Never ever give up on yourself...

By Carl's Mom Dec. 2, 2019 —My son's ashes remain on a shelf in my office at my home... I think to myself, is this really happening on many occasions? How could my seemingly happy kid take his own life? I have seen death... I have been an active participant in the healthcare field assisting with life saving measures for many people. Performing CPR on your own child is another level of trauma....

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I am 18 months into my journey of surviving my son's suicide. At this point, many days feel as though I am going through my everyday life still trying to figure out what I am supposed to do now. I was not done being a mother.... I was not ready to have no bedrooms in my house filled with my child's laughter and shenanigans... I loved it. Making 3 different dinners because everyone wanted something different. Going to football games and watching the marching band perform at halftime. It was my favorite part. Going to concerts to watch Carl perform. His music was always so beautiful to me and I was always so proud of him.

I have asked the universe many times... why my kid? Why did nothing stop his death? You hear many stories of people who survived death by some miracle.... why was my son not saved? Psychologist talk about suicide and how all the lights have to turn green, clearing the path of suicide by nothing interrupting it... sadly, no texts, no calls, no one home.... alone... no one there to stop this from happening or intervene... All of the normal happenings for his life did not happen... he had a bad moment and made a bad decision and nothing happened to interrupt it.

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We were so blinded by Carl's death... especially because it was by his own hand. He didn't have a mean part to him... He was a really good son. He was kind, loving, sweet and really cared about other people's feelings. It still hits me like a ton of bricks that this really happened to us. The first year after losing Carl, my family lived in a state of total shock... our heads could not wrap around this notion of how he died. After all of the "first's" things started to become more real.. the shock began to wear off and now the reality was sinking in...

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All I know is that I wanted to scream to the world, "He was a good kid, he was happy." There were zero signs of depression or anxiety, ZERO... I think the first question or statement from people was, "was he was depressed?" From my family's standpoint, from his friends, other parents, his friends mom's... No he wasn't. How could this happen to the happiest dude in the group as his friends put it.

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So for us... we don't fit the typical scenario for suicide... what is true is Carl suffered from extreme anxiety and mental anguish that turned into“overwhelmedness" and depression that brought him to his knee's and he lost his ability to cope in an awful moment of distress. THIS can happen to anyone... things build up... sometimes more than a person can handle. Reactive depression from extreme mental anguish spiraling into suicide... A whole lot of shitty things happening to an adolescent mind that didn't have enough experience dealing with such disappointments. He was ashamed of himself... he was hiding the fact that he was doing other homework in his zero hour class because at home he was screwing around playing video games with his friends online instead of doing homework. That began to spiral into falling so far behind that he was failing a class. Instead of admitting this to us, he started losing sleep over it. He told his friends.... but not us. He was still so immature that he didn't realize that no matter what, it would have been OK.

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~(Uncertainty about the future - Too often teens misinterpret the pain they are experiencing as a sure sign of what their life will be like in the years to come. Most are coming from a childhood in which things went relatively smoothly. They were reasonably protected and shielded from major difficulties. Sure there were setbacks, sadness, even trauma, but their place in life was stable. They were well loved and good about where they belonged. Now their world is in turmoil, and rather than seeing their struggles as part of a rough transition, they see them as part of the ‘new normal.’

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Lacking experience, they view their current difficulties out of perspective. The newly introduced struggles they face have yet to be resolved, and so teens begin to think that they never will be. An episode of depression can be unlike anything they've ever experienced before, and so they mistake such despair as being a permanent aspect of what awaits them as adults. This lack of perspective that might otherwise come from experience clouds their judgment about how serious the situation is, making their problems seem more intractable than they actually are.)

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~(Their self-identity is in flux - Adolescents are at a very vulnerable stage in their lives. They feel displaced . . . no longer a child, not yet an adult. As part of a natural developmental stage on their path to maturity, adolescents are driven to separate themselves and pull away from the adults they relied on throughout childhood, replacing this supplanted human connection with the support and approval of peers. So teens are left in a mad scramble to shed an identity that revolved around parent approval and replace it with a self-identity that revolves around their peer groups.

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During this tumultuous time, there are a lot of opportunities for things to go terribly wrong. Such a change is tough on everyone, but for adolescents who really struggle to find a place where they feel they fit in, the alienation and anguish this causes can seem unbearable. As Slaby & Garfinkel write, “the overwhelming and innate desire to be liked, to be loved, to be touched, can lead to despair if they can’t find anyone who truly understands them.”)

http://www.keepyourchildsafe.org/.../why-kids-commit...

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So here we are... 18 months later... still trying to figure out how we are supposed to move forward with this new life. The world has moved on... I look for signs from him all of the time. Since he has died, I have been surrounded by cardinals which I used to never see. Dragonflies would land on me and just sit there for long periods of time. I even found a feather yesterday all of which people say are signs your loved one is with you. It doesn't make me feel much better because I can't hug him and he is not here.

