Could My Kid Be Suicidal? What to Do and Say. A Personal Story with AnneMoss Rogers
“Our kids don’t kill themselves because of lack of love. They can have absolutely everything and still struggle with suicidal thoughts. I hear it every day. “Well, my daughter is at college, and she said she’s been really depressed. But she’s not the type to kill herself.” Sheryl, if I could tell you the number of times people told me and then two weeks later called me back and said, “Oh my God, my child attempted suicide or killed herself or himself or themselves. I do not want that to happen.”
– AnneMoss Rogers
Hi, friends; welcome to the show today.
And I’m so glad that you’re here. Mental health and emotional wellness is something that we all want for our kids. And if our kids are struggling, if they’re going through a tough time, if they’re spending a lot of time in their bedrooms, and they’re sad, and they are isolated and they’re lonely, or you have a kid that is struggling with depression or anxiety or substance abuse.
It’s heartbreaking. You feel powerless and confused; it’s scary.
And the big question is, what do you do? That’s what we ask ourselves. What do we do?
Well, my special guest today is AnneMoss Rogers is here with answers.
In this interview, AnneMoss bravely shares her heartbreaking journey of losing her son Charles to suicide. She opens up about the challenges leading up to his tragic passing, her struggles to support him through addiction, and what she would have done differently If only she’d known at the time.
AnneMoss Rogers is a mental health motivational speaker, suicide prevention speaker, and trainer who became an expert educator on the subject of mental health after her son’s death by suicide. She is a TEDx speaker, and her blog, Emotionally Naked, has reached millions. She is the author of the award-winning memoir Diary of a Broken Mind and the best-selling book Emotionally Naked: A Teacher’s Guide to Preventing Suicide and Recognizing Students at Risk with co-writer Dr. Kimberly O’Brien.
She shares wonderful resources, which I want you to check out in the show notes. She also shares wisdom and what parents can do and say to create an environment where change is possible. There is support, healing, and hope available.
She also offers many free ebooks, so if you have a kid who is struggling with mental health, make sure in the show notes that you check those out.
So, without further ado, let’s jump in.
What You Will Learn:
- What are some of the biggest mental health challenges facing tweens and teens today?
- What specific actions can parents take if they believe their child may be considering suicide?
- Many teens are reluctant to seek professional help. What advice can you offer parents on how to encourage their children to reach out for support?
- The best resources available to parents and teens who are struggling with suicidal thoughts?
- How do we talk to your kids about difficult subjects and get a response?
- What to say/do if your child is struggling with suicide.
- Practical tips to help parents with tweens and teens build resilience and coping skills that prevent them from getting to crisis?
- Resources Shared and Where to Find AnneMoss:
- NAMI – National Alliance on Mental Illness
- Families Anonymous
- AnneMoss’s Website
- AnneMoss’s Books
- TEDx Video
Find more encouragement, wisdom, and resources:
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And here is the episode typed out!
Welcome to the Moms of Tweens and Teens Podcast. If some days you doubt yourself and don’t know what you’re doing. If you’ve ugly cried alone in your bedroom because you felt like you were failing. Well, I just want to let you know you are not alone, and you have come to the right place.
Raising tweens and teens in today’s world is not easy. And I’m on a mission to equip you to love well and to raise emotionally healthy, happy tweens and teens that thrive.
I believe that moms are heroes, and we have the power to transform our families and impact future generations. If you are looking for answers, encouragement, and becoming more of the mom and the woman that you want to be, welcome. I am Sheryl Gould. And I am so glad that you’re here.
SHERYL: Well, welcome, AnneMoss. I’m so glad to have you on the show today. Thank you for joining us.
ANNEMOSS: Thank you so much for having me. Your audience is significant to me, and I appreciate that we can be together again.
SHERYL: Well, thank you. And I know you were part of our summit. Not all of our listeners could hear from you; there are so many who were, but we just felt this whole message and the work you’re doing is so important, especially when raising tweens and teens, to help raise mental health awareness and what we can do to help our kids.
So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. And there is no better person to talk to about this than you. I thought we would start by sharing your story about your son and your mental health advocacy work today.
ANNEMOSS: Well, thank you. It was pretty early when I saw signs that my son might be just different or dealing with some issues that I couldn’t quite put my arms around. I’d see some signs of early elementary or middle school.
