What doesn't kill you makes you weaker?

[abcbac]

I was reading an article and it told me that trauma and hardships make you a weaker person contrary to what I have been hearing. What do you guys think? Doesn't pain lead to growth and maturity?


What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker | Psychology Today

[RonSouther]

Originally Posted by abcbac

I was reading an article and it told me that trauma and hardships make you a weaker person contrary to what I have been hearing. What do you guys think? Doesn't pain lead to growth and maturity?


What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker | Psychology Today

If you blame the world for your hardships, then hardships make you weaker as you rot in a pit of denial.

If you take total responsibility for yourself, truly seeing that no one is responsible for your mental health, for your happiness, then hardships are a mirror for you to see the "warts" in your life, allowing you to mature and grow.

If you can see that no one is born a slave or a master, that we are each unique individuals, then it begins to be apparent that happiness problems are owned by you.

And if you've ever suffered the misery of being a crutch to someone that is emotionally beyond needy, then it's a no-brainer to see the truth in your responsibility for your own happiness.

[ZephyrusX]

I do think that our brains are meaning making machines, and on that note, it does not make any sense to say that all hardship will make you stronger as your response to the environment will largely depend upon how you make sense of it. The articles says that trauma will make you weaker, and although the majority of people experiencing trauma do experience negative life consequences, a minority of people are resilient towards life traumas in the sense that they are able to adapt positively. To clarify, resilience is a process rather than a characteristic. There are no fixed minority of people out there who are inherently resilient. Rather, there are factors, such as loving relationships inside and outside the family, self-esteem, self-confidence, problem solving skills and access to social support, that will increase the probability of you positively adapting to hardship and stress, and despite how you initially respond to hardship, you can always change those factors.

I suppose it is possible to increase resilience by changing how you respond to a stressful situation (i.e a bout of depression is the catalyst that makes you see a therapist), but I think it is our response that determines a change in character rather than the event it self and I in no way think that hardship is the only way you can increase resiliency. Here is a list of 10 ways to build resilience from the American Psychological Association, and as you can see, you can work on these factors without experiencing hardship.

The American Psychological Association suggests "10 Ways to Build Resilience", which are: (1) maintaining good relationships with close family members, friends and others; (2) to avoid seeing crises or stressful events as unbearable problems; (3) to accept circumstances that cannot be changed; (4) to develop realistic goals and move towards them; (5) to take decisive actions in adverse situations; (6) to look for opportunities of self-discovery after a struggle with loss; (7) developing self-confidence; (8) to keep a long-term perspective and consider the stressful event in a broader context; (9) to maintain a hopeful outlook, expecting good things and visualizing what is wished; (10) to take care of one's mind and body, exercising regularly, paying attention to one's own needs and feelings and engaging in relaxing activities that one enjoys.[51] Learning from the past[52] and maintaining flexibility and balance in life[53] are also cited.

Psychological resilience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Adde]

I think its not as simple as it sounds, either way.

Personally, I have been through a bit of hell of my own.
- Disfunctional family (to a degree, I mean we all can find a proof that we had disfunctional family to a degree, if one is so inclined)
- Civil War (now this one is really a bummer, it changed my life in thousand different aspects)
- Living as immigrant in a society that is not really tolerant (it is if you can magically transform your ethnicity and race)

Now, all of those factors put you on a track and in a state where you feel that you are falling behind people who dont have those issues, BUT

if you accept the notion that just what happens to you is what defines you, you may well kill yourself, but if you take everything that life throws at you as a yet another challenge to be mastered, and define your own worth in terms of how good you are at clearing those obstacles, then the saying "what doesnt kill you only makes you stronger" is true, but in a different way.

Point being, you should always strive to live your life in best way you know, and keep learning so that you can direct that energy and life force in better direction.
At the same time, you have to understand that regardless of what YOU do, there are external events that you have no control over, and they WILL happen to you, in various grades of severity, and that is something that you HAVE to handle, and it is the handling capacity that is your major characteristics.

I think that is what Nietsche observed and reflected upon.

