How to Ask Your Loved One About Their Suicidal Thoughts

By: Roxanne Sorci, LCPC

Knowing your loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts can be a scary place to be. You may see their suffering and feel completely lost on what to say. Stuck in wanting to do everything in your power to protect them, while oftentimes experiencing your own anxiety and confusion. Oof. You’re not in it in the same place they are, and you’re also carrying

your own struggle too.

With September being Suicide Prevention & Awareness Month, I thought it was the perfect time to share some communication techniques, specifically three different ways you can ask your loved one if they are thinking about suicide.

When someone is thinking they want to die, it can be easy for they themselves to deny or understate their thoughts out of fear, stigma, or worry about being negatively judged.

To help overcome these obstacles, psychiatrist Shawn Shea describes “validity techniques” as communication tools to help your loved one share their sensitive, oftentimes distressing, thoughts by creating room for them to express themselves in a space of safety and care. The validity techniques we’ll explore today include normalization, shame attenuation, and gentle assumption.

Normalization

When we normalize something, we send the message that one is not alone. Asking about suicide through a normalization lens makes it clear that it is normal and human to think of suicide at one time or another in one’s life, especially when someone has been experiencing a low mood for a long time and/or emotional pain is very high. The mind is doing what the mind does by searching for a way to experience less pain. It makes sense that the mind sometimes goes to ending the pain through means on ending one’s life to get relief.

When we practice communicating with normalization, we are trying to send the message that thinking one would be better off dead is not as uncommon or taboo of a thought that people think it is. Normalization creates space for one to not feel judged by their suicidal thoughts which can then create room for openness and a felt sense of safety.

Here are three examples:

• “Many people with depression like yours can feel so bad that they begin to wonder what’s the point of living. Is that something you can relate to currently?”

  
  

• “In the past when you have not answered your phone & were eating less, it quickly led to you thinking about suicide. I’m curious, do you think you are headed back to that place, or are currently in that suicidal headspace right now?”

  
  

• “When I was in a very low place in my life before, I would experience scary thoughts and images of killing myself. Have you had any of those thoughts lately?”

Shame Attenuation

According to Brene Brown, if we were to put shame in a petri dish with three things, the emotion of shame would grow exponentially. Those three things are silence, secrecy, and judgement.

When we think of experiencing shame related to suicidal thoughts, we can acknowledge the difficulty in wanting to speak these thoughts out loud. The one experiencing them may also be judgmental towards themselves for having them in the first place, thus exacerbating the emotion of shame.

When we practice shame attenuation, we are communicating that suicidal thoughts are more than likely occurring due to the pain one is experiencing and the difficult situation they are in, rather than framing the thoughts or situation as a personal failing.

Here's how it can sound:

• “I can tell that this is something that is very hard for you to talk about, understandably so. You’re probably in a ton of pain right now. At the same time, I want to remind you that I am here to support you and love you through it. Are your suicidal thoughts back?”

  
  

• “Having a depression sucks. Sometimes when people go through long bouts of depression, they begin to have thoughts of suicide. Have you experienced any thoughts like that?”

  
  

• “Things seems to be heavy for you lately which makes sense with everything you are going through. I know experiencing suicidal thoughts isn’t rare when the weight of the world is on your shoulders. I’m wondering have you been thinking at all about not wanting to be here anymore?”

  
  

Gentle Assumption

Gentle assumption is a technique where we assume that the person is thinking about suicide currently. In a caregiver position, sometimes it’s easy to know when your loved one is having a harder time than they normally do. When we communicate questions with gentle assumption, we are acting like the person we are asking about suicidal thoughts to has already answered “yes.” Asking a question where the answer implied is “yes” adds an additional element of normalization to experiencing suicidal thoughts.

• “When have you thought about suicide this week?”

  
  

• “How often would you say the thought of not wanting to be here anymore has been popping up in your mind this week?

  
  

• “How intense has the wish of going to sleep and not waking up been for you today?”

I know asking someone about suicidal thoughts isn’t easy. By using the validity techniques like normalization, shame‑attenuation, and gentle assumption, you offer your loved one a safe space in which they can feel less alone and more comfortable. Sometimes all it takes is a genuine moment and a couple of questions to shift the weight that someone’s been carrying, giving them permission to finally set it down. You can’t take away their pain, but you can ask some questions to send the message that it’s okay to talk about dark thoughts, even when it feels really hard. 

Sources:

Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience (First edition). Random House.

Shea, S. C. (2002). The practical art of suicide assessment: A guide for mental health professionals and substance abuse counselors (Paperback ed.). Wiley.