If a helper is seen as a potential abuser:

One gets an aggressive, fighting style response,

– Or a yielding response, (yes, yes, you are right, but they don´t act on it, because they are not convinced, they just have learned in their life that it is better to just yield).

– Or a paralyzed (frozen) response, at times they even can´t think, there are no words, but in their mind there are thoughts, they don´t know how to share that.

If helper is seen by the counselee as a potential victim:

– this can create a pity (“again someone who tries to help me” ).

 – or this can create a lowering of the intensity of their story, back-tracking   ´eating their words´.(“Poor Téo, he has to hear all this garbage, this must be too much for him”).

If seen as a dysfunctional helper:

– At best a resistance to what is suggested, or resignation, not really listening or a dismissive reaction.

The neurons in the brain only react if they get information that make sense. Otherwise the information is automatically rejected just like the many sights we see when one travels and we don´t remember them.

Many traumatized people do not have a conscious contact with their bodies. They don´t really are aware of what happens inside their bodies.

The feelings react, without them understanding why. They were confused in their youth. Now they need to learn how to react to these feelings. Werner May^[1] said about this:

“Relationship skills includes the ability to develop an interest in others, to learn to understand others and to be ready to cooperate. That means more homework to relearn our management of feelings. Most of us will have grown up with the fact that there are bad and good feelings. In fact, there are only pleasant and unpleasant feelings, both good or bad. Pleasant feelings God has created so that we can experience joy, he has created unpleasant feelings as signal feelings, as a sign that something is not quite right. Thus, for example anger or jealousy, no bad feelings, but quite good feelings, though unpleasant, but they ask if something was wrong. We persist in these unpleasant feelings or jump inappropriate and often violently, then we can speak of unwanted negative attitudes, but as a signal feelings they are quite reasonable and even desirable”.

Some suggestions how to respond to severely hurting people with HTB:

Because you talk to a living person, one could make the compliment (I often deliberately look a bit incredulous) and say: “…and you haven´t killed yourself yet? I admire your struggle to live! ”

When someone did act destructive or attempted suicide and they share that with you: Show understanding and interest in their feelings, rather than what circumstances brought them to this act. This is their way of dealing with their inner pain.

With suicide there can be a part that believes that when they kill the internal abuser, they will live anyhow!  We need to be curious, how do they to see their world.  Sometime one could ask:

o   Q: What did you feel that triggered this attempt to kill yourself? Don´t dig, listen and repeat what you understand that they say, so they can simply agree. That shows that you understand them.

o   Those who grew up in a culture of abuse have a partly warped thinking pattern learned from their environment. I would never tell them: you have believed a lie, because that makes them feel guilty. Guilt feelings are usually a part of their mental blocks to change. I would rather say: you developed as a child or young person a misunderstanding, that `death is a friend who quietly waits`. It might have been a soothing option when one was young, perhaps even the only final escape possibility. Now they are adults, the abuse happened years ago. Let us turn the anger toward the abusive systems. If the abuser(s) is/are still alive: choose yourself to live well and turn your back on those people for now. Any attempt to face them now is not needed for your healing. Get healed first and then we can see what can be done.

o   If needed: tell them the story of the “ silver box” or something similar.

o   If one observes a latent danger of suicide,

o Make an anti-suicidal contract (we discuss this later)

o One can share: ´It would make me feel awful if I would hear the news that you decided to die´.

o One could try to share hope with them, like: I still have hope for experiencing freedom, never mind what situation you are in. While we can´t change the situations, nobody can force you to think in a certain way´. 

o   Radiate the peace of God, but allow your eyes to show your sadness. You can tell them that their suicidal ideation is a very normal response to an abnormal situation they were exposed to.

o   Watch for strong changes of mood ´from darkness and doom´ to a light-hearted approach to life: If this change of mood is so remarkable and they say: Now I am doing fine…. They might actually have an ´injection of adrenaline´: they suddenly become energetic. NOT because they are now O.K. but because they get this ´high´ feeling after a quiet decision to kill oneself: so be very alert.

o   The need to repeat old pain situations (e.g. for me it was the movie “The Longest Day” about the invasion of the Allied forces in Normandy in France in 1944. I saw that at least 25 times). Then there is usually a child-part which doesn´t understand what has happened and still wants to know, thus turning to replay the actions.

o   Victims even can become abusers (50% do NOT turn into persons who cross-appropriate borders). Two nurses who told me with tears about them sexual abusing small children in the hospital, it was a replay of what happened to themselves.

^[1] werner.may@ignis.de