But it was once he got to high school and he started to use drugs and alcohol that I started to wonder, Is he masking something? Is he trying to numb his feelings? And I thought his feelings might be depression.
I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be thoughts of suicide. But those that were his antidote to thoughts of suicide late at night.
Charles is the funniest, most popular kid in school; he’s six foot one. And this mop had loose, curly brown hair. And he’s just one of these charming people. When he walked into the room, everybody turned towards him, like he had sunshine in his pocket, and was there to hand it out. And oh, gosh, nobody was funnier.
He would segue into addiction eventually. But before he actually got there, we did every program locally; we tried to get a diagnosis. We ended up having to kidnap him out of his bed and take him to a wilderness program. And you don’t do that because you caught your kid with a beer or a joint. So, he goes to the wilderness program. They recommended it from their therapeutic boarding school.
Now, all of this was recommended. We didn’t suddenly say, Oh, what about that wilderness program? We had no idea this kind of stuff existed. And he ends up going to therapy boarding school. He’s not happy about it.
We ended up taking him out and putting him in another school. He finally finished his high school. He came home in 2014. He spent some 22 months outside our home in some kind of placement. It was my hope that he would start to use the tools that he learned while he was away. The only tools he learned while he was away that he actually used was to get more drugs, unfortunately, and none of the coping strategies he learned.
So went back to using drugs and alcohol and became addicted to heroin. And for nine to 10 months, he was addicted and living in my house. I had no idea. I mean, I would see strange behavior. But he did his drugs at night. And here’s how he did it.
He would text his drug dealer. He would be parked in front of the house. They were delivered to the car. He would do his drugs in the car and snort it. I didn’t realize you could snort heroin. He would come back in. He would sleep it off. And then, when I woke up in the morning, by the time he woke up, he wasn’t high anymore.
So, I rarely saw that side. But these days, your kids can go to a convenience store and get gummy bears with a hallucinogen. And while they say 21 and over. I’ve been in lots of these stores, and I’ve never once seen them check any IDs, so they don’t have to necessarily go to a drug dealer. They can go to a local gas station or convenience store. And they have access to, you would not believe, the myriad of drugs; they can just buy out of the store for like really cheap, like $8, then get something to get high with.
In 2015, he ended up going to detox to rehab. Then he went to a recovery house, and he relapsed. They took him back to detox. He left there. He walked out, got all checked in, and decided he didn’t want to be there anymore. And for two weeks, we didn’t know where he was.
We’re off to dinner one night; we are beside ourselves. We’ve had some communication. I had a phone call that day; I was still upset about it, trying to get in touch with him. And he hadn’t called me back, and that really worried me.
Then, the police called, and they met us in the parking lot. And they deliver the worst news of our lives, and they tell us that my son is dead.
My husband said, “How did he die?” Sheryl, I am so sure it is a drug overdose. I’m so sure of it in my mind that I think, “What a stupid question.” And, of course, it’s not a stupid question. But I was so positive.
And they said it was a suicide, not an overdose suicide. And the method he used left absolutely no question that it was a suicide. And it was like this extra twist of the knife. And you know what my first question was? How could I be such a crummy mother that my son would check out on me that would leave me? Didn’t he know we loved them?
I would find out more about suicide because I had to understand it. And it’s really not that our kids kill themselves because of a lack of love. They can have absolutely everything and still struggle with suicidal thoughts.
I hear every day, “Well, my daughter is in college, and she said she’s been depressed. But she’s not the type to kill herself. ” Sheryl, if I could tell you the number of times people told me this and then two weeks later called me back and said, “Oh my God, my child attempted suicide or killed herself or himself or themselves.” I do not want that to happen, especially when there are signs and ways you can intervene. And you have to work through that fear. Because talking about suicide doesn’t give them the idea, we’ll talk about it; we’re opening up the conversation, saying I’m willing to listen to you.
SHERYL: Wow, thank you for sharing your story. And yeah, I’m just thinking about how that must have felt for you to go through all of that and how you did so many things – getting him into the wilderness program. Then, getting him into a therapeutic boarding school and trying to get him to help every step of the way. And then having it end in suicide.
ANNEMOSS: It just exploded in our faces. I thought, after everything we’ve done, or have we added to it? Or should we not have done that? Sheryl, I can’t tell you, to this day, if that trajectory was right or wrong, but I can tell you it did add trauma.
