Survivor’s guilt: is it real? Is it a big deal? Yes, yes, it is. Why, you ask? Here goes:
As I sat in my therapist’s office today, feeling teary-eyed, I was at an absolute dead end. I was incredibly sad, without a clue as to why. I had been feeling this way all day. I felt completely out of sorts.
Gently, my therapist (whose memory is far better than mine) asked me when my sister, Ellen, had died. November 5th, Election Day, is her birthday, and I think of her that day, always. The anniversary of her death, however, is not a day I necessarily actively remember.
In response to my therapist’s inquiry, I told her that Ellen had died in October. My therapist asked if I knew when in October she had died. I remembered I had taken a picture of her gravestone several years ago when I visited our hometown, so I looked it up on my phone. The date of her death was October 11th. Today’s date? October 10th. As I sat, it hit me: somehow, I knew without consciously knowing.
It's funny, to borrow the title of a popular book, The Body Keeps the Score (authored by Bessel Van Der Kolk) -- how the book addresses how trauma impacts the body. My body was having a visceral reaction to it being the anniversary of my sister’s death. My body hijacked my mind.
Now, I talked it out with my therapist, and there is a reason why I don’t have the anniversary of my sister’s death in bold type in my calendar: I feel guilty about her death. Why? It’s not as if I was responsible for her death.
But then again…that’s not how it feels to me.
Why? I was very depressed for the months leading up to Ellen’s death. Ellen even asked my mom why I wasn’t returning her calls. Then, Ellen called me on a Friday night. She was so excited that they were going to a rodeo. I got the message, and thought, I can call her over the weekend.
When the weekend came and went, I told myself I would call her on Monday. I didn’t. She died of heart failure that Monday morning. I have never forgiven myself for not returning her calls – most especially for not calling her that weekend.
Survivor’s guilt is a phenomenon that happens when you survive something – and someone else does not. Survivor’s guilt hit me hard when my sister died. I had struggled with mental illness for quite a few years and had made two suicide attempts, one of which I was lucky to have survived.
So, here was my sister, with two children who needed their mother. Me? I was a train wreck. Most days I spent cursing up one side and down the other the fact that I was alive.
How was that even remotely fair? How was it that I got to live and she didn’t? I still see the aftermath, and how profoundly her death impacted her children, my mother, my sisters – me. I still feel an immense sense of grief over the loss of my brilliant, sweet, and funny sister. But, oh God, could she keep a grudge! I wished over and over that she could keep any and every grudge she ever had with me – I didn’t care, just so long as I could have her back. Of course, death doesn’t work that way, and it was a means of bargaining that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross talks about in her five stages of grief. (The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.)
I also felt severe survivor’s guilt when my closest friend from my two years of inpatient treatment at The Clinic took her life. I spent so much time trying to figure out how I could’ve done something that could’ve somehow, anyhow, made a difference. Of course, chances of that having changed the outcome were slim to none, but it’s the way my brain reacted to losing her.
Losing Karen made me realize that, while there was nothing positive to reap from her death, perhaps there was a reason I had to live: Karen and I had the same diagnoses, had been on roughly the same medications, and were both profoundly ill. We also wanted to use our experiences to make a difference. After her hospitalization, Karen got her Master’s of Social Work and went on to work as a social worker. She had so much to give, and so much heart. Despite knowing how ill Karen was, I had thought she had turned a corner – to the point where I envied her resilience and persistence.
Last, but certainly not least, I still feel the loss of my younger half-brother in the pit of my stomach. Ted had graduated from Vanderbilt and started his first job in investment in the Twin Towers, and lost his life on that fateful day in September 2001. I had not been out of the hospital for a few months when he died. I had not reached out to him for quite some time, as I really avoided talking to people about what was going on with me (my illness – my how that has changed!).
I don’t honestly know if he knew what was going on with me, and I loathed having to have a conversation about how and why I had abruptly stopped working. The thing that got me (and, to be honest, still gets me) is that I had spent the summer after my second year at the University of Michigan Law School in New York City, and there were things I really wanted to show him. I had no idea we would run out of time.
I still feel as if I had made some inroads on that wish to share NYC with him, I would feel better, at least not so guilty. I tell myself that I wasn’t in the space to make plans for such a trip, that I was still far too ill – which helps, though only to a certain extent. The survivor’s guilt that I feel about not reaching out to my brother is, at times, staggering. Whenever I think about not reaching out that fall, I try to remember that I cannot change the past (no matter how much I want to) and that it is the Beast who lures me with thoughts like, “I failed Ted,” “I should’ve made an effort” and, of course, the kicker, “I’m a bad person”/”I hate myself.” I do wonder, sometimes, if he knew how much I loved him. I hope so.
When I can muster even just a little bit of separation between myself and the loss of Ellen, Karen, and Ted, I can put up some space between myself and the clamoring of the Beast that is suicidality. The Beast desperately wants me to see the loss of these three people as my fault, and my fault entirely. There are a lot of shouldas, wouldas, couldas, and oughtas in life – most often they are pointless and get us nowhere.
Survivor’s guilt is all about assigning blame. Our minds try to make sense of things, and assigning ourselves blame for what we cannot control is a trait of the human brain. Assigning blame is perhaps nowhere more intense than in the suicidal mind. That the Beast is all about assigning fault where it doesn’t belong, and doling out the survivor’s guilt that we have built up around people we have lost, is no joke. The Beast so distorts the meaning of things that we are wont to blame ourselves for things that are almost always out of, or predominantly out of, our control.
So, you ask, what if I really did do what the Beast is accusing me of? What if I did something wrong, said something wrong, something unforgivable? Well, then you need to address the wrong, make amends as best you can, and make sure you don’t make that mistake again. However, even if what you did was egregious, do not allow the Beast to add to your burden. Unless you are a sociopath, you will almost certainly punish yourself enough. Regardless of the reason we assign ourselves blame, don’t, I repeat, don’t give the Beast the reins; don’t let the Beast drive.
Remember, the Beast is all about the shoulda, wouldas, couldas, and oughtas in life – it wants you to stumble and fall, wants you to give in and give up. Don’t. Stand up, and realize you are a mortal, and that mere mortals cannot change the past. Take deep breaths (even 101 deep breaths if necessary). You’ve got this.
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