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All I did after he died was become a crazy detective searching through everything trying to find out what in hell happened to my kid.... I went through his computer, his homework, back pack, pockets of his pants, pockets of his coat, asked all of his friends all kinds of questions, finally his phone after having sent it off to HTC to have it unlocked. That took months to get back. After finally getting his phone back, we scoured through it only to find one clue... a picture of a self assessment he took online for depression and anxiety. He scored extremely high for anxiety, depression was normal, stress was normal. Even this was surprising to find. Carl was always so cool and collective who never over reacted to anything. He was his friends mediator in arguments. All of the evidence still doesn't explain this... the actions don't add up to his life that he led and how his life ended. I do think that his anxiety turned into reactive depression due to circumstances that he felt were out of his control. I also think that he didn't understand what was happening to him and just kept it to himself.

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~(Unrealistic or demanding expectations - Teens are often their own worst critic. They expect to take the world by storm, and when this doesn't happen, they can be extremely hard on themselves. It’s noted that this type of perfectionist attitude "is a common thread among suicidal adolescents. They must be 'all' or they are nothing. This demanding, uncompromising attitude becomes a setup for their own perceived failure, depression, and sense of hopelessness. ...they often exaggerate or distort some specific shortcoming, difference, or problem they are experiencing. This creates an overwhelming burden that becomes the rationale for choosing suicide as a solution to their problems." (Slaby & Garfinkel, 1994, pp. 50, 156)

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Part of this attitude traces back to the youthful optimism that can be both asset and liability. In a child’s early years, the future was a simple matter of deciding who you were going to marry and what you wanted to be when you grew up...astronaut of firefighter, or if the choice was too difficult, then perhaps a firefighting astronaut. Then adolescence arrives, and teens find out that attaining their ideals is not as simple as choosing cakes at a buffet. Those you desire may not always desire you back, and with the greater freedom to act upon our own behalf comes the cold reality that our efforts don't always lead to the outcomes envisioned.

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Many teens become stuck in this contradiction between their ideal self and the reality they experience. The optimism of youth which says the stars are supposed to align if only you try hard and do your best becomes the high platform from which they repeatedly fall from. Especially among the most tenacious teens, it fuels a perfectionist attitude. They feel they are supposed to accomplish this or that or attain a certain degree of success, and if they don't, then it's entirely their own fault.)

http://www.keepyourchildsafe.org/.../why-kids-commit...

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Now we are on our second round of major holidays without him. The "firsts" were beyond awful but this year... they feel bad too. There is no end to losing someone you love. The finality of it... there is no fix for it... the notion that it will never feel better... trying to find a place to store that pain...there is no where in your brain that understands this death... so I pray and I pray for God to give me peace and some kind of understanding... that's it.

How do I give advice to other parents when a part of me feels I have failed at my job as a mother... I know the reality is that it's not my fault, but trying to tell my heart this is actually harder to do. I will tell you that I loved Carl so much, raised him just like I raised my 25 year old daughter.... the difference is that there were no smart phones when she was growing up. Social media was My Space and pay as you go cell phones for use in an emergency. Once she was in high school, she got a droid phone which still had no internet as it was way too expensive for most people and it was not a huge thing yet. Carl was given a hand me down LG Envy3 for his first phone to text or use in an emergency. So no social media until around 2015 for Carl. Reports and scientific evidence show a commonality between smart phone use and a rise in sales of the iPhone up 50% in 2011 and suicide now up 56%.

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~(In 2012, a article reports a study done noting an abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. At first presumed to blips. The biggest difference between Millennials (my 25 year old daughters generation) and their predecessors was in how they viewed the world; teens today differ from the Millennials not just in their views but how they spend their time. What happened to cause such a dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a starker effect on Millennials trying to find a place in a sputtering economy. But it was exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent. Theirs is a generation shaped by smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen. Born between 1995 and 2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and don't remember a time before the internet.

Rates of teen suicide and depression have skyrocketed since 2011.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/.../has-the.../534198/

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On my journey to bring about awareness to teen suicide, there is much to learn and share... one of the most important parts to sharing awareness is to discuss the impulsiveness of suicide... there are seemingly happy kids who suffer a set back or two and are dying by suicide.

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~(In discussing impulsivity, the author points out New York Magazine writer Jesse Green's discussion of impulsive suicide, citing Scott Anderson's "The Urge to End it All" from the New York Times.

As Anderson pointed out, impulsive suicides are seldom accompanied by the classic warning signs, such as prior attempts, diagnosed mental illness, or drug or alcohol abuse. The act is sudden, unrehearsed­, and is thus especially common among young people who are naturally impulsive to begin with. Among 153 young survivors of nearly fatal suicide attempts interviewed in a 2001 University of Houston study, "70 percent set the interval between deciding to kill themselves and acting at less than an hour," Anderson reported, "including an astonishing 24 percent who pegged the interval at less than five minutes.")

https://www.huffpost.com/.../impulsive-suicide-a-cauti_b...

