Use the Survivor Guilt Hypnosis Script to Help Clients Move on

Survivor guilt affects individuals who have survived a traumatic experience that claimed the lives or livelihoods of others. It can present as part of PTSD, and often focuses on intense feelings of shame, guilt, and frustration with a fixation on justice.

The Survivor Guilt Hypnosis Script from The Script Collection was put together to help clients accept the past, stop blaming themselves, and move forward.

The script's pre-talk opens with an explanation of our natural desire for fairness. As a social species, humans evolved into tribes that shared food among themselves. The concept of fairness is so ingrained that when one person survives an event that kills another, it can feel contrary to our understanding of the world.

The client is assured that traumatic events can "stir up strong feelings of shame and regret" and lead to what we call survivor guilt, which makes grief and trauma harder to process.

The client is then reminded that while fairness was once paramount for tribal survival, people are no longer hunter-gatherers whose society was built on the equal distribution of resources. The script points out that "the very idea of fairness" has limits. The client is consoled by the promise of finding ways to honor the memory of people they've lost, even if they cannot make sense of their passing.

The client is assured that hypnosis will help them through their suffering and find a new way forward in life.

The induction begins with embedded commands that direct the client to relax and close their eyes. Flowing language is employed as the client is assured they don't need to consciously try to relax. The client is guided to notice a part of their body that feels "especially relaxed." They are led to focus on that feeling of relaxation and allow it to spread "like a liquid light" throughout their body.

Embedded commands instruct the client to embrace the concept of being kinder to their body. They are guided to send grateful feelings toward their hands, to thank them for the work they've performed. The client repeats the process for more parts of the body, noticing how a deep kindness spreads throughout their body and permeates every cell.

In the trance state, the client hears a story about a World War I veteran who struggles to understand why his life was spared. One day, he passes a threshing machine in a field of wheat and notices how the machine missed a few stalks while cutting the majority of the crop. In that moment, the veteran found a new perspective on surviving.

The full script continues.

Add the Survivor Guilt Hypnosis Script to your script library today.

Survivor Guilt is also available as an MP3 download.