Survivor guilt happens when a person perceives themselves to have done something wrong by surviving a catastrophe or injustice while others died or suffered. Its intensity can run the gamut from bittersweet to all-out despair. Survivor guilt is conventionally associated with large-scale catastrophes like the battlefield or a plane crash, but it can pop up in more common situations too.
In 2020, survivor guilt might be more salient than usual.
For example, one study found that 65 percent of cancer patient caretakers experience survivor guilt. Anyone who has participated in a cancer support group will recognize the many layers of grief after the group loses one of its members. The survivors ask each other, “Why did she die while we’re still here? She was kind and giving and left two kids behind—why are we the lucky ones?”
In 2020, survivor guilt might be more salient than usual. Think, for example, of a grad student from Florida despairing over the fate of his family and country while he studies physics in Germany, watching the coronavirus numbers soar at home. He says, “I didn’t do anything to deserve being safe. How can I sit and play with equations all day when my community back home is suffering?”
What about survivors of economic devastation? An employee who keeps her job while her equally qualified coworker is laid off in a large-scale corporate “right-sizing” may feel uneasy about her unjustified privilege. “Why not me?” she asks. “Do I really deserve to have this job more than my coworkers did?”
Finally, and tragically, survivor guilt has been a well-known experience among war veterans, for whom this experience can be a significant risk factor for PTSD and even suicidal thoughts and attempts. In a research study interview, one veteran recounts:
The only thing I've really had issues dealing with was when I got wounded how I came away relatively scot‐free if you will, whereas the guy on my right died and the guy on my left can't lift his arm higher than this anymore.”
Themes of survivor guilt
There are scores of examples, but in general, survivors have these experiences, alone or in combination.
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