even though suicide
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grief is so big and ugly and
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complicated, we don't have to carry
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it alone. And that's something that I
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think everyone at some point
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feels like, oh, my God, I'm in this all by myself. I'm
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isolated. I'm in my headspace without
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any other input or influence or perspective in there.
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But there are spaces that are built for us. There
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are places that survivors can
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go, and those spaces can be life changing.
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Absolutely life changing.
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Sorry, I accidentally put myself on mute and didn't know how to come off.
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Wow. And you're the more technical one of the two of us. That's horrifying.
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I am. It's all good. And something else we need
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to remind people is that even if you don't have
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money, you can still go to support groups. Support groups are free.
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Yes. Yes. And I'm just going to give a shout out right now
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to the organization that I
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volunteer at. I do a lot of volunteering in a lot of different spaces.
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And one of the spaces that I'm very grateful to
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be a part of is based here in the
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Boston area, on the south shore of Boston. It's
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at Samaritan's South Coast. It's through that organization,
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and it's an online virtual support
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group called safeplace. And what Makes it so
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unique is that it's a support group
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specifically designed for survivors of suicide loss.
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And that's because suicide loss
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is such a different kind of grief. And
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I think that's an important place to start this conversation because we're
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talking about support groups and therapy
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for this specific kind of grief. I think it's important that
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we say that out loud, that it is really unusual and
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different. Somebody who's died by suicide, it comes with
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an awful lot of baggage. If you're grieving someone who's died that way, it comes
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with a lot of baggage that does just does not exist with
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someone who died of cancer or someone who had a heart attack or died in
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an accident. And these layers and layers
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that are added to suicide grief are
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things that people just don't understand unless they've lived it.
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Yes. You're trying to find a powerful way to say that.
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I can say it. I'm trying to find a powerful way to say it. The
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other side of the coin, though, is what I felt
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prior but during my suicide attempt
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and making sure I had the right support. So there's
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not only support groups out there for people that are
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suicide loss survivors, but there's also
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people support groups out there for people like me
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who are suicide attempt survivors. I did go to a couple of
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groups. It was very helpful to be able to talk to other people that were
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kind of in the same situation that I was. And what I found
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really interesting about it is that a lot of these people
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just didn't have any money, but they wanted help. They wanted
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to feel less alone with these thoughts that they had in
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their head and wanted to talk it out. And I think talking it out
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is huge. Oh, it is absolutely huge. I'll give you one
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example from a recent group that I
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facilitated. There was someone
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who attended this group for the very first time. They had
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never joined us before. And keep in mind, most groups function
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in the way that ours functions. For those of you who are listening, who have
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never tried a group and are a little just
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reluctant because you don't know what to expect, Most groups function the
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same way that they will not put you on the hot seat. You are
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not expected to do a deep dive into what brought you
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there. You're not expected to give all the details
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and even to talk. I mean, quite honestly,
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we have plenty of people who just want to be surrounded
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by people who understand what suicide loss is,
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feels like, looks like, sounds like what they've gone through.
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Because granted, circumstances
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will always be unique to the person who Is
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grieving. And the person who took their life and
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the circumstances around that death are going to be
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unique. But the elements like
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the shock factor, which can be huge, the.
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The trauma of how a person may have taken their life,
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the unanswered questions, the shame, the guilt, the
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what if? What should I have done? What could I have done? Why didn't I
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see it? The why? And that judgment, that
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silent judgment from other people, just being
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around other people who have experienced that, who understand what that
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feels like, is so unbelievably cathartic.
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It's the same for people with attempt survivors.
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There's no shame, there's no guilt. There's nothing like we're all
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talking about how to
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just make it to the next day. And in a lot
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of cases, it's just airing out with
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somebody that has been in a similar situation
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and knowing that you're okay and that you're not broken and that there's
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no shame in what you went through and you are not weak, and
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it makes a world of difference. Well, I want to circle back to what I
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was just telling you about this person who attended this recent group,
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because I think it's so valuable. Like I said, they had absolutely no idea what
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to expect. They had never been to a group like this before.
