On-line Support Forums

Family and friends, counselors, reading, ceremonials, crying, working, being able to laugh; there are so many strategies that helped me on the road to taking my life back, and being happy once more.

I also participated in an on-line forum and an in-person support group, both for suicide survivors. 

When I joined the Suicide Survivor Forum on line, I did not have any experience using forums, chat-rooms, or social media such as Facebook.  So initially, is was a bit of a struggle to go through the logistics of registering myself for the forum.  While I participated with a particular forum, I think I will do a sidebar of forum addresses so they are available, as some may be more appealing than others.   

The first thing I want to say about this forum is that it was very confidential and well monitored.  Some information is required for registration, and then you have to wait for a password to log in.  I would recommend that this be considered a requirement before you participated in any forum on-line.   At the time I did this, I was a little skeptical regarding the need for confidentiality, but now many, many, on-line searches later, I have seen that there are times when a site regarding suicide may include something that is difficult or upsetting to read, especially when open to the general public.  A few times I  have come across things that were just plain unkind or ugly, but sometimes people who are very upset or angry state things in print that are hard to look at.  So, this is a support to be used with discretion.

I believe that the timing of when this might be helpful is important too.  For me, I involved myself in it about seven or eight months after Erik had died, in the Fall, before the holidays.  My initial reaction to reading some of the “threads” in the forum was the simple feeling of knowing that others had been through similar experiences. But again, they were very different in the details of their losses and their reactions to them.

I think the other major thing I liked was that it was accessible to me at any time, day or night, for a few minutes or a long time.  There were many times in the late evening, around midnight, that I could not get things off my mind or wanted to express a thought and I could go into my laptop and bring up the forum. 

After just reading some of the other stories in the forum, I was ready to start my own thread.  I remember that each person chose a name and an avatar to identify their comments.  At that point, I had no idea how to choose and download pictures, so I was stuck with using one that was offered as part of the site.  I was so delighted that one of the avatars (pictures) was a picture of a man slam-dunking a basketball, which was absolutely perfect as a remembrance for Erik, so I chose that one.

Ironically, my first thread for the forum was:  “The Holidays are Coming”, expressing my worries of how to handle the holidays.  It brought a good deal of immediate response, and definitely helped me to find the strength and develop ideas for getting through our first Thanksgiving and Christmas without Erik.

The other thing I noticed about the forum was that people seemed to actually become friends or form alliances with each other, sort of in small groups.  It amazed me that people were from all over the world.  Also, some people were still writing even though their loss was many years ago, and some had found the forum very quickly, with losses very recent.

One of the downsides of using a forum like this is that people naturally write the most when they are upset, so often much of what was written could be extremely sad.  Or, there were also expressions of anger, and occasionally, people writing about thinking of suicide themselves.  I remember being upset a few times over things that I read, but for me, felt that I still found it helpful to use the forum. 
 

I participated in the forum for about five to six months I believe, when I suddenly realized that it was making me more upset than helping me.  So I stopped.  But I will always be grateful that it was there for me when I needed it, and think it gave me a much greater understanding of what this journey entails, because of its personal and timely information. 

This tool for survival is I think a particularly individual choice, and the value in it totally depends on the person and how they choose to use it.  When I started I looked at a listing of participants and there were many people who made only several entries and stopped very quickly.   So they must have not found it helpful, or found it better to just read what others had written.  But there were also others who had participated for a long time and became a sort of mentor for the newer people. 

So I offer this as a suggestion of something to try…it is so accessible, and of no cost, and can be used at any point in your journey.  It could be very helpful, or lead you to think of doing something else. 

I will post the names of the sites on a sidebar for everyone, (click at right side of screen near black line), and wish all luck in finding something that is helpful to you.