I have been hearing the words “survivor guilt” a lot lately from people in my community who survived the fire with their family and home intact.  They feel uncomfortable with their good fortune, as if they have something to feel badly about; as if their good fortune and other people’s bad fortunes were somehow related.  Survivor guilt is a common feeling after a tragic event, and adds a layer of suffering that also needs our attention for healing.

The term survivor guilt came from those who worked with Holocaust survivors.  Although they made it out of the horror of the Concentration camps, survivors often became depressed from the burden of knowing that so many millions did not.  It was also found in Veterans who made it home from war when their brothers in arms were killed or injured and in many people after 9/11.  SInce then, the concept of survivor guilt has been applied to a broad range of situations where people feel a burden from a comparison with someone close to them who has experienced a misfortune from which they were spared, such as surviving a disease, a car accident, or even drug abuse.

It can be hard to understand how someone who should be grateful can actually feel burdened, even for some to the point of having thoughts that they wish they, too, had died.  Even for the individual themselves, their mind tells them that they should be happy and make the most of their lives, but their psyche cannot let go of feeling guilty.  Researchers theorize that survival guilt represents our mind’s need to feel a sense of control, not able to accept the randomness or lack of control or influence that we have over our lives. Instead, we feel a sense of responsibility, as if there was something we should have or could have done to alter fate.  It is our mind’s effort to believe that life should be fair and therefore we, too, should suffer.

People who feel responsible for others, whether through a position of authority (leader, parent) or in an emotionally caretaking role are most vulnerable to survivor’s guilt.  Even children of alcoholics who often take the role of the caretaker in a dysfunctional family, can grow up with a sense of survivor guilt that ties them to unhealthy relationships.  Survivor’s guilt is the burden of an inflated sense of responsibility, as if your survival or good fortune was at the expense of someone else’s suffering.

I must confess that as I look up the hill from my home to the empty space of my mother’s home, I feel  twinges of survivor’s guilt.  It’s a pain very familiar to me in my earlier years.  As my sister struggled in her life, it was hard for me feel happy.  Even after her passing, each milestone, completing graduate school, getting married, and having children, was layered with a deep sadness I could not get a handle on.  It was as if there was not enough good fortune to go around, and my having good things happen was somehow at her expense.  I carried an overblown sense of responsibility, in some ways a child like understanding of my being at the center of all that happened around me.  It was a long and profound process of healing for me, that involved much forgiveness and letting go.  I can now be sad and grieve her loss, missing her sense of humor and wishing she could meet my daughters, without feeling guilty.

Healing from survivor’s guilt involves accepting that bad things happen, even to good people.  It also involves expanding our tolerance for having incompatible feelings, the absolute joy of gratitude together with the pain of grief.  One feeling does not negate the other.  Because you are grateful and joyous to be alive, does not mean you are not genuinely sad and compassionate for someone else’s loss.  It involves accepting that we are all vulnerable, and at times completely helpless. That although we wish we did more, or did things differently, there is nothing we can do to change a tragedy.  The best we can do is to make our lives meaningful and honor the memories of those we love and those we continue to live for.

The older I get, the more I understand that no one goes through life unscarred and unscathed.  We will all have our time for both good fortune and tragedy.  Our lives are not scorecards, where some people end up winners and others losers.  We all have relative burdens that tend to even out over our lifetimes. When I am the lucky one, that is the time to use my strength and resources to help other people with their burdens.  For certainly the tables will be turned, and I will need to lean on someone else, who will then be the lucky one, to help me get through.

Note – I came across a treatment group for Veterans that I was very moved by.  It is a group for combat survivors experiencing survivor guilt.  In the group, each member shared their story and their sense of burden,  “confessing” their mistakes as leaders or soldiers that they can never undo.  The group listens and contemplates, and then makes a ruling regarding the culpability of the member.  Along with this, they give the Veteran an act of penance that they must do to be absolved of their burden.  The focus is to help each member, with the judgment of their peers, to experience a realistic sense of culpability and then to move it through by taking action.