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They were at the beginning stage of their journey
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through this kind of grief. It was a fairly new
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situation that they found themselves in. And
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they had no preconceived ideas of what a group like this would be
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like or what they would even say if they went to one.
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And as it happens, this
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person started talking,
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started sharing, naturally got emotional
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and all the things that come with it. And an hour later
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was still sharing and talking. And this was
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this person's very first ever experience in a
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group like this. And this is not to say that that's how it happens all
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the time or that that is the expectation, because it absolutely is not. You can
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literally go to a group and maybe just say your name and
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say, I'm really here because I just want to be surrounded by other people who
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understand this kind of loss and call it a day, and you just listen and
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that's that. But this particular found
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that being in an environment where people truly understood, and
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in the case of this group that I moderate, the Safe Place
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group, they actually
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require us to not only be trained as facilitators, but
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they require all of their facilitators to be survivors of
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suicide loss so that we understand that breed
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of loss. And
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I'll tell you, at the End of that meeting,
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this person shared with us how
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unbelievably valuable it was to just get this
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stuff out of her head into a
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place where the people receiving it
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understood it. It wasn't about them trying to get answers. It wasn't about
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this person saying, okay, help me get to the next stage
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and the next stage and what do I do and where do I go and
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how do I. It wasn't like that at all. They just needed
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to express what they were feeling in a I say
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room, I'm using air quotes. It was a virtual room where
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people had also felt what she had felt and
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the impact that it had on this person. You could
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see everything shifting in her. You could just see
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how it impacted her
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in positive ways to be in an environment like that. So sometimes you don't have
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to say anything at all and sometimes you're compelled to say all the things. Either
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way, there's value in either one of those.
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The other thing that helped me a lot
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just with processing everything was therapy. I had
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the money so I could go to therapy. It was so welcoming to be
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able to talk to somebody about it that
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was non judgmental because being judged about
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your decisions or things you've gone through
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sucks. I didn't wake up one day and be like, I'm going to take my
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life today. It just was a matter
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of a whole bunch of stuff happening in
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a really short period of time. So
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I'm a firm believer in therapy. Yeah. Because like it
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or not, and we talk about this often, there is so much
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stigma attached to suicide. We have come such a long way
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and yet there is still such an enormous amount of
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stigma still attached to this thing that we all need to be
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talking more about. And it's scary. People don't know what
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to say. They don't know how to say it. So most people say
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nothing, which, okay, you don't want to say something
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hurtful, it's better to not say anything at all. But then that
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silence that comes from so many people
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creates a whole sense of isolation. And that's why
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finding someone like a trauma informed therapist or
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a group that is specific to people who have
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attempted suicide and not been successful, or people who have lost someone
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to suicide, people who can seek out and
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find that kind of support, who understand that kind
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of grief is so valuable and it's so
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unbelievably important.
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I think for me, the best thing that happened was I
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didn't feel like my therapist was walking on eggshells. And
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the same thing with the support Group. Nobody was walking on
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eggshells when they were talking to me. They were very open and honest about
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what we were talking about. And that made me
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feel better that I could let my true self out
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and not have to
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pick my. Pick my words for me. I don't think I would have
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healed as well without it.
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Yeah, I agree that I'm snapping fingers
00:12:40
that universal. I agree. Because
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I know in my own experience, therapy itself has been
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a humongous part of my healing.
00:12:52
And even just it was funny. I actually have said this
00:12:56
a couple of times over the last two seasons. I did not
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identify as a trauma survivor. I just
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didn't. Don't ask me why. I just didn't.
00:13:07
And I had gone to therapy early in my life, in my
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mid-20s, when I took a gap year from school, and I didn't know what I
00:13:14
wanted to do with my life. And I really talk about my father because I
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didn't know that my father had taken his life. I didn't know that for 20
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more years. So I. I
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did see the value of therapy, but for a different
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purpose. And then I went 30 years
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without seeing a therapist again and became a mom
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and was married and was working and was juggling life and all of
00:13:38
those things and putting everybody in the world before
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myself. So I wasn't gonna go get
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therapy before. I was gonna make sure everybody else is okay. So all
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of a sudden, I get to a point 30 years later
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where I say, oh, my God, I have got such
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a bag full of things that I need to unpack now.
