Connection
You may have picked up Healing for Healers because you are supporting a colleague who has lost a patient to suicide. Do not forget to offer your unconditional support. I am here for you, you can call me any day anytime if you want to talk things through or just a shoulder to lean on. Saying something doesn’t make it better, what makes it better is connection. If you have your own story to share, do so without making it about yourself. To be truly empathic one has to reach within and connect with that place that knows that feeling.
Everyone comes to work to do a good job. But sometimes bad things happen. When they do, its time to take time to H - E - A - L.
H - Hindsight Hurts
Hindsight strips away all the complexity and simplifies cause and effect. Thinking how did I not see this is unfair. Be kind to your self.
E - Event ~ Non-event
The significant event reminds us of the gravity of our work. Take time to remember the daily small wins when we steer people’s lives for the better. As “non-events” we generally take them for granted.
A - Accept, Affirm
The emotions you experience today are nature’s signal to you that you are a kind and compassionate human being, accept and affirm these feelings.
L - Look, Listen, Learn
Look after yourself, you cannot pour from an empty cup, listen to your colleagues, many have been on this journey and use this adversity to grow.
H - E - A - L your S - O - U - L is the combined wisdom of errors in judgement I, Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray, have made over two decades while supporting self and colleagues who lost a patient to suicide, mistakes you dont have to make...
Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
Follow us on www.progress.guide
Connection
You may have picked up Healing for Healers because you are supporting a colleague who has lost a patient to suicide. Do not forget to offer your unconditional support. I am here for you, you can call me any day anytime if you want to talk things through or just a shoulder to lean on. Saying something doesn’t make it better, what makes it better is connection. If you have your own story to share, do so without making it about yourself. To be truly empathic one has to reach within and connect with that place that knows that feeling.
Everyone comes to work to do a good job. But sometimes bad things happen. When they do, its time to take time to H - E - A - L.
H - Hindsight Hurts
Hindsight strips away all the complexity and simplifies cause and effect. Thinking how did I not see this is unfair. Be kind to your self.
E - Event ~ Non-event
The significant event reminds us of the gravity of our work. Take time to remember the daily small wins when we steer people’s lives for the better. As “non-events” we generally take them for granted.
A - Accept, Affirm
The emotions you experience today are nature’s signal to you that you are a kind and compassionate human being, accept and affirm these feelings.
L - Look, Listen, Learn
Look after yourself, you cannot pour from an empty cup, listen to your colleagues, many have been on this journey and use this adversity to grow.
H - E - A - L your S - O - U - L is the combined wisdom of errors in judgement I, Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray, have made over two decades while supporting self and colleagues who lost a patient to suicide, mistakes you dont have to make...
Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
Follow us on www.progress.guide
Host: Good day, I am Mahi, your host. Welcome to a special episode of the PROTECT podcast on World Suicide Prevention Day 2023. Today we launch a document Healing for Healers. As the name suggests, its about you, health professionals, particularly those who have been working in mental health but it applies to all, professionals who bring hope and healing to those who are struggling to see the light, but when you are struggling after losing a person you are caring for to suicide, how do you heal, how do you keep alive the flame within yourself, how do you stay connected with hope. But before we dive into Healing for Healers, lets spent a bit of time catching up. Manaan its coming up to a year that you have recorded a podcast. What happened?
Expert: End Sept 2022, I went to India and lost my streak and then amidst the busyness of my day job, private practice, suicide prevention teaching, training and consultancy work, just could not get the podcast off the ground again. Moral of the story is don’t lose your streak.
Host: But doing a podcast every week was quite a heavy load to fit into your other responsibilities. You have to practice what you preach and have some work life balance.
Expert: True and not so true, if you want something done find a busy person and they will somehow make time, and I am so tempted to say something controversial but am trying to show restrain as it is a world suicide prevention day special.
Host: Oh you cant do that, now I am intrigued, you must share what’s on your mind.
Expert: I might get lynched for saying this. But I do have an issue with the way the concept of work life balance is banded about now a days.
Host: What do you mean?
Expert: It is the juxtaposition of work against life that I don’t quite like, as if life begins after work, so work has to be powered through so that you can get to the other side and then you can begin living. There are many things that make life worth living, whether that be close relationships, leisure activities and work or study. They all contribute to making life rich, full and meaningful. I agree with the importance of balance in life, but I do not like the way work and life are pitched as if they are two contrasting things. My home life is important and so is my work life, both contribute to the sense of who I am as a person.