And I think family-based treatment is the way to go – where if you can get a family to work with a therapist, and get the kid involved, and at least one of the parents, I think that has the best success rate sof anything. Because what happens when we send them off to go be fixed, we don’t get as much of the benefit of everybody learning what’s going on.
They’re doing a lot of this with eating disorders. And it’s had some really good success rates. And I think it is the way the uture will be because we’re not sending them off somewhere, then there’s a transition back, which is dangerous. If it’s a very sensitive time, and you don’t know what to do, and you’re nervous, you’ve had some peace, and now, the chaos is returning. You want to see them, but you’re also fearful of where it took you before.
SHERYL: I have a lot of clients who have gone through this. They end up coming and taking them in the night where they go to the wilderness program. And that is the hardest part of it: when they’re going to come home—that reentry. And the parents knowing that they’re coming home, and it is this parallel process. And so I like what you’re saying: coming together as a family and opening up those lines of communication with a therapist, saying that we need help and support.
ANNEMOSS: That, I think, also lets your child know I’m struggling. I, therefore, am going to reach out for help. So you’re modeling help-seeking as a sign of strength.
SHERYL: Yeah, and when you share, you do everything you knew to do. And when you look back, what might you have done differently?
ANNEMOSS: Yeah, that’s the hard part – given what was available—I’m not sure. We were going to a counselor; that’s what he recommended. What I can tell you is that my son was like a jet plane flying into the side of a mountain. He wasn’t going to be alive long had he stayed home. That much I can tell you. So, it was an act of parent desperation.
What I wish is that when I went to go see the counselor, and I asked for a psychological evaluation, which I didn’t use those words, I asked for a diagnosis. He said, “Oh, no, we don’t need to give Charles an evaluation,” whatever he called it. I should have said, “I want before we take this step. I want a psychological evaluation.” But I didn’t know those words. And I didn’t know those steps. But now your listeners know those steps. You’re the parent and customer; you need to ask, “If I am taking this step, I want evidence that I need to take it.”
And now there’s this Netflix special. Sheryl, I can’t even watch it. I thought, oh, I’ll just watch the intro. I mean, I was already activated beyond words. I don’t need to feel this bad. I just didn’t have that many options.
And, had there been some family-based treatment that we could have done over Zoom, that would have been what I would have done. We did an outpatient program where we went once a week. He went – it’s called intense outpatient treatment. And that was actually working.
But what happened was my son had a sleep disorder, and he was diagnosed with a particular medication. I came in and asked the head counselor who was running the groups on Mondays when the parents were supposed to come and be part of the group too about the medication that they had prescribed, “Would it trigger the urine test? Is it something he could take?” So I showed it to her, and she looked at me and goes, “Parents are so stupid.” And then she turned on her heel, and she walked out of the room.
Sheryl, I was already a mess because my son had broken into a store at the beach because he had mixed his previous sleep medicine with alcohol and broken into a store. He had a psychotic break as a result of mixing the two medications. I was asking for her guidance and advice. And she basically told me I was stupid, and I just wanted the floor to swallow me up and chew me up. And I wrote about it in my book. I’ve still been really angry about it, and I see this woman around, and I know she wonders, “Why doesn’t she ever talk to me?” And she has no idea what she did because she doesn’t remember it.
She called six months later, but we couldn’t get into the follow-up program after that, they kicked us out. I’d signed up for this thing, and then I’d scheduled the psychiatrist appointment to follow that because they said, “Well, your kid has to be off drugs and alcohol before we do this part. ” And then we had all this space, so, in that time, before we got to the psychiatrist, he starts experimenting with drugs and alcohol when he had been abstaining. In other words, we were making success. And because she decided that I was no longer worthy of the program because I asked a question. And I would later ask over and over; I kept calling. And then, finally, somebody said, “Well, it’s because of the benzodiazepines you were allowing your son to take.” And then SLAM, he hung up the phone.
SHERYL: Wow.
ANNEMOSS: I didn’t even know at the time that was what it was. I mean, I did later. I was just shocked. And I just felt like I had this support. And all of a sudden, they were against me. And we were the only two parents who showed up every single Monday for this parent-family thing. We had parents who showed up occasionally, but we were there every single week. We were so dedicated.
SHERYL: How hurtful.