00:14:01
And you and I are very, very unbelievably fortunate.
00:14:05
We have incredibly supportive partners, loving partners, who will hold
00:14:08
the most unlimited amounts of space. And in my case, I have two daughters who
00:14:12
are also been there to hold space for
00:14:16
me. And I'm very grateful. My mother. I'm knocking on
00:14:20
wood when I say this. My mother is here, and I talk to her every
00:14:23
day. But still, you
00:14:27
need something else. You can benefit from
00:14:30
something else from an unbiased opinion. And
00:14:34
after I found out the truth about how my dad really died, I was flooded
00:14:38
with just so many emotions. I did not know what was
00:14:41
happening. I was angry. I was super
00:14:45
confused. I was a little bit shameful in some ways. Kind of
00:14:49
felt betrayed, felt sad, felt guilty, and everything was just like, layer, layer,
00:14:52
layer, layer, layer. And therapy gave me the space
00:14:56
to hold all of that without having
00:15:00
to clean it up, which is, I think, what you just kind of said about,
00:15:02
like, oh, I didn't have to worry about picking the Right. Words and how to
00:15:06
articulate Struggling with your
00:15:10
mental health? Feeling lost, overwhelmed, or just alone?
00:15:14
Well, you're not. Welcome to the HELP Hub, your online
00:15:17
destination for mental health resources, content and tools
00:15:21
to help you navigate whatever mental health challenges you're facing in the moment.
00:15:25
At the HELP Hub, we offer individualized resources tailored to
00:15:29
your unique needs and community, with over 16 different
00:15:33
categories to find exactly the correct kind of personalized help you need
00:15:37
when you need it most. Because even though we all deal with many of
00:15:40
the same challenges, we don't always experience those challenges the same
00:15:44
way. So whether you're looking for crisis support,
00:15:47
downloadable resources, or an extensive archive of mental
00:15:51
health related articles and videos, we've got you from episodes of
00:15:55
the Survivors Podcast for Suicide Loss Survivors Lived
00:15:59
Experience blogs to interact with interactive tools and professional connections.
00:16:03
The Help Hub meets you where you are and helps you move forward with
00:16:06
strength and support. Remember, you don't have to do this
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00:16:18
Yeah, when I spoke up in group, I was super,
00:16:22
super nervous, super shaky, but I wanted
00:16:25
to share my story and
00:16:29
everybody around me was super supportive. And the
00:16:33
same thing when I went and saw my therapist for the first time. First time
00:16:36
in my life I'd been to therapy, but
00:16:40
they didn't judge and they made me feel comfortable in my own
00:16:44
skin. Yeah. And that was super important to me.
00:16:48
Yeah, for me, it was the
00:16:52
ability to be messy. And you know me, you know that I'm a pretty linear,
00:16:55
organized person. Some might say a
00:16:58
perfectionist. I don't know. Pick your words
00:17:02
carefully. Friends might be ocd. Oh,
00:17:05
totally. Oh, my God, I'm so ocd, it's ridiculous. It's almost comical how OCD I
00:17:09
am. But I. I understand that. And I. I celebrate that. And I also work
00:17:13
on that every single day. But being able to go into an environment
00:17:16
where I could completely break down, I could be completely imperfect. I could say, I
00:17:20
don't have the answers. I don't have it all together. I'm completely
00:17:23
effed up in the head right now. And have the person in front of me
00:17:27
say, yep, okay, that's cool. Yep. Let's just take it one thing at a
00:17:31
time. It helped me to
00:17:34
understand my own emotional responses to things. And that, that
00:17:38
was really big for me. Like, why are you acting like that? Why are
00:17:42
you feeling uncomfortable like that? Where is that discomfort coming?