[Andrew Gubb]

Despite what you might expect from me as a New Agey type guy, I'd be inclined to agree with the article. While I believe that everything does indeed happen for a reason, I believe that pain should be viewed as what it is: pain. Pretty much by definition it should be avoided and to miss this basic truth is delusion.

Traumatic events do help with a couple of things: 1. it can potentially teach you how to heal, which can place you well to heal others later on, and 2. suffering can force you to disidentify with your ego as Tolle says, or to stop seeing meaning in meaningless things (perspective), and may be the catalyst for spiritual change.

Though I do see the power in number #2 and have experienced that for myself, I really don't recommend either looking for pain or feeling like you can't advance in your spiritual path because you don't have pain. The sort of awakening that comes from pain is a gift that must be given to you and can't be asked for (that would be masochism - not likely to advance your spiritual path). Luckily, if you're awake enough to want this kind of awakening, you're awake enough to instigate your own awakening in less painful ways.

It should be pointed out the effort needed to heal from traumatic events is very large, and many - i think most - people never do heal. They just run away from their trauma for their whole lives. With this in mind I don't think we can call trauma in any way a good thing.

There is a lesson in the idea of "what doesn't kill you...", though. It's that things aren't black and white. What might seem to all appearances bad could be good for you. If I could give an objective definition of trauma for all people it would be, "bad". But that's the point: I can't make such an objective definition. No-one can, about anything.

Meaning

I agree with the article that it's common for people to want to find meaning in things. I think it can be a good thing - an essential thing - but we need to be aware of our ability to delude ourselves while doing so.

I remember Steve Pavlina posted a good process for coming to terms with things. He said to look at the situation from many different angles. One could be that your trauma was absolutely horrible. One could be that there were learning experiences in it. One could be that it helped awaken you to compassion. One could be that it shouldn't have happened; another could be that it happened anyway or it happened because you needed to learn something. And so on. This way, you see many different meanings but hopefully don't attach yourself to just one. Eventually you'll find a conglomerate of these, each in their correct balance and perspective.

I think it's also good to meditate on it not having any meaning at all. There's a despair in there... a sense of lack of control of your own fate. I think it's good to surrender to this despair. Let it overwhelm your attempts to control reality. Let it burn up your lack of humility and leave you innocent in energy, like a newborn baby.

When I lost someone I loved dearly, I couldn't handle it. I tried to give it meaning. But I think the suffering abated somewhat when I surrendered to it not having meaning. Maybe later I woke up to some potential meanings it could have had, because of that. But most of all I let it go and realised that what happened, happened; the past can't be changed and it just is as it is. So most of all being comfortable with the lack of meaning in events helped.

[leena]

My personal observation is that pain and hardships do make certain people%( not all) weaker.Lately I have been thinking over this famous saying"what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".I doubt its authenticity when I look at my own life..and now I see that article showing the same.I think only few people do really become strong after hardships.After a certain period of time there remains no strength to face any more pain.I don't think my hardships have made me any stronger or mature in any way..they have only made me worse and weak.the quote above isn't meant for everyone but for a selected few.

[abcbac]

I agree that if you let the hardships define you than you might as well be miserable. I guess the journey to get over these hardships is what makes you stronger. Also, it is very hard not to make meaning of something. I feel life is easier when you make meanings. It gives you reassurance and a reason.

[Clint Cora]

I think they can go both ways. Some people end up thriving because of hardship experiences while some others just sink. It may have much to do with emotional intelligence (see my video definition of emotion intelligence for further clarification), their support systems, etc. These in turn determine how one responds to hardships and the end results.

[cheesedip1]

[QUOTE=Clint Cora;1025964]I think they can go both ways. [QUOTE]

Agreed.

[scotthegeek]

I keep hearing all these inspirational stories and it makes me feel weak because everyone sighting the exceptional people that overcame so much.

I think its personality and genes that have a big role as to how someone handles things.

[RonSouther]

Originally Posted by scotthegeek

I keep hearing all these inspirational stories and it makes me feel weak because everyone sighting the exceptional people that overcame so much.

I think its personality and genes that have a big role as to how someone handles things.

What are you looking to overcome?

[CroMagna]

What an excellent article. I learned so much. Thanks for posting it