ANNEMOSS: We kept running into stuff like that, where the system that’s supposed to help you was not helping you. And then the counselor we went to, I kept saying, “You know, I wish there was some support group.”
He would go off to wilderness, and do you know when I found out about family support groups? When he was in the wilderness program, I watched a webinar and they talked about – here are the local family support groups, look them up on the internet, and find out when they met. My son was in wilderness and for the first time, I find two.
Support Groups:
There is one through NAMI (https://www.nami.org/)
And there’s one called Families Anonymous if your child is messing with drugs and alcohol.
And I went to that, and those were my peeps. I mean, that’s who kept me sane.
And when my son died, guess who the first people were who came over to my house, knew what to say, dove right in, and gave me a hug? While everybody else was, what do I say? What do I do? They just knew because they’d been there.
SHERYL: Yeah, you had to have that support community around you. And I’m sure you are helping so many people in many ways. I am just affirming that because I know that there are listeners here who are going through situations where they feel at every turn trying to get their kids help and they are all in. You were all in trying to know, “How do I help my son? I need guidance and direction”, and you didn’t know. And here, the very place you’re going to and showing up so faithfully is turning their back. The amount of shame you feel and blame is so pervasive anyway, and so to have them cut you off like that when you weren’t doing it on purpose. You didn’t know.
ANNEMOSS: It was the oddest. I don’t think she adored me. I would find out later, and I would talk to another mom. She says, Oh, we did that program. She didn’t like moms like us. And I’m like, What do you mean? She said, Well, she likes struggling single moms, but those of us who have more normal families or more middle class or upper middle class. She has a real prejudice against so she said I felt the same thing.
She said don’t take it personally. So, if I were to give your listening audience advice – if your child is struggling with drugs and alcohol, they are 15 times more likely to die by suicide. So, you want to start changing your family dynamic in a way that creates an environment where they’re more likely to make a change.
So, if you want to look for programs that support craft C.R. A. F.T. and their books, I will also give you for your show notes. It is a parent guide for books, support groups, and podcasts that focus on substance use, mental health, and suicide prevention all into one.
So I have a guide, and I’ll send you a link to that because it just gets like – “Is this mental health? Is this because of marijuana use? Is this robo-tripping? Is it heroin because they’re abusing poly substances? And now we can get all this stuff at convenience stores.
Well, you can’t test that with a urine test. So lots of times that they’re doing these programs, they’ll go get these sort of under-the-radar drugs, and they’re doing all these under-the-radar drugs that they can’t test for.
SHERYL: So, “CRAFT” wants to look for those programs. I’ve heard of CRAFT and get support. And then, some listeners say, “I’m not sure what’s going on with my kid. They’re in their room; they’re smoking pot, and they seem depressed. They don’t want to go see a therapist. What do I look for? What do I do?”
What would you say to that?
ANNEMOSS: I can tell you that any child sitting in his room smoking dope is masking something. And I think the biggest thing is to listen more and lecture less. And I say that because we really need to move more from the sort of punitive parent into more of a wisdom guide.
Understand that you can support this; you can help. But you can’t fix all this. You can’t; you can’t do that. You’re a fixer, and you want to fix it. You’ve got it, but you can change how you communicate. You can change the way you listen and listen more and lecture less. What I mean by that is that the lecture has never worked.
When we say, “I’m concerned – And I think I’ve been talking too much. So what I’m gonna do is, I’m going to ask you some questions, then I’m just gonna shut up. And I’m going to listen to you because something’s going on. And I don’t know what it is.”
I think one good way is to say, “I’m struggling. I don’t know what to do with something. And would you take a walk with me?” And have the conversation that way. You’ll have to work on allowing for those long stretches of silence and not to start backfilling constantly with words and advice and all that sort of stuff. You need to sit back because if there is silence and they are not answering you, what is happening is they are processing.
We need to be patient because that’s where the nuggets are. Sometimes, you’ll make a mistake, and you’ll dive in, and you’ll go. “I promised I would shut up. I tell you what, in this conversation, when I interrupt again, if you would say, Mom, you told me, you would allow me to talk, and you would listen,” Just remind me that that’s what the deal was, and I’m going to shut up again. “Because remember, I’m trying to learn here too. “You’re giving them some power back. When you’re doing that, you’re giving them some agency. So, as parents, you always want to look for opportunities to give them some agency to give them their power back.
