Survivors Guilt And How To Cope With It

Winning Against Cancer May Not Be The Last Challenge

Survivors’ guilt is a phenomenon that doesn’t attract enough attention in talks about cancer. This is very much in disproportion with the number of people that experience it. In this blog, we’ll talk about it, to raise some awareness on this sensitive issue.

Many patients living with cancer will experience guilt. Guilt is a feeling of responsibility and anxiety that is very hard to endure and display. Guilt usually leads people to replay "what if" and "if only" scenarios in their heads, as they try to think of what they could have done in a different way.

While there is increasing awareness given to patients’ experiences as cancer survivors, there is a limited acknowledgment of the survivor’s guilt phenomena. It is neither well recognized nor sufficiently addressed in the public domain. Survivors who show feelings of guilt usually notice that our emotions are either depreciated or dismissed. Benevolent listeners often recommend that we shouldn’t feel that way, a reply that tells survivors they are better off saving their feelings to themselves.

How Survivals Guilt Comes To Be

Survivor guilt is something countless patients have to cope with as cancer survivors. At the same time when they become being cancer-free—or at least slow down cancer growth to a halt— it can happen that someone close to them has a downturn or yields to the disease. Instead of asking themselves “why me”, a question that patients may ask themselves when diagnosed, they start thinking: “Why NOT me?” Here we’ll discuss what do we know about these feelings and also some of the ways to cope.

No matter what kind of cancer patients are diagnosed with, living with its emotional price can remain long after effective treatments are done. The result can drive to the confusion of complex feelings. For those patients who enter the world of cancer survivorship, guilt is often one of those sentiments.

The Aspects Of Survivals Guilt

Characteristics of survivor guilt are present in the cancer survivorship community, including the appearance of anxiety and loss, association with a fellowship, and enduring a condition that others didn’t have to endure. Oncology social workers must be aware of reactions and experiences that may be invoked when people observe other patients experiencing discomfort and pain, or even dying. As a response, survivors may parallel their own lives with the lives of those who have died and try to warrant their existence. Oftentimes feelings of guilt can be a sense of remarkable incapacity, lack of control, sorrow, sadness, and a deep sensation of injustice. When the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) was published, survivor guilt was dismissed as an acknowledged particular diagnosis and renamed as a significant symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Survivals Guilt Is A Form Of PTSD

It seems obvious that a diagnosis of cancer suits both the description of survivor guilt and PTSD too. Cancer is a traumatic experience and no one who endures treatment can come out the other side untouched. As so many patients know, the end of treatment is not the end of coping with cancer.  When patients are progressing through treatment, they are solely trying to survive and don’t really feel the full emotional influence that being diagnosed with cancer can involve. It’s often only when treatment ends, that the full impact hits.

Feelings of guilt are normal, but it is not good to continue reflecting on them. Feeling very guilty about situations outside of one’s control and not being able to let go of guilt can often drive to despair. Even though depression is more prevalent with people with cancer, it should not be deemed a routine part of living with cancer. Dr. Shymali Singhal, surgical oncologist and founder of H&B, advises patients to learn more about the types and manifestations of depression and how to get help.

Surviving Is Not The End Of The Fight Against Cancer

Survivor guilt is quite real, and, on closer examination, we can see that surviving cancer offers very fertile conditions for feelings of guilt. Survivor’s guilt is described as an intense feeling of guilt felt by those who have survived a tragedy that took the lives of others. As a consequence, survivors may perceive that they did not do all they could to save the others. They may also feel undeserving when compared to those who perished. Although this is the glossary version of survivor’s guilt, those patients who feel it know that survivor’s guilt exhibits itself in different ways throughout our lives and journeys.

One of the biggest misunderstandings is the rainbow of sentiments that match the label of survivor’s guilt. Survivor’s guilt is frequently perceived as a very distinct emotional answer to the specific act of out-surviving others. In reality, cancer survivors feel guilt for reasons that extend far past solely surviving cancer while others have not.