Host: I get the point you are making but on your death bed will you be thinking I could have spent a little bit more time at work.
Expert: Ah that old cliché, you know what on my death bed I doubt I will be thinking much, but if I had some of my cognitive abilities left, I will be thinking about my life and legacy which will cover both home and work. I have been blessed with loving relationships at home and people are who are very meaningful to me, but it is the same at work, I am surrounded by people that care about me and I care about them. Home or work it’s the power of human connection that brings joy to life.
Host: That is true, but we have gone of on a tangent.
Expert: Not quite I think what we have been discussing is quite pertinent to Healing for Healers and energy in the long run and maintaining resilience amidst adversity.
Host: Before you dive into that I did want to ask you about your trip to India. This was the first trip back after COVID?
Expert: Yes it was, and having lost some key people in our extended family it was bitter sweet. But its always nice to see your family. I also got away into the mountains, deep into the Himalayas into the magical lands of Leh Ladakh.
Host: And you have been doing the drone videos on youtube instead of the podcast.
Expert: Guilty as charged, those videos did take up a lot of my time, eating into the podcasting time I guess. But it was absolutely magical.
Host: You have travelled a lot through the Himalayas, was this very different.
Expert: Yes it definitely was, I have trekked and travelled all the way from the eastern fringes to the North Western, and I have never seen anything like this, the landscape, the high mountain passes, the roads, the lakes, rivers through sanddunes, the famous moonscapes of Ladakh, the peace of monasteries, the turmoil of war captured in the war memorials. Leh Ladakh has it all.
Host: And then you came back to Kolkata for Durga Puja or the Autumn Festival?
Expert: Yes I had not visited Kolkata during Durga Puja since 2006 and over this time your memory begins to fade about what a showcase of humanity this festival is. It celebrates the victory of good over evil and the whole of East India descends into creative chaos and madness for the week of the festival.
Host: It sustains an entire economy though, doesn’t it.
Expert: It absolutely does, life in Bengal rotates around Durga Puja, it is difficult to capture in words what it actually is. The lights, the sounds, the smells, its not for the faint hearted as India is an assault on the senses even in the best of times, but during Durga puja it reaches a crescendo. The creativity of the pondols, the beauty of the idols, the craftsmanship blows your mind perhaps only second to the energy of people, the throbbing pulse that runs through Kolkata during the festival is something you have to experience, it cannot be described. So for listeners if you are making travel plans, in the month of October, Kolkata is the place to be, it is an unashamed plug for my home town, but believe me you have never experienced anything like that.
Host: And in January you did the driving holiday along the New South Wales coastline.
Expert: Oh yes that was wonderful too, from one light house to another, so much history and such costal beauty, so you see I do have balance in my life.
Host: Ok thanks for the dig, not going to talk about work life balance anymore but professionally what have you been doing.
Expert: You mean my drone videos are not professional.
Host: Ha Ha I am sure they are, I meant in the sphere of suicide prevention
Expert: Its been an incredibly busy year for suicide prevention work. We have been working on the prototype for the PROTECT app, its part of our goal to reach 10 million people. I keep asking what can I do today to create time tomorrow, and given everyone has a super computer in their palm, i.e. a smart phone, it seems like a natural next step to get the training and the tools out on smart phones and for people to benefit from the program. I am sure we will talk about it in the upcoming podcasts. Expecting to launch it in early 2024.
Host: You have been doing lots of talks as well.
Expert: Yes it has been relentless, did the suicide prevention summit in Australia, in UK and the one for the US, the US one where we looked at risk vs recovery had over 2500 attendees. Lots of talks in Western Australia. I have been continuing the work with South Metro in Perth where I am doing specific consultancy work relating to leadership in suicide prevention, setting up suicide prevention pathways, working with safety and quality teams. Translation of our work into Spanish continues, also working in the suicide prevention space for schools in the far east, doing a talk in Malaysia on World suicide prevention day, upcoming talks for GPs in Australia and general hospital staff. So yes I might not have done the podcast but I have been talking talking talking endlessly.
Host: Yes I have heard your colleagues say that you can talk to a wall.
Expert: Well it was during a team building exercise, my star sign profile said as a Gemini I can talk to a wall and that then became proof of the fact that star signs are a real thing.
