He survived Itaewon. She didn't. The guilt is unbearable.

A visitor receives therapy at a makeshift counseling center for anyone struggling from mental distress caused by the Itaewon crowd surge at Seoul Plaza in Jung District, central Seoul on Thursday. [YONHAP]

Every day and every night, he can’t stop thinking about the Itaewon tragedy. He was there with his girlfriend.

He survived. She didn't.

“The guilt – the regret keeps haunting me,” said the survivor, who’s now being treated at a hospital in Seoul.

“I constantly ask myself what I could have done differently to save her.”

The young couple was supposed to have a fun night out at a friend’s restaurant in Itaewon, central Seoul. They arrived in the neighborhood at around 9:50 p.m. last Saturday.

The main streets already seemed packed with revelers celebrating Halloween. They went through the narrow alleyway, thinking it would take them to their destination a bit faster.

They were terribly wrong.

“Mid-way through the alleyway, I started to feel pressure from the front and back, and it got worse,” said the survivor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“I was stuck there for over an hour. It grew harder to breathe. I felt nauseated and lost all sense of feeling from head to toe.”

By then, he had no clue where his girlfriend was.

Amid the pushing and pulling of the raucous crowd, he supposed she somehow shifted away in the sea of people.

Just as he was about to pass out, he felt a pull from above.

It was a firefighter.

“He lifted me and dropped me at a nearby restaurant,” said the survivor. “Even as I was being transferred to a hospital, I thought my girlfriend would be alive.”

The survivor doesn’t know when he will be discharged. The doctors told him it was rhabdomyolysis, a serious medical condition involving damaged skeletal muscle.

He was offered therapy by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. But it barely helped.

He spends every moment of the day frantically searching for videos of the crowd, hoping to see any glimpse of his girlfriend.

“It just kills me thinking that my girlfriend died in pain for such a long time.”

As the country mourns 156 Itaewon crowd surge deaths, many survivors, witnesses and families and friends of people who died in the tragedy are reeling from trauma and depression, just eight years after the Sewol ferry claimed the lives of 304 people, mostly high school students.

Civic groups, local government offices and universities this week have begun to offer therapy sessions for anyone going through distress, urging Koreans and foreigners alike to come forward in case they need mental support.

Among the dead, 26 were foreigners, including exchange students who were studying in Korea.

The Korean Psychological Association announced that it would start offering free Korean and English consultation services over the phone, while the Korean Counseling Psychological Association said it would open a website this week where visitors can chat with counselors.

Chung Chan-seung, a neuropsychiatric doctor and head of the Social Responsibility Committee at the Korean NeuroPsychiatric Association, advised anyone going through mental distress to try deep breathing, abdominal breathing, the “butterfly hug” and the “grounding technique.”

In the grounding technique, a person slightly raises their heels and drops them to the floor with a thud, Chung said.

“Continue to gently press down the heel toward the ground and focus on the feeling of your sole touching the ground.”

For the butterfly hug, Chung advised people to cross their arms over their chest in an “X” shape and gently pat the sides of their arms 10 to 15 times per session.

BY LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]