Let’s say you’re doing a presentation at work. You come into their room, “I’m freaking out about this situation. Can you come to take a walk? I just need to chill out about it. And I need to exercise and need somebody to be with me. Would you mind just being with me and then discussing it?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this, what do you think about that? And you know what would help if you gave me a random hug every once in a while, or just a stupid text, or whatever you’re comfortable doing? It would just kind of make me feel that sense of relaxation. ” Let’s say they come up and hug, and you give them a random hug. Suddenly, what do you do when you turn into jelly? They’re gonna feel that power. And their power is back; are you giving them purpose?
SHERYL: I appreciate you saying that. It’s also modeling for them that I struggle with these things and opening up that communication with sharing, not for them to take care of you. But just to say, “I’m noticing I’m feeling anxious about this; I would love for you to go for a walk.”
And then they get to feel that sense of, Yeah, my mom struggles too, and you’re talking about; you’re creating a climate in your home where it’s safe, to have struggles and to talk about how you’re feeling.
ANNEMOSS: So what you’re doing is you’re being vulnerable, but you’re not oversharing; you’re not going out and taking a walk and saying, “Your dad lost his job, and we’re going to lose the house. And we don’t have anything in the bank account.” ” Too much. Oversharing.
If you’re in that situation, what you’d say instead is, ” Hey we got to regroup, your job is to figure out how we can cut back at the grocery store. Here’s our list: What can we do to make changes to save $100?” Or whatever the kid likes to do, give them that little piece of it.
But again, we want to be vulnerable without over-sharing; maybe there was abuse in your background. And you just share a little tidbit; you don’t want to overwhelm them with the whole, the brother sexually abused me, and it happened every night, and I have these visions.
You want to be careful getting into all that because it can start to activate you if you’ve had that kind of trauma in your life.
But you can also say “I had a lot of trauma growing up. I’m still working through that with a therapist, and it’s been very helpful.”
You can work out what little pieces you want to share without scaring them.
SHERYL: You keep going back to this theme of getting support. What I found in my life is that it’s so important for me to get support so I don’t dump on my kid. If we’re not getting support, if we don’t have a safe place to go and talk about these things or work on them, then it ends up leaking out on our kids.
And the same thing about the fear – you were talking about being a listening presence. I talked to my moms so much about how it’s scary. Like if your kids are abusing alcohol and drugs or they’re depressed, you’re terrified. I mean, it’s really scary.
And then what do we want to do when we’re afraid we want to control things? But then, that’s the advice-giving that’s wanting to lecture rather than listen. And so support – it can be so helpful. Where do I go?
That’s why we started the Moms of Tweens and Teens community. Where do I go to drop out my stuff? So that I can listen? I’m so scared right now. I’m having trouble listening. I just want to fix this because it’s so hard and difficult.
ANNEMOSS: I think what you offer is so beautiful, and as I see the amount of activity that people ask their questions, they get this is what I’ve tried. It’s not like people are giving advice; they’re just saying, “I don’t know your situation. But this worked for us. And we have this situation. “
So it allows people to see the different things that worked for that child, and take little pieces of that, and try one little thing. But that support, having a place to bounce things off of and being with others who at that moment are with you. I mean, there are a lot of people who hit that in their teens.
I remember everybody talking now about how hard it is. And then, a year later, I was, Oh, my gosh, no, I see. And what do I do? I’m overwhelmed. And I had nowhere to go. That support was everything to me. I mean, even now, I run a grief support group for grieving parents. It’s just having a place where you can talk about the things that bother you that no one else understands.
Unless you’re going through it, it’s so important. I mean, it just opens up your way of thinking. It allows you to step outside yourself. So pause and take a deep breath when you want to launch into that.
Do I need to fill it with noise right now? And the way I got my kids and stopped lecturing, I asked my kids to help. I said every time I lecture, you need to say, Mom, that is unsolicited advice.
It takes 18 months to break a habit. This habit was broken in eight weeks because they loved it as another way to regain their power.
SHERYL: I love that. I’ve done that with my kids, too. And my kids are older now, and they even call me out. And they’re like, you’re giving me unsolicited advice. Oh, there it is. But they can tell you. And I’m not asking.
