Survivor Guilt: What Long-term Survivors Don't Talk About
Survivor Guilt: What Long-term Survivors Don’t Talk About
While survivor guilt is not experienced by everyone, and may vary a great deal in intensity, it appears to be a common experience. The following article answers some questions survivors may have after experiencing a tragedy.
What is survivor guilt?
Survivor guilt has been described in Holocaust survivors, war veterans, rescue workers, transplant recipients and relatives spared from hereditary illness. Relatively little discussion of survivor guilt has taken place among long-term survivors of acute and chronic illnesses.
Survivor guilt, when it occurs, derives from situations where persons have been involved in a lifethreatening event and lived to tell about it. It is often experienced after traumatic incidents causing multiple deaths. In the special case of chronic illness, survivor guilt can occur after the deaths of peers who faced the same diagnosis. By definition, there is an implied comparison with people who have endured similar ordeals.
Who experiences survivor guilt?
Anyone who survives can experience these feelings including patients, families and healthcare providers.
Survivor guilt explores the other side of the coin of why me? Namely, why not me? Why did I survive when others did not? Those who struggle with it may express the feeling of being an impostor: somehow the "wrong" person survived; it "just doesn't seem right." Many feel that beating the odds makes little sense unless the survivor earned or deserved it in some way. But some survivors emphasize they don't feel especially deserving. To complicate feelings of unworthiness, in the early stages of grief there is a tendency to idealize the deceased, so the survivor may feel even less deserving by comparison.
Why does survivor guilt occur?
Survivor guilt may be reinforced by the frequent use of statistical profiles to predict as well as to describe illnesses. However, people given the very same odds for survival do not
While survivor guilt is not experienced by everyone, and may vary a great deal in intensity, it appears to be a common experience. The following article answers some questions survivors may have after experiencing a tragedy.
What is survivor guilt?
Survivor guilt has been described in Holocaust survivors, war veterans, rescue workers, transplant recipients and relatives spared from hereditary illness. Relatively little discussion of survivor guilt has taken place among long-term survivors of acute and chronic illnesses.
Survivor guilt, when it occurs, derives from situations where persons have been involved in a lifethreatening event and lived to tell about it. It is often experienced after traumatic incidents causing multiple deaths. In the special case of chronic illness, survivor guilt can occur after the deaths of peers who faced the same diagnosis. By definition, there is an implied comparison with people who have endured similar ordeals.
Who experiences survivor guilt?
Anyone who survives can experience these feelings including patients, families and healthcare providers.
Survivor guilt explores the other side of the coin of why me? Namely, why not me? Why did I survive when others did not? Those who struggle with it may express the feeling of being an impostor: somehow the "wrong" person survived; it "just doesn't seem right." Many feel that beating the odds makes little sense unless the survivor earned or deserved it in some way. But some survivors emphasize they don't feel especially deserving. To complicate feelings of unworthiness, in the early stages of grief there is a tendency to idealize the deceased, so the survivor may feel even less deserving by comparison.
Why does survivor guilt occur?
Survivor guilt may be reinforced by the frequent use of statistical profiles to predict as well as to describe illnesses. However, people given the very same odds for survival do not