Survivor Guilt: How Do You Know if You're Experiencing it & 6 Ways to Help

Surviving a life-threatening situation is emotionally turbulent for various reasons.
You might wish you had done more at the time of the event. You might feel guilty for others getting hurt at the expense of yourself. And you might feel guilty, as though you’ve done something wrong, for surviving while others didn’t.
If that last sentence hit home, you might have something called “survival guilt.” This term was first coined to describe those who survived the Holocaust. However, the same concept can also be applied to those who have been in life-threatening car crashes, wars, natural disasters, and more.
In this article, we take a closer look at what survivor guilt truly means, the signs, the causes, and how you can begin to overcome it.