And then it’s amazing how powerful it is. When I say you know what, I believe you’ll be able to figure this out. Even then, they say thank you, Mom, because we don’t realize we’re also sending a message we don’t believe they can handle.
ANNEMOSS: The next step is allowing them. I’m confident you’ll figure this out. I mean, that’s it, that’s the end. It’s that easy. So you’ve given them the confidence that I know you’ll figure it out. You’re really smart. Now, I think that what’s important is to get them to that place; sometimes, we want to use curiosity instead of criticism and start asking questions.
My son’s moving out was moving out to California. Mom, we’re gonna move all of our belongings out there, and they were worth what, maybe $900 all their stuff.
And I want to dive in and go, that’s gonna be too expensive, you are gonna have to do this, and blah, blah, blah. So I didn’t do that. And I just took a deep breath. And I said, Oh, okay, that’s it. How much is that? And he was there long enough. And I was, oh, okay, I was just curious if you knew. Where would you go? Where would you put all that stuff? And then it was, never mind, you’ll figure all that out. I don’t need to ask the stupid questions.
Two weeks later, he called me that morning. It is like $6,000 or more to move all this stuff to California. And we looked into a trailer, and then nobody had a hitch. Once I get there, storing your stuff costs $200 a month. And because I don’t have that kind of money, I said, what will you do?
He goes, Well, we’re just gonna sell it all on Craigslist and stuff like that, take the money, and put it towards our trip. I didn’t say I told you so. I didn’t say all my questions prompted that no way planted seeds.
SHERYL: Yeah, it’s a whole different outcome when we do that. I love that criticism. I mean, curiosity over criticism or curiosity over that advice-giving?
ANNEMOSS: Yeah, and asking those questions. That’s a fancy term, but you can use motivational interviewing. I love that, and you can earn a certification for it.
And I’ve taken it, but I was already doing that. And when they come up with the idea, how much more invested are they than if you tell them it? Anytime I remember one time telling us that you shouldn’t have parties when you’re in college because underage people are going to come and they’re going to arrest you.
Because, Mom, that’s BS. So, guess what? Two weeks later, at a party, underage people are arrested, and he gets arrested. Yeah, and his friends, everybody read the party. He doesn’t even remember that I ever said it.
And at that point, I just said, what will you do about it? Each of you got one lawyer for your first infraction, and you both used it up; what are you gonna do? And guess what? Those friends got together, and they figured it out.
SHERYL: And they figured it out.
ANNEMOSS: We went in together; there were five of them. So five of them pitch Dan money by selling stuff that they had to invest in a lawyer to get through and do community service, and the whole nine yards didn’t do delta or anything, but you figured it out. And I held love round.
SHERYL: Yeah, those are natural consequences, and they often learn from them. So, going back to the suicide piece, tell our listeners about the work you’re doing, where they can find you, and how they can get support from you. What are you up to about the organization you’re leading right now?
ANNEMOSS: One of my programs is Raising Mentally Healthy Kids, which provides parenting tips for teaching coping skills. School districts most often ask me to do this in their communities because they often pay somebody to train the teachers and counselors, but we need to include the students in that equation.
We also need to have the parents, and what’s left off most often is the parents. There is very little support for parents after a child has attempted suicide.
So I do, and I’ll send you the link; I have a bunch of ebooks on what to say next, what to do next, and that kind of thing. But we also have, and hopefully, by the time this podcast is out, it’ll be out or close to being out.
It is a documentary for parents after their child’s suicide attempt. And we’ll talk about what you do.
Because I mean, how do you feel after that freaking out, right? What do I say every time they walk in the door? How are you? So, it’s just various strategies that go with that. And I’ve also included those in the ebooks as well.
Mental Health Awareness education. I’ve written two books, and we’ll do a lot of webinars, but I speak all over the country. And 35% of what I do is in business; I also address parents when I’m in business. Then, I’m at colleges, universities, and school districts for the rest.
SHERYL: So parents can also reach out to you? Can you come to talk to their school?
ANNEMOSS: Right, went out to Lafayette and California, and I spoke to those parents, and we had 300 people in attendance. I talked about what the signs of suicide are and what you say or do, and then I ended on those parenting tips for teaching kids how to cope, and then they printed out one page that had all those examples. It’s a process. So you want to understand that if you do one or two, sort of, okay, that’s progress type stuff on the back, don’t beat yourself up, too.
