Guilt Cause #5: Guilt that you’re doing better than someone else.
The experience of survivor guilt is one recognized by professionals who work with combat veterans who outlive their fellow troops. Survivor guilt also occurs when people who lose families, friends, or neighbors in disasters themselves remain untouched or, at least, alive. Applying not only to people who live when others in the same situation have died, though, survivor guilt also characterizes those who make a better life for themselves than do their family or friends.
First-generation college students, for example, often feel torn by conflicting emotions about their success in school. They want to do well (and their families want them to also), but the students themselves feel guilty that they are getting opportunities that their parents or siblings did not.
To “protect” their family members, they may engage in self-destructive behaviors that ensure they won’t make it in school. Logic would dictate that the family truly want the student to succeed (and thus bring honor to the family), but this logic is lost on the student due to survivor guilt.
The only way to cure yourself of survivor guilt is to remind yourself of how proud, glad, and invested those who love and care for you. Remind yourself, as hard as it might be, that your own failure will not help bring someone back to life, nor will it make others who love you feel better about themselves. You need to gain your inspiration from the knowledge that your efforts are a tribute to them. Don’t get down on yourself if you can’t reach your loftiest goals (or the ones they have or had for you) but at least know that you’re giving yourself the shot at success that they would want you to have.
There’s no doubt that guilt is a complex and interesting emotion. It can even cause you to spend more than you want to or can when buying gifts for your friends and family. You can’t live a completely guilt-free life but you can keep it within manageable bounds. Guilt can also help you gain greater self-understanding by helping you to recognize when, in fact, you've done someone else harm. Guilt, in and of itself, isn't a destructive emotion. If you let it become all-consuming, however, guilt can get the best — or the worst — of you.
Author and Credits: Susan Krauss Whitbourne