Research shows that since 2019, social movements have caused great mental distress to many Hong Kong people, and many people will feel guilty and self-blame. If you feel chronically guilty during this period, you may want to pay attention to whether you have ‘survivor’s guilt’ or even post-traumatic stress disorder.
What is survivor guilt?
Survivor guilt is one of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Patients usually feel guilty and self-blame because of major accidents or casualties. They believe that they are responsible for the death or injury of others, and feel that it is a crime for them to live in peace.
Survivor guilt can be experienced in three types of feelings:
- They believe that what they have done is insufficient, so they are unable to save the dead and injured.
- Some of the things I have done have affected the dead and injured and ‘abandoned’ them.
- Others need to face life danger, but you can be safe
People with survivor guilt may also have other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as feeling frequently irritable, having difficulty sleeping, having nightmares, feeling fearful when recalling the traumatic event, being unable to control the replay of traumatic images in their mind, and avoiding thoughts of the traumatic event, etc. wait.
How to relieve survivor guilt?
When you find yourself feeling guilty and blaming yourself for surviving, try the following methods to relieve your emotions.
1. Accept your emotions After experiencing a casualty incident, it is normal to have feelings of guilt and fear, so please tolerate and give yourself time to digest these emotions. But if you really can’t digest and control your emotions on your own, please seek professional help.
2. Evaluate your own behavior. When you calm down your emotions, you can try to ask yourself whether the result will still be the same even if you take different actions. Try to analyze the situation and environment at the time with a calm mind, and then analyze the impact of your actions. Rational analysis may make you realize that your abilities alone are limited, so you should not be fully responsible for the incident, and the death or injury of others is not your fault.
Note: This is not to evade responsibility, but to use an objective perspective to evaluate yourself in the incident, so as to relieve irrational guilt!
3. When it is safe, tell your story to someone you trust. Sharing your emotions and feelings with someone you trust can help you get over the haze of survivor guilt. Many times, people with survivor guilt will keep thinking about their ‘insufficiencies’ and ‘faults’ and don’t know how to resolve these emotions. But if you can share and discuss it with someone you trust, who can see the matter from a different perspective and provide you with support and companionship, you will gradually accept your experience and relieve your guilt.
4. Take care of your body When faced with negative emotions, many people forget to take care of their body. Physical health is also very important to mental health, so please remind yourself to eat a balanced diet, do moderate exercise, do things to relax, etc. Only by being healthy can you have more strength to face mental problems!
Only when you know how to let go can you go a long way!
Link to this article: https://psyctest.cn/article/Bmd7y5Vz/
If the original article is reprinted, please indicate the author and the source in the form of this link.