00:17:45
And it helped me to process
00:17:50
all of this trauma about
00:17:54
my dad that I never perceived as trauma. It's
00:17:57
so weird. I understand what I mean by that. I know I lost my father
00:18:00
when I was a child. And anyone would say, okay, you had childhood trauma. I
00:18:04
just didn't think of it that way. Like when he was walking around saying, you're,
00:18:08
you know, a survivor, childhood trauma, it just
00:18:11
didn't, wasn't like that. So I just never connected those dots.
00:18:16
But man, when I did, woohoo,
00:18:21
that was a moment. And for me,
00:18:26
I've been, like I said, I'm a fixer. I tried to fix myself,
00:18:30
but I couldn't. There's only so much you can say back and forth
00:18:34
to yourself that's gonna make you feel better. And
00:18:38
there was only so much I could say back and forth to
00:18:42
my wife or my friends or colleagues.
00:18:47
It wasn't helping. I needed
00:18:51
something else so I could keep putting one foot in front of the other.
00:18:55
And once I found that safe space, it was the best thing
00:18:59
I ever did for myself because it was something I actually did
00:19:02
for me and not for anybody else. It was the
00:19:06
absolute best self care, self love
00:19:10
ever. I love that you just said it that way because this is how I
00:19:13
know we were always destined to be friends, because you said that the way I
00:19:16
always say it, going to therapy was
00:19:20
perhaps the greatest act of self care that I have ever gifted to
00:19:24
myself. And that is exactly how I say it every single time I ever have
00:19:27
this kind of a conversation anywhere. Because
00:19:31
I was always the one doing the listening. I was always doing the
00:19:35
holding of the space. I was always trying to, like you, fix
00:19:39
everybody else's stuff all the time. And so my
00:19:42
stuff, by virtue of just me and me alone,
00:19:46
was always kind of shoved in a corner and was never really addressed.
00:19:50
But I learned through therapy how
00:19:54
to consider myself. I learned through therapy
00:19:58
how to really reflect on
00:20:01
what was behind the behavior. So one of the things, and I think I've
00:20:05
talked about this hypervigilance side. Did I talk about
00:20:09
that? I think in season one that I discovered I
00:20:13
never understood. There was never a word to it. And my
00:20:16
therapist said, for those of you who are only listening
00:20:20
to the audio of this, I'm making gestures with my hands.
00:20:24
Like I'm running around trying to catch things that are falling. So that's what I
00:20:27
have done my entire life. Always running around trying to catch the. Okay, okay, you
00:20:31
got it. You got it. Everybody good. Everybody good. And I never really understood,
00:20:35
I mean, aside from being a caregiver, like, I understood it to be that and
00:20:39
that that's my love language, but it was deeper than that. Why was I so
00:20:43
compelled to always be considering everybody Else.
00:20:47
And it was because when my father died, I
00:20:50
developed a hyper vigilant side of my
00:20:53
personality that that had to make sure that I
00:20:57
controlled every situation. Not in an I'm a control freak. I mean I
00:21:01
definitely probably am, but not in the way that you
00:21:05
might think. Not in a like I have to have control dominating kind of
00:21:08
thing. It's more just like I have to always know that my people are okay.
00:21:12
I have to always make sure that everybody's in
00:21:16
a good situation, in a good headspace. Not needing help,
00:21:19
support. And that was born from
00:21:25
not being able to control that somebody I loved more than anything in the world
00:21:30
was gone in the blink of an eye. And
00:21:34
I had to make sure that I was like, I mean, it sounds kind of
00:21:36
silly when I say it like this, but it's kind of what it is. I
00:21:40
had to be the goodest little girl. And no one was saying that to me.
00:21:42
It wasn't like my mother or anybody else in my life was saying that. But
00:21:45
it was like I felt like when I think of it now, it's like I
00:21:47
had to be such the goodest little girl to make sure that everybody
00:21:51
was okay all the time. And
00:21:55
that was a very, very eye opening
00:21:59
revelation for me that I don't think I would have found if I hadn't been
00:22:02
in therapy. And
00:22:07
if you are listening and you and you don't have money,
00:22:10
there are so many free resources out there.
