Research Survivor Guilt Stories

[joeylittle]

@somerandomguy - your personal attack has been edited.

If people want to share, they are welcome to. People want to disagree, also are welcome to. Personal attacks are not allowed, period.

 

[RoselynJ]

You could have easily lurked and gotten anything you needed that way.

Except that as I said I thought that would be entirely inappropriate and disrespectful.

 

[joeylittle]

@RoselynJ - engaging in side debate isn't going to help your thread stay on-topic. Try and be mindful of that, moving forward.

 

[RoselynJ]

@RoselynJ - engaging in side debate isn't going to help your thread stay on-topic...

I will thank you.

 

[scout86]

There are plenty of authors who write about things they've never experienced and from perspectives they haven't lived. Women write from the perspective of men and vice versa. I HOPE Stephen King hasn't experienced most of what he writes about. If you want to know about something, don't you ask? Wouldn't it be worse if an author just made the assumption that they KNEW what something was like, when they didn't?

I might have missed something, but I didn't get the impression she was asking for individual stories, just general information.

Something my T harps on, a lot, is the difference between 'guilt' and 'shame'. (I'll confess I'm not sure I get his point. Yet.) I wonder if that difference might be relevant.

 

[EveHarrington]

Your definition of respect is very different from many here.

I see respect as not asking strangers to pick at healing wounds but you see respect as doing just the opposite, picking at those wounds.

People are reacting strongly because you are hitting on TRIGGERS. No, not the tumblr definition of trigger aka "slightly bothered" but the REAL definition of PTSD triggered which is something I pray you never experience.

Good god if you hit on my current major trigger I'd be reacting just as much if not more. Do you want to know what my current trigger does to me? It causes me to lose touch with reality. Scary shit when it happens while you're driving.

So why do you think it's ok to come here and do this to people?

Yes we're all responsible for our own triggers but in this case it's an outsider who is prodding with an ice pick out of curiosity for entertainment purposes.

I'm not trying to be rude. If anything I'm trying to point out how little you understand PTSD and how it would be best to write on another topic.

 

[gealach]

The Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino www.butyoudontlooksick.com

Maybe check out this site, it might help explain why many here are so upset - by creating this thread, you're not just stealing our spoons, you're shoving those spoons down our throats, and asking us how we ''feel'' so you can add that to a work of fiction.

There are ethical and appropriate ways to conduct research, and that may even include meeting with survivors/sufferers/supporters, however this was not the ethical or appropriate time, place, or group. I am a health care professional, and have conducted copious research throughout my career, and have been published. I would never attempt what you've done here, and by your stated credentials you really should know better. It's really obvious that this thread was inappropriate and careless, yet you persist and that doesn't pass the smell test.

What you are asking for is something many don't or haven't yet revealed to their therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist/family/friends, etc. How we feel (physically, mentally, and emotionally), is a very personal and intimate topic and one that is fraught with consequences. If we struggle to describe our feelings to those I've mentioned above, how can it not be damaging to be asked to describe this to a stranger for the sake of entertainment?

Has your thread caused someone to dissociate? self harm? depression spiral? consider suicide? have flashbacks? You don't know, and can't follow up to find out. You have no supports in place for those that have experienced consequences. This is the difference between legitimate, ethical research, and just picking low hanging fruit.

Edit: I'm having flashbacks of holding my murdered 3 year old niece in my arms, and having to explain her death to her 5 year old brother. How do you think that makes me feel? How does that make you feel?

 

[lostforgottensoul]

I HOPE Stephen King hasn't experienced most of what he writes about.

Stephen King writes mainly from imaginary.

If you want to know about something, don't you ask?

I would say yes. Except, in this instence it is a very indiviual thing. So say my survivor's guilt looks vastly different then your survivors guilt. Same symptoms (some more then others) but just like if one wanted to write a fictional character having PTSD, the first question I'd ask would be if they researched it and know the Criterian and symptoms and it may help to give our personal experiences but they are vastly different dependant on trauma, person themselves, therapy or no and how far into therapy, support system, enviromemt and set of circumstances. Even my flashback looks different then your flashback. Disocissation also different. So though flashbacks and disocissation are both part of the symptoms, how they are experienced is an individual thing. Including comorbid, what other disorders and the remainder of what I had advised above.

