The fact that I was unable to keep my son alive weighs heavily on me. I knew Brady was at risk for suicide because he’d had a previous attempt. The three mental health professionals treating him told us he needed to go into a residential treatment center. For a variety of reasons that sounded good at the time, I, along with his mother, decided we’d keep him home and send him to intensive outpatient therapy. A month later, he was dead. It happened at my home, while he was under my direct care and supervision.

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I struggle to deal with this. Recently, I have gotten some comfort from thinking that, while it is apparently true that I made an extremely poor choice when faced with perhaps the most important decision of my life, it is also true that I am a human with limited information and understanding.

There is no question that I did the absolute best I could to help Brady, with all the love and attention and energy I could muster. The fact that I failed is a reflection of the reality that I cannot control what goes on. I can do my best, and what happens happens.

I am pretty sure that unless I can find a way to forgive myself, the rest of my life is going to be very unpleasant indeed.

Basically, I try to forgive myself. Other people have indicated that they have no problem forgiving me. Some say they would have made the same decision under similar circumstances. I find the compassion and forgiveness they offer me to be soothing. And I am pretty sure that unless I can find a way to forgive myself, the rest of my life is going to be very unpleasant indeed.

Self-Forgiveness Research

I haven’t found a lot of evidence on the role of self-forgiveness in bereavement grief coping. So I was interested to see, when performing my regular check this morning to see what’s new in grief research, a just-out study that examined self-compassion.

This study from the European Journal of Psychotraumatology focused on the role of rumination – circular repetitive thinking I described in this Grief Science post: When Thinking In Circles May Help and When It May Not  – among people who had relatives who had gone missing. According to the Dutch researchers, this sort of ambiguous loss might increase the risk of survivor symptoms such as post-traumatic stress (PTS), prolonged grief (PG) and depression. They hypothesized that more ruminative thinking about the loss might lead to poorer outcomes for survivors. They also said:

“A potential protective factor is self-compassion, referring to openness toward and acceptance of one’s own pain, failures, and inadequacies. One could reason that self-compassion is associated with lower levels of emotional distress following ambiguous loss, because it might serve as a buffer for getting entangled in ruminative thinking about the causes and consequences of the disappearance (‘grief rumination’).”

This sounds sensible, of course. However, lots of things that sound sensible are disproved when subjected to careful examination. So I read on with interest. For this study the researchers looked at 137 relatives of long-term missing persons. Using self-reports, they measured each survivor’s levels of self-compassion, grief rumination, prolonged grief, depression, and post-traumatic stress. Then they analyzed the results to try to tease out the effects of self-compassion and rumination. They found:

“Self-compassion was significantly, negatively, and moderately associated with PG, depression, and PTS levels,” they reported. In plain English, being compassionate toward yourself — including forgiving yourself for your failures — appears to make it less likely you will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, prolonged grief and depression.

Being compassionate toward yourself — including forgiving yourself for your failures — appears to make it less likely you will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, prolonged grief and depression.

They also found that people who showed more self-compassion did less ruminative thinking about the loss. And they suggested that mindfulness training could help strengthen this beneficial self-compassionate attitude.

Grief Coping and Self-Forgiveness

That’s all according to this one study, at least, and assuming that relatives of long-missing persons are not too different from anyone who has lost a loved one to death. Not exactly conclusive, but definitely suggestive. It seems likely to me that if I diligently pursue self-compassion I am more likely to return to feeling like living sooner than otherwise, and with less suffering along the way.

As always, I am reporting on my experience looking for evidence-based bereavement grief coping strategies. I do not intend to suggest that anyone must or should implement any strategy described here. It’s just something you could think about, if you’re of a mind to. If not, that is fine with me. Different strokes for different folks.

Thanks for reading, liking, commenting, sharing and following Grief Science. I am sorry for the losses that brought you here. And I hope you get some peace today.