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I could go on and on and on with research statistics pointing out.... not all suicides are planned some are the result of of a Child's underdeveloped prefrontal cortex leaving the child vulnerable to not understanding consequences and acting on impulse to stressful situations that they are not adapt to mentally handle. "Mental anguish, anxiety, hormones, adolescents, social media, smartphone use, bullying, stigma, sexual identity,

~(The teen years are a stressful time. They are filled with major changes. These include body changes, changes in thoughts, and changes in feelings. Strong feelings of stress, confusion, fear, and doubt may affect a teen’s problem-solving and decision-making. He or she may also feel a pressure to succeed. These problems may seem too hard or embarrassing to overcome. For some, suicide may seem like a solution.)

https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default...

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So from what I can tell, being a teen today is challenging... the smartphone interference seems to be playing a big role in the struggles of being a teen... but most importantly, sometimes there are no signs... that's right... sometimes there are no signs a teen is struggling and this is the part of the awareness I really want to help with.

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~("Because they're young and a lot of the times don't have developed coping skills or they are having trouble expressing themselves, or they don't really understand what's going on inside their bodies or inside their heads; a lot of times they don't reach out for help," said Robin Isenberg, Executive Director of NAMI Greater Toledo.

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Erasing the stigma surrounding mental health has continued to be the focus among educators and medical professionals. NAMI of Greater Toledo has programs that teach kids and teenagers about dealing with things like anxiety and depression.)

https://www.wtol.com/.../512-766a69a5-fd4b-4e1a-85df...

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~(Sadly, life can pile atop the shoulders of the young as readily as it burdens the old, and there are far too many kids out there who struggle with thoughts of ending their life before it's even really began. In rare instances, suicidal thoughts and gestures can be seen in kids as young as 4 or 5 years old. More commonly, suicidal thoughts tend to emerge just before puberty in troubled kids, and once adolescence arrives, thoughts of suicide become relatively commonplace, even among otherwise "normal" kids.

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Suicidal thoughts in children and adolescents often go by unnoticed, ignored until it's too late. Since suicidal ruminations commonly reach their peak at a time when struggling with life is considered routine, perhaps even to be expected, severe emotional problems may be written off as normal teenage turmoil or dismissed as a passing phase. Making matters worse, young people are often the least likely to reach out and try to talk with someone about their struggles. As suicide researchers Andrew Slaby & Lily Garfinkel write, "parents are surprised to find that a daughter who committed suicide at seventeen first felt suicidal at age ten or eleven. Their obvious question, then, is ‘Why didn't we see it then?’ The answer is that the teen didn't have the words, or, perhaps, she camouflaged her pain so adeptly that it went undetected." (1994, p. 158)*http://www.keepyourchildsafe.org/.../child-and-teen...

So I will end with please start the conversation with your children... no one is exempt from this type of trauma... please don't think this can never happen to you... I believe suicide is like autoimmune disease... it's an idiopathic illness with many causes... I will carry this child with me for the rest of my life. He lives within me, forever a young man of 17. Others will carry him as they move forward in their lives. He will be with them when they look out to the world with compassion, when they act with determination and kindness, when they are brave enough to contemplate all the things in life that remain unknown.

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Talking about suicide is not easy. It’s taboo, scary and uncomfortable. For parents who have lost a child to suicide, it’s beyond painful...

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Without those conversations though... the perception of suicide will never change.

#lovecarl

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“Someday you will be faced with the reality of loss. And, as life goes on, days rolling into nights, it will become clear that you never really stop missing someone special who’s gone, you just learn to live around the gaping hole of their absence. When you lose someone you can’t imagine living without, your heart breaks wide open, and the bad news is you never completely get over the loss. You will never forget them. However, in a backwards way, this is also the good news. They will live on in the warmth of your broken heart that doesn’t fully heal, and you will continue to grow and experience life, even with your wound. It’s like badly breaking an ankle that never heals perfectly, and that still hurts when you dance, but you dance anyway with a slight limp, and this limp just adds to the depth of your performance and the authenticity of your character. The people you lose remain a part of you. Remember them and always cherish the good moments spent with them.” - Christopher Walken

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~Talking to teens about suicide: learning their story

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Richard Jones of Hope City Counseling shares how he talks to teens who are overwhelmed, stressed and who need to share their story.

https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/.../105536024/...

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~We are never given a parent manual, but we are given the tools to help one another. I am on a mission to help parents change the conversation they have with kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8FGzsFLCm0...

Love,

Carl's Mom

#lovecarl

C- Call someone

A- Ask for help

R- Reach out to family and friends

L- Love yourself

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Call 1-800-273-8255

Available 24 hours everyday

Suicide is preventable. Get free help now. Text HOME to 741741

Carl Nagy