Finding Strength in Trauma

It can be easy to let a traumatic event take over our lives well after the event itself has ended. We tend to let it dictate things like how we feel about ourselves, what we think we’re capable of, who we think will love us, etc.

Trauma becomes this dark cloud that we can’t shake.

What if I told you that wasn’t how it had to be? What if I told you that we could use our traumatic experiences to our advantage?

Taking Back Control

“While you don’t control external events, you retain the ability to decide how you respond to those events.” -Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

By finding the positives in a traumatic experience, you take all of the power away from the trauma. You regain control of your life and it slowly becomes easier to heal.

When I worked as a victim advocate in a domestic violence shelter, there were some clients who used the abuse they experienced as proof that they could overcome any obstacle they would face while trying to get back on their feet.

They understood that finding housing, getting a job, and processing everything they’ve been through would be challenging, but they routinely said things like, “I’ve been through worse, so this will be easy.”

Now, healing from a trauma isn’t actually easy. It’s a difficult and often painful process. But it’s not impossible, and trying to find a way to turn the negative things into rich soil you can grow from can make the process easier.

Finding a way to put a positive spin on trauma is also something that will take time. It won’t happen immediately after the traumatic event occurs. It’s not something you can rush into.

Nietzsche Said It Best

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a proponent of the Latin phrase amor fati–a love of one’s fate.

“That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.”

Nietzche isn’t saying we should be happy when something traumatic happens to us. What he means is that we shouldn’t live a life controlled by our traumatic experiences. We shouldn’t wish things happened differently.

Instead, we should find the strengths that we developed because of our trauma.

For example, I was in a controlling relationship when I was in college. I spent almost every second of everyday thinking about the possible reactions he could have to the things I would say and do.

While that relationship left me with many emotional bruises to heal from, the habit of neurotically thinking through all of the possible reactions from another human has morphed into a strength I now have.

I can’t control the reactions of other people and I can’t necessarily control the outcomes of my choices.

But I can use the habit I developed in the controlling relationship to think through the possible outcomes of choices I am faced with and better prepare for any potential obstacles.

I turned the negative habit of panicking that what I say or do would make my controlling ex-boyfriend angry into the valuable skill of thinking through decisions rather than acting impulsively or irrationally.

This doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing I was in an abusive relationship or that I’m happy about the experience of having a controlling partner. It means that I found strength in my trauma.

Psychologists call this same process “post-traumatic growth,” which basically means finding new meaning in your experiences in order to begin the healing process after a trauma.

Let Trauma Help You Find Your Purpose

Another way to shift into a more positive mindset about a traumatic experience is to use it to your advantage.

Use your experiences to help other people who are currently experiencing similar things, or could potentially experience something similar in the future.

Leslie Morgan Steiner is the perfect example of someone who used her traumatic experiences to her advantage.

She endured severe physical and emotional abuse from her former husband, but rather than living the rest of her life as a victim, she decided to use her experiences with an abusive partner as a way to educate other people about domestic violence.

Leslie Morgan Steiner has done a TEDx Talk about why domestic violence victims stay in abusive relationships and she’s written a memoir called Crazy Love where she takes readers on a deep dive into the abuse she dealt with for years.

She took one of the most awful things a person can go through and turned it into an opportunity to educate people throughout the world on what domestic violence looks like and why leaving an abusive relationship isn’t easy to do.

Again, none of this is to say that people should be happy about trauma. It’s just another way to look at the traumatic things we have experienced. If our reaction to things is the only thing that is truly in our control, we can choose to react in a way that allows us to live our best life.