I'm Solid In My Recovery... Why Am I Feeling Guilty?

What is "survivor's guilt"? This can apply to anyone who comes in contact with someone who may be struggling, especially when we are in a better place – whether it's friends, family, or community.  

What is "survivor's guilt"?

I have been thinking a lot about my feelings towards certain individuals who aren't doing so well. They may be struggling with troubling symptoms of a diagnosis like schizophrenia (like me!) that are difficult not only for them, but for the people around them who care about them.

I have noticed that there is a certain amount of "survivor's guilt" that I feel when talking about these folx who aren't doing well. It's almost as if I feel like I got the great end of the bargain, while they are left with nothing and no one.

Schizophrenia recovery and guilt

Sometimes, I feel an amazing amount of guilt and shame that I was able to do so much with my life after struggling for so long with my diagnosis do schizoaffective disorder and these folx are still hurting and have seemingly no way out. I came through the worst of times, why can't they?

Survivor's guilt is a part of PTSD and was a term coined when talking about people who survived the holocaust.¹

It is a real feeling that can be translated into our reality when working with a great deal of loss, trauma, and difficult situations. When our lives and recovery are going well, we may feel this guilt or shame when we work with those who are still in a place of lack. I think that it’s a real concern for all support systems to feel this way. For those of us in supporting roles... to take this on can be daunting.

But why am I not struggling as much?

If you were in a car accident and you were the only one to not have a broken bone, you might end up thinking, "Why me? Why was I ok, and all my friends got hurt?" I think we sometimes might feel, "Why me? Why have I been able to achieve a good amount of stability and recovery and those around me are hurting?"

I know that I find myself asking this question quite frequently when I'm in the midst of my work. See, I work in the mental health field, and I'm constantly surrounded by folx who aren't doing their best. Unfortunately, the struggles sometimes far outweigh the successes.

I often wonder, how did I get so lucky? Here I am, moving forward while some of my fellow folx with schizophrenia are hopelessly stuck!

Living with schizophrenia is complicated

I think that it's natural to feel this way, and so the question becomes, how can we mitigate this risk against feeling the feelings of extreme burnout? I think if we feel like we are the lucky ones all the time and are surrounded by folx who are struggling all the time, it creates a difficult dialectic that is hard to make sense out of. Why me? Why them? Hard questions to ask.

I think as people in recovery, we need to find ways to reconcile the guilt of being well against the folx in our lives who are not and hold the hope even stronger for them.  

Schizoaffective disorder is also tough. It not only affects our thoughts, but our moods, too. How can we find ways to move through the worst of times till things lighten and there is once again that spark of hope?

From guilt to burnout

Sooner or later, unless we start asking some of these questions, the guilt and shame we feel about our own wellness will lead to burnout. It will consume us, and we will start feeling resentful of our own recovery. And that's not a good place to be as a helper or as a human.

If you've ever felt this way, I'd like to take a second to validate your feelings. I think that it's something that we all grapple with either directly or indirectly. Sometimes it helps to call it out and name it.

What's most important

Make sure you're taking care of your basic needs: getting enough sleep, eating, exercising or any kind of movement, using your self-care skills that are unique to you.

Be patient and know your own limits. Give yourself time to heal. This is not something that just appeared out of nowhere, so this is not something that will just go away overnight.

You've done so much work for your recovery

Focus on all the good you have done not only for your own recovery, but for the recovery of those you care about. Think about baby steps. Sometimes we want to see miraculous progress, but don't forget about the magic in the mundane.

These are all things that you can do to help prevent these things like survivor's guilt from growing and taking up too much space in your recovery journey.

It's only natural to be faced with these things in our recovery. Most of all, be proud of how far you have come and where you have yet to go on your journey. Hope, learning, growth, and change are all possible.