SHERYL: Yeah, it is a process. And I like that. Because when you’re scared to death, you want to do it all at once. And we can put so much pressure, but just learning things like the listening you modeled, what you can say, and what you can do? Can you think of another coping skill parents can help their kids with?
ANNEMOSS: I think that understanding their fears. Let’s say you’ve got a psychiatrist appointment, and it took you eight months to get that psychiatrist appointment, and it is tomorrow. And your kid is saying, I’m not going. And you want to go and demand it because it took all that paperwork.
You want to leave that behind for a minute and figure out what’s behind that fear. So you want to say, Well, why don’t you share with me? Why don’t you want to get out? And I’m just going to shut up and listen to you, but you need to remind me, Hey, Mom, you are listening, remember?
And then you listen because you can’t do anything about it if you don’t know what it is. And I want to go to the psychiatrists, Mom, let’s get them talking. Because they’ll prescribe medication? Well, is parent, I would say, wow, I wouldn’t want that. I would love your personality; I wouldn’t want that either.
Can you start writing down some of these questions? Can you ask the psychiatrist? I would love to get together and write down any other questions. And I think we have to have a pact that I’m not going to make you do something. Because if you’re not invested in it, it’s not going to work anyway, right?
So why don’t we just make that pact going in? Then nobody can make you do anything? So are you willing to go now? Can you just go to this appointment? So we can ask this quickly? Because I’d like to know the answers from a professional about some of the things you’ve put forward.
SHERYL: That is so much more empowering. Because they say I don’t want to go, and you tend to freak out? Versus Oh, tell me why. What about going to that appointment? Does it make you not want to go and just get them to talk, and I’ll shut up?
I’ve been able to tell them that ahead of time. I loved it when you said oh, wow, I wouldn’t want that either. Yeah, that validates their feelings and who wants to go. I don’t like that the first time I went to therapy, I didn’t want to go to therapy.
It’s normal for them to resist going; they feel like somebody will look at them under a microscope, or something’s wrong with them. So, I’m just validating that fear. And I don’t want that either. Why don’t we write down some of those questions? Then I can’t make sure you’re giving them the power back.
ANNEMOSS: Exactly. And like I said, anytime you can give them their power back, you’re not being judgmental. Never, I mean, they may give you a crazy reason you don’t understand.
Try to look at it from their perspective and understand where they’re coming from. Well, I wouldn’t want that either. If you can step outside of your mom’s duties and fill out all the forms you have to fill out, all you have to do is make the appointment.
You just gotta leave that outside the door for a few minutes and step into their shoes, which isn’t always easy.
SHERYL: If you’re results-oriented, that’s what can push you towards trying this because you get better results. And you do, and it’s hard to believe that, but having been somebody, you also do this. It’s amazing. Just handing it back to them and saying, I can’t make you empower them. And then they go, Oh, she can’t force me. This will be my decision; how often do they choose to go? It’s their decision. And they do want to feel better. They do.
ANNEMOSS: They want to feel better. They want strategies; they just don’t want to be sent off. They don’t want to have tons of side effects. They don’t. They don’t want the stigma of having. There’s just a lot of stuff they fear, and we need to find out what that is.
SHERYL: That has been so helpful; I want everybody to check it out. I’m so happy you’re giving me those books, and I will put those in the notes and on your website. What are you doing? I hope people will reach out to you. And maybe have you come to speak to the school. This is, I mean, it’s an epidemic now with our kids off, and so many moms are struggling with us with our kids. And so tell them where to find you.
ANNEMOSS: Mental health awareness and education. If you look up the emotionally naked speaker, you’ll usually find me and suicide prevention speaker AnneMoss Rogers. I usually come up for those, but I advocate for parents. And you guys are my peeps.
SHERYL: I am so grateful for the work that you’re doing. I’m so grateful for you using your story, grief, and tragedy for good to help us and save lives. And so I just want to thank you, and I know I’ll have you back again. And yeah, I just really want you to know how much I greatly appreciate you. I can say Ah, look at that. That hair and that beautiful face and, Yeah, his life. His life matters mattered. He’s making a difference too.
ANNEMOSS: He still is, and that’s what we grieving parents don’t want our children forgotten.
SHERYL: Yeah. So, thank you so much for being on the show.
ANNEMOSS: Thank you for having me, Sheryl.