00:22:15
Go online, find something that works for you
00:22:19
because I will tell you, talking about it actually does
00:22:22
help. Keeping inside does not help.
00:22:27
It's true. And just
00:22:31
jumping off of what you just said about people who have to consider the
00:22:34
financial piece of caring for their
00:22:38
mental health, we take it for granted. You whip out your Blue
00:22:42
Cross card or your Anthem card or whatever card you have
00:22:45
and you pay your little copay and you go and have your session
00:22:50
and you don't think about the millions of people out there
00:22:54
who cannot afford to do that. It is too
00:22:58
prohibitive. And we're very
00:23:01
lucky that we live in a digital world where the majority of humans these days,
00:23:05
especially in this country, have computers and have Internet access and
00:23:09
can join these groups that are free. Community
00:23:13
centers also all around the country in every major
00:23:16
city have support groups that are in
00:23:20
person. No one is ever going to charge you to go to
00:23:24
a support group and if they do, don't go to that support group because you're
00:23:27
being scammed. So there are so
00:23:31
many other free resources.
00:23:34
There are online mental health
00:23:38
platforms like one of our big partners,
00:23:41
yours and Mine is Calmry, and they are making
00:23:45
online therapy affordable for people who
00:23:49
couldn't otherwise afford it. And there are places like Talkspace and
00:23:53
BetterHelp, and. And they're all working together to create
00:23:57
more affordable models for people to get the care
00:24:01
that they need. So we'll put all of the information
00:24:04
that we have in our show notes for places
00:24:08
like my virtual support group, SafePlace, and
00:24:13
all of our partners and affiliates who. Who
00:24:17
work to provide therapy at reasonable costs. And all of those groups that we.
00:24:21
That we know about, we'll. We'll definitely drop them in the show.
00:24:24
Like, for me, because y' all know I don't have insurance
00:24:28
right now. I. I have my HSA card, so I had to scale
00:24:32
back on my therapy. But what I did in replace of that is that
00:24:36
I just go to more support groups now just to make sure that
00:24:39
I'm okay. Because I put a whole lot of work
00:24:43
into the last two years. I don't want to go backwards. All
00:24:47
I want to do is keep moving forward and putting one foot in front of
00:24:50
the other, whether it's a good day or a bad day. But
00:24:54
somebody that's been where I'm at, where I've been,
00:24:58
it makes all the difference in the world. It
00:25:02
absolutely does. And like I
00:25:05
said before, we're very fortunate that we live in a world where you can go
00:25:09
somewhere in person as easily as you can
00:25:13
go to a virtual group. And I'm just
00:25:17
thinking now of all of the virtual groups that I know about
00:25:21
that are supported by and
00:25:24
facilitated by all of these bigger organizations like the American foundation for
00:25:28
Suicide Prevention and Samaritans. And on
00:25:32
my own mental health resources platform, the HELP
00:25:35
Hub, we have an extensive online mental health
00:25:39
resources page that will
00:25:44
put you in touch with or connect you to a lot of these
00:25:48
groups and organizations. So it's out there. It's out there for
00:25:52
you if you're looking for it. And I think this
00:25:55
conversation in the last few minutes that we have, it might be worthwhile to just
00:25:59
talk for a second about what to expect when you
00:26:03
start therapy. Because a lot of people are really
00:26:06
scared to try therapy or to try a group because they have absolutely no
00:26:10
idea what to expect. So I think a minute or two
00:26:13
demystifying, that might really help.
00:26:18
Yeah, for sure. In my case, because I had never been to therapy, they
00:26:21
made it a safe space, very safe space. And I
00:26:25
had a lot of emotions going into it. I had a lot of emotions
00:26:29
coming out of it, too. But
00:26:33
I felt at peace. And I mean,
00:26:37
it's hard to talk about it without getting super emotional. That's okay.
00:26:41
But for me, I got
00:26:45
to see myself through a different lens. Through a different lens.
00:26:49
And when I looked at my therapist, she didn't see me as a
00:26:53
failure. She didn't see shame, she didn't see weakness.
