Essay Sample on Survivor's Guilt

📌Category: Health, Mental health
📌Words: 822
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 16 April 2022

Have you ever felt guilt of someone passing away in your family and felt like you had something to do with it, well that’s survivor’s guilt. Guilt, now guilt takes away your joy, pride and the things you love to do, but never look down upon yourself, always look back up. What is survivor’s guilt? Imagine having to deal with the pain of someone you have lost and imagine the pain and sadness getting into your head and asking yourself, why me. A little background information on survivor’s guilt is that it started in the 1960’s and that people suffer from traumatic experiences. Now survivor’s guilt is something that is very important that people have because of someone that they have lost and cared for. People shouldn’t feel survivor’s guilt because you are the one who survived and survivor’s guilt puts people into a depression, and takes all of your happiness all away.

In the story “The Seventh Man”, the seventh man shouldn’t feel survivor’s guilt because he is the one to survive. The Seventh Man brings up the past on how he lost his friend in a big wave and blames it on himself. The seventh man shouldn’t feel that though because his friend is the one who wanted to come along to the dock. His friend K is the one who lost his life because he wasn’t paying attention to the situation at hand. If K didn’t lose focus he would still be alive during the seventh man lifetime. According to the story “The Seventh Man” author Haruki Murakami states that “They tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself; but I don’t believe that,” he said. My evidence connects to my reason because The Seventh Man lost his friend in the wave that he froze in fear. The Seventh Man said that he saw his friend, K with a big grin on his face. The Seventh Man was shocked to see his friend grinning in a dangerous moment.

In the article or podcast “Racked with guilt” people are going into a depression because they are losing either their family or any one in the world. But, people shouldn’t feel depressed. Why? Well, it’s because people do have strong feelings, but those strong feelings are avoidable and the guilt is just racked up in your head. Guilt can overwhelm a person, although it’s really easy to overcome if you practice on how to focus on yourself instead of others around you. In the Racked with Guilt article it gives prime examples of what people think like Rachael Sunshine . Rachael Sunshine says. Some people are asking, "Why do you feel guilty about surviving?"Rachael also says that "well, when you've been through a lot and you're in a population that statistically was not supposed to survive, you do feel a little bit guilty about that." There are more people that are out in the world with survivor guilt and it can and will affect them for the worse. This article changes my thoughts on how people see and deal with survivor's guilt because I didn't think it was that bad. People with survivor's guilt can affect their life, but they can always overcome the situation by focusing on themselves instead of what happened in the past.

People suffer from survivors in many different forms like, they have grief, they feel like they did it, and most likely have depression afterwards. In "The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt" Nancy Sherman states that "the guilt begins an endless loop of counterfactuals--though in fact you did nothing wrong.” Nancy Sherman gave examples of guilt, subjective and objective or rational guilt. Nancy Sherman explains what subjective guilt is, it is associated with this sense of responsibility, and is thought to be irrational because one feels guilt despite the fact that he knows he has done nothing wrong. Nancy Sherman in the story “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” also explains objective or rational guilt, by contrast--guilt that is “fitting” to one’s actions--accurately tracks real wrongdoing or culpability: guilt is appropriate because one acted to deliberately harm someone, or could have prevented harm and did not. People put themselves in circumstances that had nothing to do with them. Part of the population has felt or dealt with guilt and grief. Society took a toll in the Covid-19 situation like people becoming depressed and that their guilt is taking over them. 

In conclusion, the thing you should be worried about is yourself when you lose someone. Survivor’s guilt is a hard thing to just disappear, it stays there for a while until you stop thinking it's you that's done it. When losing someone in an accident or an adventure you would probably think it's your fault because you brought them. Now, that the person you brought along is dead, he would have been asking why him? Why not me? Guilt is a very harmful thing in the world and it won’t just go away either. Guilt can take over the body and affect it in any way possible. Guilt can affect your daily life. Guilt is a disgusting thing that's all over the place, most people have it and some don’t. Survivors' guilt is just in the mind, it doesn’t need to bother you if you don’t feel survivor’s guilt.

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