Host: They are a real thing.
Expert: Well it’s a thing all right, don’t know about it being a real thing.
Host: We are in real danger of digressing again, tell us about healing for healers
Expert: It’s a booklet that brings together 4 key messages or principles to construct a conversation when supporting a colleague who has lost a patient to suicide and it also provides 4 key practices to maintain energy in the long run.
Host: It is an actual booklet?
Expert: Yes it’s 24 pages, so not too long, and it’s available digitally to the organisations I am working with as well.
Host: What’s the inspiration for healing for healers
Expert: I lost a loved one to suicide very early in my psychiatric training within 12 hours of having spent a significant chunk of time doing general chit chat about life and living, philosophy, politics, etc. That has been a heavy burden to carry, in my stronger moments I know that the eyes cant see if you are not looking for something, in my weaker moments even though it has been over 2 decades it fills me with self-doubt that I should have seen it although I was not looking and we were just spinning the yarn and my loved one never had any mental health issues either. So a part of healing for healers is messages that I share with myself when I am gripped with self doubt, the other part is messages that I have shared with others in the last 2 decades of my leadership practice.
Host: It must be an incredibly sensitive conversation to have with a colleague when they have lost someone to suicide and are stuck in an abyss of self doubt.
Expert: Yes an incredibly sensitive conversation, and I have made so many mistakes, I might even say that healing for healers is a document that brings together the learnings from the mistakes I have made.
Host: You mean in the conversations with colleagues.
Expert: Yes in the messages I have shared, you lean one way and you can come across as patronising, you lean another way you come across as insensitive, you lean another way and the person may pick up underlying tones of blame in what you are saying even if none is intnentioned. Given practitioners are conscientious and are already hurting at that time, it is so easy for a well meaning message of support to be misconstrued, and believe me I have got plenty of mistakes in my history.
Host: I am curious what kind of mistakes
Expert: well the most common one that I made and still do from time to time is as a Psychiatrist myself, I have this intense desire to decrease a person's emotional pain, so I jump in and start giving solutions, I open my trap and start talking, when all that I need to do is to be present.
Host: I am sure that is hard, you do want to make someone feel better, that is quite natural.
Expert: Yes you do but in the moment there is very little that you can do to make it better. What makes it better is connection, if you have lost a patient to suicide you have been there where your colleagues is now and you need to re-connect with what you might have felt when it happened to you and then just be present and share that space with your colleague. This is hard cause we are talking about reconnecting with a moment of extreme vulnerability and emotional exposure for your self, but that’s what you need to do to be present, truly present. Without saying I have been there you are conveying I have been there.
Host: That sounds like an extremely nuanced skill
Expert: It is and there is no training out there for consultants and people in leadership positions who have to support colleagues in this situation. Doctors and nurses usually put on their Mr Fix it cap and try to fix the situation, what they tend to do is start asking questions about what happened, so they are curious about the patient’s presentation and what the colleague did and they try to make their colleague feel that look you did everything that you could do, there is nothing more that you could have done.
Host: Surely colleagues like to feel reassured that they did everything they could, what is wrong with that?
Expert: Firstly, your colleague is hurting because a person’s life that they have been involved in is lost. There may be a small part of them which is about self preservation and what does this mean for me, but mostly they are just hurting full stop, and bringing up oh did you do this and did you do that and did you document everything, and saying you are safe, that does not do anything about their desire to curl up and cry because they are a conscientious human being who wishes that they can turn time back and have done everything differently. Secondly because they want to turn time back, does not matter how appropriate their actions were, going through what you did and didn’t do makes them feel that there were things that they should have done or shouldn’t have done. When you start exploring as if you are taking a history or a sequence of decisions, the colleague will inevitably find stuff which now with the benefit of hind sight, which we all know is a wonderful thing, they wished they had done this differently or that differently.
Host: So healing for healers is a booklet that provides people working in mental health with the key messages to provide to colleagues after they have lost a patient to suicide.
Expert: Yes and it is the foundation for a training program in which we get professionals to practice the conversations. We learnt from the 7 Safe Steps program that there is nothing like scenario based learning, actually practicing the conversations and then having case based discussions and reflection on what worked and well and even better if. These are critical skills for people in leadership positions but also for those who are not in a formal leadership role. Remember there are only two groups of professionals in mental health, those who have a lost a patient to suicide and those who are going to lose one. It is a very morbid message but a reality of the work we do. So healing for healers as a training program is important for your own resilience, the messages you will give to colleagues apply to you too and you need to believe them first and practice what you preach.
