Memorial Day and Dealing With Survivors Guilt

photo credit - Tanner Ross via unsplash

It’s been almost 20 years since I left Iraq and said my goodbyes to my brothers in arms that we lost there. I still see their faces in my dreams sometimes. The look of pain and fear in their eyes. I wake up feeling shame, sorrow and some might say madness to be honest. Survivors guilt affects so many people. Veterans, first responders, victims of terrorist attacks and even survivors of natural disasters.

Survivor’s guilt happens when a person experiences trauma in which they wish for the ability to change outcomes for other people. It sounds crazy right, thinking that we can change the outcome of someone else’s life. “Maybe if I told them to not go to work that day.”, “I should have known because the weather forecast looked bad.”; or in my case, “If only I had seen the enemy sooner.”. The examples I just mentioned are thoughts that people experiencing survivor’s guilt may have. The crazy part is that, unless you are superman or have the ability to see the future, there is nothing you could have done to change any of it or worse; say I did see the enemy sooner and done something about it, then I would not have seen the one that was coming for me and I wouldn’t be here this morning talking to you.

The symptoms of survivor’s guilt include:

Frequently ruminating on the event – Constantly going over the situation in your head, playing out the different scenarios to prove that you could have done something different even though you couldn’t.

Difficulty falling asleep – The ruminating above usually happens while we are lying down trying to sleep. Sometimes we don’t want to sleep because the nightmares wait for us as well.

Crying often – Often this is done in secret. It can happen due to depression; it can happen seemingly out of nowhere.

Feeling sad, depressed, helpless, or hopeless – The guilt and shame that we feel can lead to other feelings and symptoms. We can feel alone and this only makes our symptoms worse.

The inability to concentrate – This is often associated with the ruminating mentioned before. We get so caught up in the “what if” scenarios that we can’t concentrate on the “here and now.”.

So, how do we deal?

The first step as with many things like this is to acknowledge that you are experiencing it. Survivor’s guilt is not something that just goes away if you ignore it. Even when it becomes manageable, there are still triggers that make symptoms worse.

Once you acknowledge that you are experiencing survivors’ guilt, it is time to get some help. People that experience this type of guilt usually fall into two different categories. The first is those that come to terms with the fact there is nothing they could have done differently to change the outcome of the situation. The second are people that believe their actions caused the event and that they could have done something differently to change the outcome.

In many cases, survivor’s guilt is accompanied by grief, but this grief is often overshadowed by the shame or guilt that survivor’s feel. If this sounds familiar, I can help to guide you through these feelings so that you can move forward in the grieving process. Reach out…