Compassion, Winter 2021

Winter 2021 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 9 Finding hope in the darkest of places… A therapist’s personal experience of losing a son to suicide. Years ago, as a newly qualified CBT therapist in the NHS, I was allocated a patient whose notes filled me with dread and anxiety. Two years previously, this patient had lost her son to suicide. I wondered what I could possibly offer this poor woman who had suffered surely the very worst fate imaginable; certainly the cruellest thing I, as a mother could conceive. I couldn’t see how CBT could even begin to help her cope with this devastating situation. I felt completely out of my depth and quite hopeless. Fast forward to 21st December 2019, when I heard the horrific news that my eldest son, Anton had died; a telephone conversation that my mind would replay constantly, horrifyingly, for months and years to come. Alone in his London flat and depressed after the end of his long-term relationship, Anton had drunk a lot of alcohol before taking his own life, aged 32. My world stood stock still. Life as I had known it felt comprehensively annihilated, leaving a colossal black emptiness. This was the dark space in which I now lived.