Trauma is not what happens to you. It is how you respond to what happens to you. With those words, I am not trying to minimize the trauma you may have experienced. Traumatic events are real, but everyone who experiences these events does not develop symptoms of anxiety, depression, Post-Traumatic Stress or some other mental disorder. Those disorders come from the thoughts, the feelings, and the meaning you give to the traumatic events.
Lots of people experience abuse or neglect in their families. Lots of people experience events like assault or cataclysmic events like war or automobile accidents.
The research shows that most of these people go on to live normal lives. The characteristic that can make the difference is resiliency.
Resiliency is the capacity to rise above adversity. It is the ability to develop lasting strengths amid difficult or terrible struggles. It is resiliency that allows the children of troubled families to not be immobilized by hardship. Instead, they can rebound from it and grow up to live meaningful lives as adults.
There is evidence that we are born with some capacity for resilience. People seem to differ in how they handle the stresses of life. But resilience is also something that you can cultivate. It is possible to strengthen your inner self. There are skills that you can develop to be more resilient. These are skills that you can work on daily, so that when traumatic events happen, you can respond in a way that allows you to move beyond them. Let me share some of them with you.
1. See what difficult times can teach you.
Your adversities can teach you something about who you are. It is important to acknowledge the traumatic events that happen to you, but you do not have to be defined by them. You may have been the victim of a horrible event, but you do not have to let a victim mentality shape your sense of self.
The traumatic events did not rob you of the strengths and the gifts and the abilities that were there before they happened. Trauma is something that happened to you, but it does not have to define who you are.
2. Be curious.
One of the ways to gain this self-knowledge is to be curious in response to situations in your life. In my work with clients who are struggling with trauma, I will invite them to experience the difference between looking THROUGH their thoughts and feelings and AT them. When you look through the thoughts and feelings, they shape your reality. When you look at them, they are things that are just happening to you in the moment. This curiosity gives you the flexibility you need to respond from a place of meaning.
Don’t try to ignore, cover up, or minimize a setback. Go deeper into it with the mindset of curiosity.
3. Be honest.
Another too for developing this self-knowledge is honesty. Yes, be honest about what happened. Don’t try to deny it or explain it away.
But be honest about the place you want these events to have in your life. It is possible to be hurt and to rebound AT THE SAME TIME.
Be honest about the strengths that you have. In difficult moments, you can always do more than grin and bear it. You can access your adaptability and choose a response that, while difficult, is more aligned with your values.
4. Develop a support system.
In a society that emphasizes rugged individualism, you might respond to trauma by pushing it away and pressing on with your life. It is easy to do this when you don’t share what is happening with others and turn to them for support.
Have people in your life who can sit with you in adversity in a caring and nonjudgmental way. They won’t push you to move forward until you are ready, but they won’t let you live as a victim. Be willing to talk with them and let them support you as you move through a difficult experience.
Again, these are practices that you can begin to develop in your life right now, not just in response to trauma. If you feel like it would be helpful to talk with someone, you can visit my trauma treatment specialty page to learn how counseling might be helpful for you.