Connecting people supporting loved ones in suicidal distress or crisis.
Our Connection Groups for people supporting loved ones in crisis will provide an opportunity for people supporting loved ones in crisis to connect with each other, to share experiences and understanding, led by facilitators with lived experience as suicide carers.
If you have supported someone you love experience thoughts of suicide, crisis, self-harm or suicide attempts, these groups are for you.
Supporting a loved one through crisis can be a challenging experience, both for supporters, our loved ones who are struggling, and for the broader network around us. This Connection Group for people supporting loved ones in crisis will provide a safe and open space to explore the complexities of support in the context of a whole family, led by facilitators with lived experience.
Sometimes those of us who are disabled, or live with disability, neurodivergence, chronic illness or other health conditions can find ourselves in a position where we need to support someone we love through difficulty or crisis. Balancing our own needs and accessibility requirements, with what we need to do to support our loved ones can be challenging. This connection group will enable us to connect with others who share this experience to provide community and solidarity.
Suicide lived experience can be dynamic, and it can be complex to navigate supporting loved ones through their own suicidality, especially when we may have our own experiences in crisis. This group will create a space to unpack the intricacy of holding space for others in crisis, and what that might bring up for us.
When someone we love is dealing with suicidality and when we play a role in supporting them to navigate that, the boundaries and relationships we have with our loved ones can become more complicated. This connection group will explore the challenges and importance in building healthy relationships between us and the people we support and provides an opportunity to connect with others who understand this experience.
Anyone who supports a loved one through crisis can know how intimidating the idea of burnout and fatigue can be, both for ourselves and for the people we love. This connection group will explore both burnout and fatigue and provide a peer space for both their feelings and strategies about navigating these things.
Neurodiversity Celebration Week 2025 goes from 17th to 23rd March. This connection group for people supporting loved ones in crisis will explore the intersection of neurodivergence and suicide, and enable supporters to identify both their own needs, and the needs of the people they support, in a safe space with others who understand their experiences.
March 31st is Trans Day of Visibility and focuses both on recognising the discrimination faced by trans and gender diverse people, as well as the strength and community in the trans and gender diverse community. This connection group for people supporting loved ones in crisis will bring together both trans and gender diverse supporters, and people supporting trans and gender diverse people to explore the importance of community and support networks for our communities.
April 2nd is Autism Awareness Day, a day designed to build societal awareness, understanding and acceptance of autism and autistic people. This connection group for people supporting loved ones in crisis will bring together autistic supporters and supporters of autistic people for an open and community-focussed discussion of the intersections between autism and suicide and provide an opportunity for people to speak honestly about their lived experiences.
When we support a loved one through suicidality, we often become confident in recognising their needs and understanding how we can best support them. Often, it can be hard for us to do the same practice of supporting ourselves, and self-care can become an unfamiliar or uncomfortable space. This connection group will bring together people who support loved ones in crisis to have a frank conversation about the challenges in taking care of ourselves and provide an opportunity to explore strategies and ways we can start to rebuild this practice.
For young people (under 30) who support a loved one through crisis, it can sometimes be challenging to fully explore our identities and engage in experiences that other young people might have easier access to. This connection group will bring together young people who support a loved one through suicidality, whether they be a family member, partner, friend or community member, to hold space for the nuances of this supporter role whilst also navigating the other parts of our lives as young people.
When supporting a loved one through both suicidality and an eating disorder, or eating issues (regardless of diagnosis), our role as supporters often needs to be highly active and responsive to the fluctuating needs of the people we support. This connection group will enable people who are supporting a loved one who deals with both eating issues and suicidality to safely explore the challenges in the intersection of suicide and eating disorders and enable us to find connection and hope from others who share our experiences.
The unique role we play as supporters of loved ones in crisis can be incredibly isolating, whether due to the specific needs the people we support have, or because most people in our lives may not seem to understand our experiences. This Connection Group is focussed on bringing people with this lived experience of supporting loved ones in crisis together, so we can hold space, empathise, and link in to others who genuinely get what we are going through.
Our relationship with the person or people we support through crisis can be complex. This might be because of the way that our support role and their need for support changes the dynamic, but it can also be linked to the way in which we started to support someone, or this support being a drastic change in the relationship more broadly. This Connection Group will focus on exploring what it can be like to seemingly ‘fall’ into a supporter role and will provide space to connect with others who understand, and who might also still be working to understand their support role and what it means.
June is known around the world as LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, an opportunity for LGBTQIA+ people everywhere to connect and feel celebrated. When our LGBTQIA+ identitie/s aren’t the only parts of our identity, both because of intersectional experiences, but also potentially also supporting a loved one in crisis, it can be challenging to find pride in both our LGBTQIA+ identity and our supporter role. This Connection Group will bring together LGBTQIA+ people who support loved ones in crisis, and support exploration of what pride looks like for those of us with these intersecting experiences.
June is known around the world as LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, an opportunity for LGBTQIA+ people everywhere to connect and feel celebrated. For those of us who support a loved one in crisis who is part of the LGBTQIA+ community, we know that the concept of ‘pride’ can sometimes feel alienating for the people we support. This Connection Group will bring together people who support a loved one in crisis who is LGBTQIA+ and will explore the intersection of suicide for the LGBTQIA+ community. It will enable us to connect with others who understand our experiences, and to reflect on how we support the LGBTQIA+ loved ones in our lives.
Many people who support loved ones in crisis can feel a sense of overwhelm, whilst juggling the many things we need to balance in our lives. This Connection Group will directly examine the challenges in supporting our loved ones, whilst also needing to balance our other life commitments, such as work, education, parenting, hobbies, family, and community, and will bring together a group of people who all understand what each other are experiencing.
