Tragedy, Gratitude, and Guilt
Note: this story mentions suicide.
Seventeen years ago today, I had just picked up my friend from the airport on a Thursday night. I remember getting the call at around 10pm from one of the captains of the ultimate frisbee team I coached. One of the girls on the team, Mandy, had taken her own life in her dorm room.
Disbelief and sadness washed over me. A few hours later anger would intermittently push aside the sadness – not anger at her but at the unfairness of the universe. Interestingly, one emotion I never felt was guilt. That came later.
I was aware that she had been undergoing treatment for depression. She was seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist. She had been very open with me about her struggles and her treatments. She had expressed her appreciation for my support, and how the ultimate frisbee team was such a wonderful part of her life. I think the knowledge that I had contributed to one of the few bright spots of her life that penetrated the darkness of her thoughts protected me from guilt.
But many years later guilt began to creep in.
Her death immediately sent my life swirling in questions. How could this happen? How did it make sense? What could I do about it? What was I doing with my life that was so important?
I ended up in a PhD program studying the neuroscience of depression. I was eager to answer my questions and hoped to help people just like her. Mandy’s death gave my life a clearer purpose. But I was also hiding – hiding in school and academic research from the real world, playing scientist to avoid confronting the sheer sense of helplessness.
And then I wrote The Upward Spiral, which came out about 10 years after her death. It’s the answers I’d come up with to all my questions, and it’s dedicated “To Mandy and all the girls she left behind” – the team of ultimate players who shared my heartbreak. The book has been far more successful than I had ever hoped. I am so grateful that I’ve been able to take all this science and make it so helpful for so many people. And that is where the guilt comes in.
The path of my life was changed by tragedy. But not always for the worse. It feels weird to recognize the benefits. It’s a strange sort of survivor’s guilt. There but for the grace of God …
I write a lot about gratitude, but it’s the things I feel grateful for that sometimes trigger feelings of guilt. And shame too, because my actions can never change the past, and may never be enough. But just because those feelings are there, doesn’t make them helpful. Or rather they’re helpful for something, but not necessarily helping to move toward important goals.
Guilt actually activates the nucleus accumbens, a key part of the brain’s reward circuitry. I think this comes from an attempt to take responsibility for things you have no control over. It’s mostly a defense mechanism, because the hardest thing is to accept that terrible things might happen and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s much easier to hide in a downward spiral of guilt and shame.
I recognize that my guilt is irrational, but that doesn’t make it magically disappear. Though that recognition helps me understand that I don’t need to be guided by the guilt. It’s like knowing when your smoke alarm is malfunctioning. The noise still bothers you, but you know it’s not an emergency.
Even though guilt may bubble to the surface occasionally, I won’t let it get in the way of moving forward. There’s nothing wrong with guilt. Sure it’s a past-focused emotion, but if you can use it as a motivator to help others, then it can be helpful. But when it starts getting in the way, then all you can do is practice more self-compassion, reaffirm your guiding values, and move forward anyway. That may never be enough to compensate for tragedy, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s simply all you can do, and that’s not something to feel guilty about.