00:26:58
She made me feel human. So if you're talking about
00:27:01
therapy, what. Here's what to expect. Here's like the boom, boom, boom.
00:27:06
Three things to expect. You get to set the pace.
00:27:09
You don't have to talk about everything right away or at all.
00:27:15
And any good therapist is going to listen to you. They're not
00:27:18
going to lecture you. Like G said, they're not going to judge you.
00:27:22
And you're going to get tools. Not. Not
00:27:26
just a place to go to kind of vomit up everything that's happening.
00:27:29
You're also going to get actual tools
00:27:33
to help you navigate whatever
00:27:36
crisis you're in or whatever you're struggling with. And
00:27:40
on the other side, if we're talking about support groups, what to expect
00:27:44
in those, we've talked a little bit about it. But you're in a space
00:27:48
with other people who have been through a similar loss,
00:27:51
whether it be a suicide loss or maybe specific, you've lost a
00:27:55
spouse or you've lost a child or you've lost a parent.
00:28:00
That's the first thing. The second thing is that you get to share when you're
00:28:04
ready or not at all. Like I was talking about with the group that I
00:28:07
moderate, people can come and just listen and
00:28:10
just passively engage in the group or they can share as much
00:28:14
as they want. And the other thing that's so powerful about
00:28:18
groups that it doesn't exist quite in the same way in a therapy
00:28:22
office, one on one, but when you're in a group, you're going to hear stories
00:28:25
that are going to help you normalize what you're going through. And that
00:28:28
is absolutely huge about being
00:28:32
in a group. But in both places, whichever one you
00:28:36
choose, therapy or a support group environment, you're going to learn
00:28:40
that you're not out there alone dealing with
00:28:44
this isolated, awful thing by yourself.
00:28:48
Yeah. And for me, when I went to my first support group,
00:28:52
for the first four or five times, I didn't say jack
00:28:56
because I was still dealing with my own trauma. But to
00:29:00
listen to other people talk about what they've gone through made
00:29:04
me feel a little less crappy about myself. Yeah. I mean,
00:29:08
therapy and support groups are not about making the grief go
00:29:12
away. We all wish that they were, but they're not. It's just not what
00:29:16
they're designed to do. They're just about giving you
00:29:20
a place to put your stuff, to put your
00:29:23
sadness. And it's a place designed
00:29:27
to encourage healing to begin.
00:29:32
And everybody deserves that in whatever way they choose to find
00:29:35
it. So the takeaways
00:29:39
from this conversation, from my perspective, there is support out there.
00:29:43
It does exist. Therapy offers us tools. It
00:29:47
offers us a place, a safe place and someone to
00:29:50
validate what we're going through. And support groups connect
00:29:54
us with people who get it, who've lived it, who feel it. And
00:29:58
that connection can absolutely be life saving. And
00:30:01
all we can say is that you don't have to carry this alone, which is
00:30:04
why we're here every week doing what we're doing and having these conversations.
00:30:09
Such a great conversation. Thank you, my friend. Thank you right
00:30:13
back. We'll do it again next week. All right, Sounds great. Love you,
00:30:17
Chi. Love you, man.
00:30:20
Thanks for joining us on the Survivors. Remember, no matter how tough things feel,
00:30:24
feel. You are enough and the world needs you just the way you are.
00:30:28
You're not alone in this journey. There's a community here and every step forward
00:30:32
counts. We're so grateful you took the time to listen and we hope you'll
00:30:36
take one day at a time. Just know there's always more light ahead.
00:30:41
Thanks for being here. Friends, just remember, help is out there
00:30:44
in so many different places. So if you or someone you know is struggling,
00:30:48
please call 988 and a trained crisis counselor like me will be there
00:30:52
to help. You can also find an inclusive and comprehensive directory of
00:30:56
mental health resources, tools. And content at
00:30:58
thehelphub.co. Just remember that help is always
00:31:02
just a call or a click away. We'll catch you next week. In the
00:31:06
meantime, keep surviving.