Adverse childhood experiences - which health professionals define as poverty, abuse, neglect and other traumas - can result in toxic stress, which wreaks havoc on the body. Researchers have found that, far from being empowering, traumatic incidents often have long-term negative consequences. However, I cringe when I hear the same idea applied to deeper suffering: the emotional or physical experience of being harmed or threatened.
WHAT DOESN T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER HOW TO
It’s true that we benefit from life’s normal and healthy challenges: We may learn how to resolve disagreements with loved ones or be inspired by teachers who push us to do our best.
WHAT DOESN T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER TRIAL
“Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet,” Keller wrote in her 1936-1937 journal. This road from suffering to strength appears in our tales of redemption, from the mistreated Cinderella to the sickly young Teddy Roosevelt and Helen Keller to current celebrities such as Drew Barrymore and Oprah. History is written by those who survive to tell it. We hear less about the Native Americans and colonists who died to make that victory possible. In school we’re taught that they were tenacious, learned to live off the land and became our forebearers. This sentiment goes back to our country’s founding, with Pilgrims arriving on these shores only to struggle against disease, hunger, rough weather and difficult terrain. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We want our pain to make sense, to somehow be edifying. Although suffering is undesirable, it’s supposed to help us grow. It’s human nature to believe that our difficulties carry extra meaning, that they are not in vain. And I constantly second-guessed how I acted around them, afraid that I might disgust or anger others, too. I tried to stay quiet around my peers I didn’t want to draw attention. Between the abuse and my innate shyness, I mostly avoided other kids, which was easy because I was home-schooled until ninth grade. It was difficult for me to make friends because of the pressure I felt to keep my home life a secret. As a child, I had frequent, unexplained fevers, which baffled my pediatrician and led him to test me for cancer. After such episodes, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t concentrate on my homework. I would have been better off without that dog collar, without those years of fear. I am glad my classmate found a way to cope with her past, but I can’t be grateful for mine. Sometimes this parent would threaten to choke me with a dog collar or would fire off shotgun rounds overhead for the fun of seeing the rest of the family cower. I also grew up with violence, terrified of a parent who was verbally and physically abusive, and drove drunk with me and my siblings in the backseat. She said she was offended when people told her: “I’m really sorry that happened to you.” She felt like they were saying they wanted to change her, so she’d reply: “Don’t be. When I was 15, I attended a writing workshop with a girl who had been sexually abused by a family member, trauma that she explored in her poetry. Virgie Townsend is a senior editor at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
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