Host: How might listeners access the training.
Expert: The easiest way will be to connect with me on linked in and we can have a discussion online as to the needs of the organisation and how the needs may be met. You can always drop me a line at admin@progress.guide. I will put information up on our website www.progres.guide as well.
Host: How long does the training last
Expert: This is based on the needs and how interactive the commissioning organisation want it to be, whether we do it online or face to face. From 90 minute webinars to half day and full day workshops are all possible. The more time we have the more interactive we can make it. This is at the heart of setting up an environment of Restorative just culture, it is essential for psychological safety, to practice in a recovery oriented way and take positive risks, remember without risk there is no recovery.
Host: How can people access the booklet.
Expert: Just get in touch with me as I mentioned previously, on Linked in or through the admin@progress.guide email.
Host: I did want to ask you about the imagery in the booklet
Expert: Ah the Pinnacles of Nambung National Park in Western Australia.
Host: Yes, they are beautiful.
Expert: thank you, yes it all came together very nicely. I was in Perth for the Royal College Conference and had arrived a day early, and because of the time difference of two hours with Brisbane, my sleep was all over the place. I woke up at 2 am and did not know what to do with myself. So I decided to jump in the car and drive for a couple of hours to the Pinnacles which was on my bucket list.
Host: Jump in the car and drive for 2 hours as you do at 2 am in the morning
Expert: Ha ha, well I am glad I did, driving up there, after I left Perth, I was not crossed by a single car driving in the other direction, and I almost hit a Kangaroo, I will never forget that, they use the phrase deer in headlights, for me its Kangaroo in the headlights, its etched in my brain. So when I reached Nambung, it was about 4 am, it was pitch dark once I turned the headlights off. Closed my eyes for a few minutes to let my eyes adjust and then you see the pinnacles under star light, it is one of the most amazing experiences I have had, its comparable to sunset over the Grand Canyon or sunrise over Pangong Tso in the high Himalayas of Ladakh. The beauty of the pinnacles absolutely blew my mind, under star light there was a mystique which evaporated as the sun rose into this glittering desert landscape punctuated by these pinnacles.
Host:If you are wondering what the pinnacles are, they are part of the natural landscape of the desert of Nambung 2 hours north of Perth. They were formed 25,000 to 30,000 years ago after the sea receded and left deposits of sea shells, coastal winds removed the surrounding sand, leaving the limestone pillars exposed to the elements erosion.
Expert: So shaped by nature’s forces and standing the test of time, the pinnacles in my mind symbolise resilience amidst adversity. It was the perfect imagery that I had been dreaming of for healing for healers.
Host: And there are some beautiful creation stories as well
Expert: Yes the traditional custodians, the Nyoongar people have a spiritual connection to these lands. Their story is of those young men who had wandered into the desert which was sacred and reserved for women. They were buried alive by the gods as punishment and left behind as these limestone figures. We chose the Pinnacles as they reminded us of lasting inner strength and how time and tide’s erosion i.e. adversity shapes our beautiful minds and who we are as people.
Host: That is a wonderful message to end our world suicide prevention day 2023 special. You all are healers and when adversity strikes it is important for you to take time to heal, you cannot pour from an empty cup, time to refill. Get in touch through linked in or by emailing admin@progress.guide if you want the digital booklet. Any last messages from you Manaan.
Expert: I think you said it beautifully. Can’t pour from an empty cup, take time to refill, support another colleague to refill their cup too, this world suicide prevention day make a comittemnt to gain the skills in these sentive conversations, they will serve you well in your journey as a mental health professional and when the time comes, and believe me unfortunately it will, you will be able to draw on them to support your colleagues. Healing for healers is a program about self compassion. As the caption on the back cover of the document says, Two Together, self compassion forges kindness for others. Like the pinnacles you remind us of lasting inner strength and how time and tide’s erosion i.e. adversity may be overcome and the learning that takes place in the process of overcoming could shape your beautiful minds, your kind compassionate hearts and who you are as people. On World suicide prevention day make time and take time to look after yourself cause as a healer you are a gift to the world and if you are hurting, you too need to heal before you can heal others again.