TIME OUT:Surviving tragedy can leave one feeling down, writes MARIE MURRAY
IN THE WAKE of the Oslo bombing and Utoya massacre, many of those who survived will suffer from “survivor guilt”.
This is one of a cluster of responses to trauma and is a significant post-traumatic symptom. It is the guilt felt when we have a narrow escape that others were not lucky enough to enjoy. It is, as it says, the guilt that survivors feel.
It’s a deep and disturbing emotion because it raises the most profound questions about life and death, about luck and chance, about fate and fortune, destiny and danger.
Traumatic events alert us to the unpredictability of the world, how quickly what once seemed to be controllable, foreseeable, safe and secure can alter and become a place where danger and threats lurk everywhere and from everyone. Traumatic events alter our perception of others, of ourselves and of our lives.
Post-traumatic responses can vary, but any event in which there is a serious threat to our lives or to people we love is traumatic. Any situation in which we escape what others do not can cause us to suffer survivor guilt. That is true of natural disasters, man-made catastrophes, terrorist attacks, war, famine, epidemics, plane crashes or road accidents.
Even at a distance, vicariously, we can suffer survivor guilt and as more catastrophes worldwide are brought into our homes by the media, survivor guilt can increase.
What makes survivor guilt acute, what shatters our confidence and sense of security, is that sometimes the difference between surviving and dying can be minuscule, a nanosecond, a millimetre, a trick of fate. When we survive close encounters, we become alarmed and alert to the fragility of existence and our own tenuous hold on life.
But there is more to it than that. The most toxic ingredient in survivor guilt is ambivalence. This is because deep down we are also glad we are not the victim.
We feel guilt about what we feel but we cannot wish disaster on ourselves. This is an emotional double bind from which there is no escape. Survivor guilt is a terrible emotion.
It can ambush us unexpectedly even in everyday life. There is increased survivor guilt reported by those who are employed about the unemployed, but this is also complicated because every job lost threatens another job. There is gratitude at having enough to survive in a recession, but guilt about those who do not have enough.
And if we ask what disturbs us about funerals, one aspect is that strange guilt-inducing mixture of empathy for those who are mourning and escape from being the bereaved this time.
The deaths of our contemporaries remind us of our mortality, but they are also evidence of our survival.
We are not the person in the coffin, our turn has not yet come. We do not know if we will be next but today it is not us. We grieve for those who die and for the fact that we must die, as each funeral moves us ahead in the queue.
There is but one way to combat survivor guilt and that is through gratitude – real genuine gratitude, that if we have survived trauma, we have survived it, and if we have been spared it, we have been spared, and if we have been touched by the distress of others, then we have been given the opportunity to support them as well. Guilt serves no purpose. Gratitude does.
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist and author. Her latest book, When Times are Tough, is published by Veritas.