So, I can say how my survivor's guilt is experienced by me but it is completely innacurate as it is my experiences and not the character's experiences.

What I'd do is find the symptoms, research how they may play out in one's life and then start thinking of each of those symptoms, which ones will this character have and which ones out of them will the reader be advised of. It is intense guilt of why am I alive and they aren't so constant thinking on that would be approprate. Maybe thinking they don't deserve good things as the other(s) that died can't. Irritablity and mood swings. Emotional numbess. Flashbacks and nightmares of the event. Thinking of the meaning/purpose of life and those sort of big things.

That would be enough to start writing in a character's experience. Remembering that all experiences are individual.

Does the character have PTSD? BPD? (I saw BPD somewhere), any other cormobid disorders? Do the same with those. Is the event that caused survivor's guilt her only trauma? If not then flashbacks may have gotten worse. Or maybe the event that caused it made PTSD kick up. If that is the case I'd think she may have gone from super functional, maybe a professional, to not being able to leave the house. Or at least it tornadoed through her life and ripped it up. She has a boyfriend/lover/husband? Relationship issues. She keeps pushing him away and he doesn't understand. Maybe their relationship goes to the brink of break up and right before the cord is pulled she decides to get help.

Sorry, got carried away but @RoselynJ, that is what I mean by individual experiences not being of help to you. All that above I just made up and it isn't based anything factual other then symptoms. I don't understand how indiviudal experiences (not stories but experiences) would help you make it accurate as if you combined info from everyone's experiences it would still be innaccurate as that is our experiences and not the character's. Symptoms are the most accurate info one can go off of. And symptoms can be found on the internet.

Please understand, I am not saying you should or shouldn't ask, I just don't understand how anything beyond symptoms would help you. That's all.

 

[shimmerz]

I see respect as not asking strangers to pick at healing wounds but you see respect as doing just the opposite, picking at those wounds.

Yeah, except I wish that there were people out there who wrote in ways that can really capture the hell on earth that comes with survivors guilt. If this author can do so then I say that is amazing! I WANT people to know how it feels. What it is. How it works. That it exists.

you're shoving those spoons down our throats,

Or, you could ignore the thread.

You realize, @RoselynJ, that in order for someone to have experienced survivors guilt, that someone else did not survive? Or escape? Or come out intact in some very significant way? And there is a very conflicted feeling that comes with that. A love hate relationship almost.

My twin died in utero and I am so happy that she was not subjected to what I was, but it is also incredibly painful that I had a chance to live and she did not. And I think she is a bitch leaving me alone to deal with it myself. And that she was the lucky one to have not survived. And I am lonely for her. And I wonder 'why me?'. And I wonder how she felt. Where she is? And for decades I thought she was in purgatory because she hadn't been baptized (Catholic indoctrination) and I thought, how is that fair?

So can you image someone that you love and feeling responsible (whether that is true or not, but believing that it is true) for their fate? That you could have done something.... anything.... a million things, that would have gifted them a better outcome? How would that feel? If someone's life was in your hands (or so you think) and you and your actions (or so you think) killed them. Or you abandoned them when you could have brought them with you.

It can take a lifetime to make sense of how it feels/what it means to us. Really touchy stuff. And so many facets to it.

There is a good book out there called 'I Want To Live'. You may want to check it out. She cannot understand why he killed the rest and not her. No gory details, just her thoughts on what happened to her.

 

[scout86]

Great reply, @shimmerz .

 

[Friday]

@scout86

In the non-fiction world it's called journalistic integrity, when writers are researching real people. The fiction world also has it's own code of ethics and standards of practice in researching real people. What this poster has done is the equivalent to the paparazzi grilling grieving parents at their child's funeral. There is no moral ground to stand on. Which is also why serious journalists and serious authors get real and in depth interviews on the most personal and heartbreaking and confidential of topics, as they're not only careful with how their information is collected, but how it is presented and disseminated. And why paparazzi and pulp writers get shown the back of the hand. It's a question of trustworthiness & principled behavior, from start to finish.

 

[RoselynJ]

Something my T harps on, a lot, is the difference between 'guilt' and 'Shame'. (I'll confess I'm not sure I get his point. Yet.) I wonder if that difference might be relevant.

That is a very good point that I had not thought of. I will certainly follow that idea and do some more research on it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.