Yes, it’s a real thing, and yes, like many other emotional issues both good and bad, it does not obey the laws of rational thought. If you survive an event where others did not, and you see the mourning of their families (as is often the case either in a national disaster or a local one), you may feel that they look on you and think: Why this person and not my son? Indeed I would be very surprised if those families didn’t think that, even if they don’t wish you dead, of course. Eventually (and usually not long afterward) you learn things about these other people. This man was a father of six. That woman was a nun who did charity work. This boy was only six with his whole life ahead of him. Each life you hear about, you may compare to your own. Are you as valuable as they were? If you have any elements of low self-esteem to your psychological make-up, this is where they’ll start coming to the fore. No, you aren’t as valuable. Life was a crapshoot and all these others lost, and you won. It doesn’t seem fair. It’s embarrassing to walk around, feeling like an insult to your mourning neighbors–a constant reminder of the person who lived, while their loved one didn’t.
Real life example. My brother died before I was born. He was my parents’ oldest child, smart, funny, talented, vivacious. My parents had two kids at the time he died. Then they only had one. My mom got pregnant with my older sister a few months later, who was considered a life-saver because it gave them something to focus on. Then, a year later, I was conceived as a companion for my middle sister. There’s no way I would have been born without my brother’s death.
When I learned of this strange fact–that in a very real sense I had my brother’s accident to thank for my life–it didn’t take me long to start comparing myself to everything I knew about him. And I came up wanting. I still do. He would be 60 now, and although one can’t predict perfectly what his life would have been life, I am fairly sure it wouldn’t have been nearly as empty or disappointing as mine has seemed. I grew up with parents who mourned their son. They loved me, no doubt about it, but they always felt the loss. Why couldn’t I make my parents happy? Aren’t parents supposed to be thrilled by their children? Obviously I was a poor substitute.
Meanwhile, my oldest sister, who was in the pool at the time of the accident (only 6 years old), has more direct surivor’s guilt. She should have recognized that her older brother (10 years old) was in jeopardy, instead of just playing around trying to scare her, which is what she thought he was doing. Like me, except even more directly, she felt guilty for not being enough for Mom and Pop.
The rational parts of us know that it’s not a kid’s job to make her parents happy; we also know that nothing could have ever taken that loss out of their lives. We know my sister was way too young to understand our brother’s flailing around underwater as a sign of jeopardy, and she couldn’t have saved him even if she’d known–she was just too small. We know I was loved by our parents and, at times, did make them somewhat proud.
My mother had her own guilt and it ended up giving her a half-lived life and an early death. Again, all of her children wondered why we couldn’t save her. Now I know there wasn’t anything short of a lot of counselling that she would never have gone to, because she didn’t feel she deserved to feel any better. We know she avoided doctors because she felt she deserved to die.
Feeling isn’t the same as knowing, and vice versa. Humans don’t weigh everything according to pure logic. Once one realizes that, a lot of human behavior starts to make sense, and from there springs, hopefully, the compassion for this unfortunate, misguided but very understandable mental torture.