404 | Surviving Suicide Loss: Making Your Way Beyond the Ruins

Suicide is a traumatic event that disrupts survivors’ previously stable constructs about life, often shaking the very foundations of their assumptive world. While post-traumatic growth (PTG) has gained increasing attention, many clinicians have historically focused on helping clients cope with trauma, often overlooking the potential for resilience and growth. This workshop, designed for licensed mental health professionals and ministry leaders, provides clinical guidance for working with suicide loss survivors. Participants will explore three key areas of impact that can facilitate PTG, providing clinicians with a roadmap to assist clients in reconstructing new, sustainable frameworks of meaning. Specific focus will be given to Narrative Therapy, Parts Work, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) exercises as tools for meaning-making reconstruction. Attendees will also examine how tacit assumptions about life, one’s spiritual beliefs, and the world are challenged by trauma, and be equipped to guide survivors toward a more resilient and integrated sense of self. Through the personal and professional experiences of the presenter—both a suicide loss survivor and clinician—this workshop will prepare clinicians to work effectively with suicidal clients and those left behind by suicide.