When someone says ‘how can I help this child with these awful feelings’ they often subconsciously mean ‘I can feel these awful feelings this child is having and they are so awful I don’t want to feel them, and I want them to stop.’
The idea of childhood parental bereavement is so painful that few of us want to ever feel it even second hand. But what parentally bereaved children need so badly is for the adults around them to sit with their pain, and feel it with them, and just ‘be’ with them in their pain. And show them — ‘this is so painful for you, isn’t it’ without jumping to ‘it will get better with time’ which doesn’t help them. Or avoiding the feelings by saying ‘it will get better with time!’
This is what psychotherapists do (I’m a Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist). We are trained to sit with the pain and loss and feel it with the child, particularly when the adults in their lives are themselves struggling and unable to do this, which is so often the case in parental bereavement and even when the parents are divorced.
I disagree that your DGD needs to see a psychiatrist. I am stating this purely on what you have written and there may be medical reasons I’m unaware of that justify the referral. Psychiatrists are not trained to help people with their emotions through feeling them and being aware of these feelings, they are trained to help people with their emotions by various means, including considering medical options for certain conditions that benefit from medicine.
Bereavement is not a condition that requires medication. It requires someone to help the child with their emotions and help them know that the emotions they are experiencing are neither unusual for a bereaved child, nor unbearable for the adult. To help the child know that emotions resulting from any death, but especially by suicide, include anger (how dare they leave me?), self recrimination and blame (what did I do to make this happen? This is my fault), helplessness (what will I do without my dad?), guilt (I just laughed because I forgot about my dad, I mustn't feel happy or laugh or anything) and so on. All of which emotions are more readily available than the one underneath — sadness — which is so painful to feel that it’s impossible to do so for years and yet is the only one the adults around the child seem to talk about.
OP, you mention feeling helpless. I wonder if you also feel / felt any of the above? Anger? How dare he do this to his daughter! Or even the less rational what did I do? Anything else? I ask because what your DGD needs is for people like you, and anyone else able to do same, to start conversations with her that aren’t conversations at all (i.e. that don’t expect any response from her but sound like a ‘conversation’ to her) along the lines of ‘this is such a rubbish time for you. I can imagine there are so many emotions in your head you don’t even know how to speak about them. I’m thinking it’s such a confusion in your head.’ That’s probably enough for a first go, so then break the intensity with something gentler but still not a question ‘So I was wondering perhaps if a bowl of icecream for breakfast might help your head?’ Or something else silly & distracting yet comforting.
A little tiny connection like this that requires nothing from your DGD gives her a new possibility: might you be someone who sees how she really feels? She is likely to wait to see if you do it again, probably several times.
You then follow this up the next time you’re in contact (by any means — in person, on line, by phone, text, anything) and add a little bit more: ‘that confusion that’s going on in your head, it’s probably going to be there for a while I guess. I think it’s going to make things a bit hard for you because there’s not much space in your head for anything else.’ Then again, another gentler link eg. ‘Your head is going to be a bit like when your phone gets full up and doesn’t run well! Now, how do we go about getting an upgrade for your brain I wonder!!’ Again, the latter part must be clearly gently silly. Help her laugh, and then perhaps if you see she looks shocked for laughing mention ‘sometimes when someone we love dies, we think we can’t be happy or have silly moments. But I’m going to let you into a secret (dramatic whisper, again for silliness): guess what, we can do both at the same time! Humans are so clever, we can laugh at the same time as feeling the loss!”
My exact words are not relevant and only examples. But the most important thing you can do is to name the emotional distress she is experiencing using ‘I’m thinking it might be’ or ‘I’m wondering if it might…’ to give her space to say it’s not like that. And to do so without stating ‘it will get better’ because right now she can’t see the future, only the present without her dad.
The other thing you can do is find out more about the therapist she saw that is suggesting a psychiatrist. I don’t know if you can do this, of course, but if you can then you might be able to find out why this suggestion was made. There may be a medical reason you’ve not mentioned. But my concerns are that the therapist is not able to manage the distress of a parentally bereaved child and hiding this difficulty behind a referral to the medical world. Childhood parental bereavement is specialist work and the organisations already mentioned would be good places to start looking for a different form of therapy if you are able to pay for it.
But if you become the person that is able to name the emotions your DGD is experiencing, and if you can sit with her and feel how awful it is without trying to avoid feeling the feelings, then DGD will get through this in a way many children don’t.
I do hope this helps reverse the helplessness.
