I think I first experienced survivor guilt when working for a corporate where staff were made redundant all around me, yet I still remained. I even called it survivor guilt, although I didn't know then that survivor guilt (Fimiani et al., 2021; Russell, 2021) was actually a thing. I felt terrible to be still within the organisation while they all had to go. There were three rounds of redundancy and I survived each round, but each time my psychological contract (Maguire, 2003) with the organisation was damaged a little more.
So what is survivor guilt? It is guilt arising from "being spared [the] harm that others incurred" and "the feeling of guilt that people may experience when they believe themselves to have had any kind of advantage compared with others, such as having more success, greater abilities, better health, greater wealth, a better job, or more satisfying relationships" (Fimiani et al., 2021, p. 176). We can feel survivor guilt despite the fact that we are not ethically responsible for having 'dodged a bullet'; we have "luck guilt" (MacKenzie & Zhao, 2023, p. 2708).
Survivor guilt has been "a medical concept since the 1960s. ‘There were high rates of PTSD and survivor guilt in Vietnam veterans,’ says [Dr Hannah] Murray, [a Research Clinical Psychologist at the Oxford Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma]. ‘Survivor guilt can often lead to self-harm, self-sabotage, or a feeling that we must almost “repay” a debt.’ And it doesn’t have to be linked to death. ‘One definition of survivor guilt is feeling that you have an unfair advantage over someone else,’ says Murray, ‘so it could be that you survived a mass redundancy, or that you’ve simply had opportunities" which others have not (Russell, 2021, 13%). Once a 'disease' of it's own in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, survivor guilt appears to now be part of the symptoms of PTSD (American Psychiatric Association, 1967).
However, we don't have to have PTSD to have survivor guilt. Not only that, but we can experience survivor guilt even though what may have spared us was luck (think natural disasters), or matters outside our locus of control (management deciding where we were without power or influence) (Murray et al., 2021). Having missed being made redundant, if we were with a tight-knit work group, can mean we have to process the feelings arising from survivor guilt.
We need to process our "luck guilt" (MacKenzie & Zhao, 2023, p. 2708), where we have "feelings of inferiority associated with shame and depressive feelings" (Fimiani et al., 2022, p. 4) by talking about how we feel. Shutting it out and hoping it will go away generally only works short term. More permanent processing usually requires expert guidance, which is usually best achieved by seeing a specialist, such as a grief counsellor.
Sam
References:
American Psychiatric Association. (1967). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II, 2nd ed.). Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics of the American Psychiatric Association.
Fimiani, R., Gazzillo, F., Dazzi, N., & Bush, M. (2022). Survivor guilt: Theoretical, empirical, and clinical features. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 31(3), 176-190. https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2021.1941246
MacKenzie, J., & Zhao, M. (2023). Survivor guilt. Philosophical Studies, 180(9), 2707-2726. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-02002-9
Maguire, H. (2003). The changing psychological contract: challenges and implications for HRM, organisations and employees. In R. Wiesner & B. Millett (Eds.), Human Resource Management: Challenges and Future Directions (pp. 87-103). John Wiley & Sons.
Murray, H., Pethania, Y., & Medin, E. (2021). Survivor guilt: a cognitive approach. The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, 14, e28, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1754470X21000246
Russell, H. (2021). How to Be Sad: Everything I’ve Learned About Getting Happier, by Being Sad, Better [e-book]. 4th Estate.