¶ … survivor mission is the particular purpose in life that a person ascribes to him or herself in the event of having survived a situation that others typically die from. The survivor mission is a phenomenon that is oft recurrent in attempted suicide cases where a person, trying and failing to repeatedly kill himself, may conclude that he has a specific mission in life and that, therefore, his life was preserved on that account. Possessing this survivor mission poses both negative and positive effects. On the one hand, it presents direction to one's life giving the individual the certainty of what he or she wants to do with his life, a certain self-confidence and stability, whilst preventing him from indulging in trivialities and time-wasting concerns. The survivor mission presents the individual with a sense of purpose and may lead to significant contributions on a social, if not, global scale (Deegan, 2002).

On the other hand, the individual's perspective may be misguided and he may absorb himself in self-and/or socially destructive projects...

A religious person may, for instance, believe that his mission in life is to become a terrorist or to actively kill others in order to obstruct abortion. Many religious fundamentalists become so and turn to aggressive actions as form of their survivor mission: that this is their purpose in life. Attempting to persuade someone that he or she is incorrect is difficult in the best of times due to heuristics such as my-confirmation and belief -- perseverance that prevents the person from challenging his perspectives particularly if those perspectives involve sacrifice of labor, time, money and other factors (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). In the worst of times -- when one believes that God or fate has called one to this mission -- resilience to change in views is tenacious and inflexible. This may cause a problem for self and others since both may be hurt in the process.
I saw a case in point of the survivor mission and its effect on others in a foreign country when a person, having survived a terrorist attack, somehow or other deemed it…