Trauma & Growth

Athletes learn that in order to build strength physically, muscles must be worked in such a way that they are at their outer limit.  When this occurs, the muscle fibers weaken or tear.  It can be uncomfortable, painful, exhausting, but necessary for new growth/new muscle fiber to come in to play.  After the damage, there is a period of rest.  The muscle(s) have time to replenish and complete the process of growth (or training continues and potential to get really hurt increases, and/or poor patterns are built around the discomfort, thereby locking the damage in to place).

"There's a general law in life: The body and mind only get stronger when they're traumatized."

John Leivers, Andes explorer and Machu Pichu guide

GQ Magazine, June 2011

Ahhh, the bigger picture.  I believe that our mind, heart and spirit operate in a similar manner.  Further to that,  I also believe that there is a balance that sometimes instigates those challenging events as well.  Among living things, when something is off balance, or drawing unbalanced energy, Life will compensate to seek a balance.  When this occurs, it translates in to events that shake us from the direction we are moving.  We then must move off the road of our lives and choose a new route. "Where the hell am I going now?!" 


We can be so bound to a certain course, that it requires something traumatic to move us from that course we were plotting, or to realize our own strength and worth, to even just find our voice so that we will change the life in front of us.  What if challenging events happen as we move further and further from the essence of who we are, and this process of trauma is the natural order calling us back to that centre, or weighting the scales to restore that balance again?   What if uncomfortable things are meant to further us (either by validating our choices, or by raising our eyes to see the need for a new path from the individual, and within society as well)?

I do not believe that we "only get stronger when... traumatized".  Growth occurs in the mild moments, when we fall in love, when we live with love, when we experience fantastic adventures and wonderful new things as well.  This is when growth occurs that is in alignment with our dreams or the pursuit of things we would like to happen.  That is growth at it's most pleasurable - the highs of life.  Trauma is usually accelerated growth that happens against what we had hoped for, expected, or otherwise thought best for us, and I do believe that it brings more profound growth spurts when we take the time to heal well.  

It was my friend Miss R, who recommended "Flourish", but it was flipping through it in the bookstore and seeing Chapter 8 "Turning Trauma into Growth" that hooked me in to purchasing the book and making it through the first chapter.  "A substantial number of people also show intense depression and anxiety after extreme adversity, often to the level of PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder], but then they grow.  In the long run, they arrive at a higher level of psychological functioning than before".  I think about all that continues to go on in Japan following the tsunami and nuclear accident, the hundreds of thousands affected, and reflect on the stories that continue to surface about the resilience of the victims there and find some hope that perhaps it is changing, and has changed the world as well as those individuals, for somehow, the better. I am looking forward to reading Chapter 8.  In fact, I do believe I will skip ahead and read that tonight.

Friction, trauma, lack of balance, frustrations, anger, sadness, helplessness...  Are they symptoms of the need for new growth or change?

Most of the time, we are so taken off-guard, even blind-sided, by the harder things in life, that we automatically inject whatever necessary to restore equilibrium as we know it - to carry on in life and to maintain the normalcy that our own lives survive by.  The greater the collision, however, the less we are able to decipher what still remains to be our 'normal'.  We must also mourn the loss of the way things were before we can move forward to install the factors that will foster growth.

In the last ten years or so, The Secret and Power of Intention have surfaced in the mainstream (though they theory has been around for ages before).   We have allowed ourselves to realize that we have a greater power than just Action A + Action B = Action C.  We have begun to open our minds to Intention = Action.  Is it considerable that within our own relationship between ourselves and Life, that when we become unbalanced, unheard, ineffective, away from our centre (including our strengths and gifts), that call for interjection unfolds from us and Life responds without us even having to 'put it out there'?  

Have you noticed patterns in your life that repeat themselves?  Something that repeatedly occurs that just sucks the life out of you, that is annoying that just keeps on coming back?  Then one day, you approach it differently and you learn something that just clicks finally.  The pattern ceases to appear.  Perhaps we are closer to our own balance with the new understanding, the lesson has been learned and there is no need for that interjection of energy to occur again.  We move forward with an effective new tool.

There are horrific things in our world that make no sense, have no reason, nor should they ever happen.  Perhaps we as a society face trauma within individuals as a means to tell the the rest of us a change is needed, to draw us together.  Perhaps if we invest the energy to learn from it, to help one another through them, we can at least protect from these things happening again, or become more resilient for the future generations. 

When I look back at those moments when life has been hard, when things hurts like hell and made me just want to close up shop for a while... there was always the question, "what if something extraordinary is coming from all this?..."  ...right after I said, "F&@* it!!", and had a period of recuperation... growth has followed.  Whether it has been a change in my direction in life, seeing new priorities, an increase in compassion for others, a deeper appreciation for life and loved ones, the ability to know that I can be there to help, or even be an ear to help others who go through similar things, I have become stronger than I was.

It is important to have the quiet moments to 'heal', and also, retrospectively look to the strengths it has taken to overcome a situation, and see the benefits/lessons etc. gained from it all.  We must mindfully carry forward the growth, rather than the losses; which coincidentally then, also offers "forgiveness" for others, and more importantly, ourselves.  If life is a compilation of experiences, then what and how we choose to remember things can make an enormous difference in the rest of our days and what we do with the rest of the energy we have left.  Will we hold on to being a victim, being afraid, bitter, defensive through life, or will we acknowledge our own strengths that it took to overcome experiences and apply them forward to affect positive change/growth in the moments we are creating?  This is a choice.

My life has had ups and downs.   I am learning a lot from life.  I am not one to delve in to a stack of books to study from (which is why I suppose I repeatedly speak about the books I do complete because they really did make an impact on me - I will list those in the Favourite Products post tomorrow).  Life has been my most faithful teacher, bringing me the lessons I have needed to learn at critical times.  There is an appreciation I have for the blows that have helped shape me (gotta love retrospect).  There is a peace to living within such a manner of Life... as well as a drive to learn lessons when the message is just a whisper before it gets to be a shriek - lol... 

When moments occur when you feel tattered and beaten, your life feeling turned upside down, perhaps something extraordinary is just around the corner.  Hang in there, ok?

May your positive growth always exceed your hardships...