Can Trauma Make Us Stronger?
Reflections on Post-Traumatic Growth
BY NURIT ISRAELI
“The wound is the place where
the Light enters you.”
T—Rumi he German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche famously
said, “That which
does not kill us makes us stronger.”
In a recent workshop I conducted
on Post-Traumatic Growth, I
started by asking participants,
many of them cancer survivors,
whether they agree. Some did,
but not all and we concluded that
it depends… One woman, who
shared that cancer had not been
her biggest trauma and recited a
history of unimaginable losses,
described how, in spite of grief
and periods of darkness, she did
not fall apart. There were times
in which she was hanging on by
her fingernails, but she managed
to bounce back, and eventually,
rose to live a life which became
richer and more meaningful. In
responding to her, I recited stanzas
of Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still
I Rise”:
“Up from a past that’s rooted
in pain
I rise.
... Leaving behind nights of terror
and fear
I rise.
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously
clear
I rise.”
Trauma is an inevitable part of
life. All too often, we are presented
with challenges we would have
preferred not to encounter, painful
challenges which disrupt our lives:
a diagnosis of serious illness, the
loss of a loved one, a fall, a betrayal,
a war, a natural disaster and a
variety of other reminders of our
impermanence. There are smaller
losses too: mistakes we make,
opportunities we miss, dreams we
must bury... Our world is unstable
and unpredictable. Much is not
under our control.
In many years of working as a
psychologist, I saw the ways in
which traumatic events hit suddenly,
abruptly upsetting the status quo.
Time and again, I witnessed how
traumas expose our vulnerabilities.
But I also witnessed how we can
bounce back from extreme hardship
and loss, how we can surmount
rather than succumb, and how
character becomes more clearly
defined during dark chapters.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD)—symptoms which develop
in response to trauma—is a wellknown
phenomenon. We know
some victims bear the scars of the
emotional wounds for life. In recent
years, neuroimaging studies have
provided considerable evidence
that traumatic stress can even be
associated with changes in the
brain’s structure and functionalities.
But in the ’90s, two scientists,
Lawrence Calhoun and Richard
Tedeshi, began to study PTSD’s
flipside: the constructive ways in
which some victims manage to
rebuild their lives. They coined
the term Post-Traumatic Growth
(PTG), i.e. positive changes which
occur as a result of the struggle with
highly challenging life crises. Their
studies and numerous subsequent
studies of victims of trauma show
traumas can become a catalyst to
spiritual and emotional growth.
Post-Traumatic Growth does not
happen instead of Post Traumatic
Stress and does not make a traumatic
event less devastating! Grief and
resilience are not mutually exclusive.
Traumas leave scars, but some
people somehow harness inner
strengths that help them rebound.
They may bend, but they do not
break. They survive, even thrive,
and report that their post-trauma
life has been enhanced.
It is not a loss itself which leads
to positive changes, but rather the
ways we process a loss. Traumas
shape us in profound ways. They
challenge our basic beliefs about
ourselves and about the ways of the
world. We need to process these
changes: acknowledge the impact
of the traumatic event, appreciate
it has changed us, mobilize courage
and will power to work through it,
and hopefully rise above it—find
ways to live with and above loss.
A patient I worked with, a survivor
of the September 11 terrorist
attacks, is an inspiring example of
PTG: He’d lost his closest friends
and had struggled with physical
symptoms and post-traumatic
stress. But he eventually managed
to change his life in meaningful
ways: he works less, has developed
new interests, has resumed relationships
with cut-off family members,
volunteers to help others and has
acquired an aptitude for appreciating
even the smallest of life’s offerings.
Similarly, my fellow cancer
survivors: none of them would have
chosen to go this route, and all of
them struggled through extreme
hardship and loss. But many of
them acknowledge cancer became
a wake-up call. Ultimately, grateful
for survival, they rearranged their
priorities, deepened their relationships,
discovered new possibilities
to live meaningfully, learned to
thrive in spite of...
Last month, I spent five days
(and nights) in a hospital’s Cardiac
Care unit, following my husband’s
heart attack. There again, while
dealing with my personal crisis
(unexpected, scary, humbling...),
I encountered others—patients,
family members and caregivers—
struggling, side-by-side, to cope.
True, I heard about periods of
functional impairment, the burdens
of treatment, the sense of loss, the
anxiety, the pain of coming face-toface
with one’s mortality. But even
there, people spoke about positive
changes. They spoke about a better
ability to focus on what really
matters and not sweat the small
stuff. They spoke about adjusting
expectations—not expect smooth
rides, yet enjoy all which is “good
enough.” They reported becoming
kinder, more patient, more empathic,
more authentic, more mindful,
more soulful, “a better version of
myself,” as one survivor of multiple
medical crises told me.
What I heard on the Cardiac Care
Unit fits what research consistently
shows. The positive changes composing
Post-Traumatic Growth are
observed in three major areas:
1. A change in self-perception:
an enhanced awareness of
one’s personal strength.
2. A change in relationships
with others: more intimate,
emotionally open relationships
with loved ones.
3. Spiritual development: a
more profound appreciation of
life in general and the courage
to pursue new possibilities on
one’s life path.
A few years ago, a Japanese
Fulbright scholar, who attended
my workshop on Living With and
Beyond Loss, introduced me to a
400-year-old Japanese art called
Kintsugi. Kintsugi, meaning “golden
repair,” is an art of putting broken
pieces of pottery back together
using gold, highlighting the “scars”
as an important part of the design.
The art is based on Wabi-Sabi, a
Japanese world view centered on
the acceptance of transience and
imperfection. The Wabi-Sabi philosophy
focuses on the premise that
breakage and repair are part of the
history of an object, and embracing
flaws and imperfections results
in the creation of a more unique,
stronger and more beautiful piece
of art. The same applies to humans:
we tend to improve by the adversity
we’ve endured. Our “scars”—vestiges
of our traumas and of our
recovery—accentuate our strengths.
We can’t avoid “being broken,”
and like a shattered vase, we can’t
put life back together the way it was,
but we may pick up the pieces and
even grow stronger in the broken
places. As Leonard Cohen offers:
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
Perhaps Rabbi Menachem of
Kotzk was right when he concluded:
“There is nothing more whole
than a broken heart.”
Kintsugi: The Japanese art of
repairing pottery with gold
lacquer. The underlying premise
is that breakage and repair are
salient aspects of the history
of an object and “scars,” which
manifest an object’s transformation,
beautify it.
April 2019 ¢ NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER 13