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“No one ever told me,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “that grief felt so like fear.” The fear was constant and it felt like the grief would never subside. The waves would continue to crash
that humans are evolutionarily wired for both connection and grief: we naturally have the tools to recover from loss and trauma.
“Part of every misery,” C. S. Lewis wrote, is “misery’s shadow…the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.”
Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. It comes from gratitude for what’s good in our lives and from leaning in to the suck. It comes from analyzing how we process grief and from simply accepting that grief. Sometimes we have less control than we think. Other times we have more.
as blogger Tim Urban describes them: “You’ll quit your job. You’ll fall in love. You’ll catch your new love cheating on you and murder them both in an act of incredible passion. And it doesn’t matter, because none of it will be discussed with The Non-Question-Asking Friend, who never, ever, ever asks you anything about your life.” Sometimes these friends are self-absorbed. Sometimes they’re just uncomfortable having intimate conversations. I couldn’t understand when friends didn’t ask me how I was. I felt invisible, as if I were standing in front of them but they couldn’t see me. When someone
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Avoiding feelings isn’t the same as protecting feelings.
“For the victim of racism, like the victim of loss, the silence is crippling. The two things we want to know when we’re in pain are that we’re not crazy to feel the way we do and that we have support. Acting like nothing significant is happening to people who look like us denies us all of that.”
Some of my other friends and coworkers made it easy for me to open up; psychologists literally call them “openers.” Unlike non-question-asking friends, openers ask a lot of questions and listen to the answers without judging. They enjoy learning about and feeling connected to others. Openers can make a big difference in times of crisis, especially for those who are normally reticent.
toward others who are suffering. Writer Anna Quindlen observes that grief is discussed among “those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.”
As psychologist David Caruso observes, “American culture demands that the answer to the question ‘How are you?’ is not just ‘Good.’…We need to be ‘Awesome.’ ” Caruso adds, “There’s this relentless drive to mask the expression of our true underlying feelings.” Admitting that you’re having a rough time is “almost inappropriate.”
“I know you don’t know yet what will happen—and neither do I. But you won’t go through this alone. I will be there with you every step of the way.”
“When you’re faced with tragedy, you usually find that you’re no longer surrounded by people—you’re surrounded by platitudes. So what do we offer instead of ‘everything happens for a reason’?” asks writer Tim Lawrence. He suggests that “the most powerful thing you can do is acknowledge.
say the words: I acknowledge your pain. I’m here with you.”
But here’s what is: none of the participants actually pressed the button. Stopping the noise didn’t make the difference…knowing they could stop the noise did. The button gave them a sense of control and allowed them to endure the stress.
When people are in pain, they need a button. After Owen’s suicide, Adam started writing his cell phone number on the board on the first day of his undergraduate class. He lets his students know that if they need him, they can call at any hour. Students use the number infrequently, but along with the mental health resources available on campus, this gives them each an extra button.
learned that at times, caring means that when someone is hurting, you cannot imagine being anywhere else.
treat others as they want to be treated. Take a cue from the person in distress and respond with understanding—or better yet, action.
Specific acts help because instead of trying to fix the problem, they address the damage caused by the problem. “Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried,” therapist Megan Devine observes.
I learned that friendship isn’t only what you can give, it’s what you’re able to receive.
Phil Deutch did this time and again, saying, “We are going to get through this.” When he was away, he sent emails, sometimes with just one line: “You are not alone.” One of my childhood girlfriends sent a card that read, “One day she woke up and understood we are all in this together.” That card has hung above my desk ever since.
I used to think there was one set of footprints because my friends were carrying me through the worst days of my life. But now it means something else to me. When I saw one set of footprints, it was because they were following directly behind me, ready to catch me if I fell.
Blaming our actions rather than our character allows us to feel guilt instead of shame. Humorist
“Journaling isn’t exactly meditating,” she told us. “But it helped me quiet myself and reflect. I was able to put words to my feelings and unpack them.” Writing can be a powerful tool for learning self-compassion.
Since then, more than a hundred experiments have documented the therapeutic effect of journaling.
Labeling negative emotions makes them easier to deal with. The more specific the label, the better. “I’m feeling lonely” helps us process more than the vague “I’m feeling awful.” By putting feelings into words, we give ourselves more power over them.
“self-limiting beliefs,” and Catherine decided to replace them with what she calls “self-freeing” beliefs. She wrote, “My worth isn’t tied to my actions” and “I can allow other people to care for me—and I need to take care of myself.”
What we don’t see coming—or at least I didn’t—is that trauma can also lead to self-doubt in all aspects of our lives. This loss of confidence is another symptom of pervasiveness: we are struggling in one area and suddenly we stop believing in our capabilities in other areas. Primary
loss triggers secondary losses.
Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that life can only be understood backward but it must be lived forward. Journaling helped me make sense of the past and rebuild my self-confidence to navigate the present and future.
Adam and his colleague Jane Dutton found that counting our blessings doesn’t boost our confidence or our effort, but counting our contributions can.
Adam and Jane believe that this is because gratitude is passive: it makes us feel thankful for what we receive. Contributions are active: they build our confidence by reminding us that we can make a difference. I now encourage my friends and colleagues to write about what they have done well. The people who try it all come back with the same response: they wish they’d started doing this sooner.
What helped was hearing, “Really? I thought you made a good point in that meeting and helped us make a better decision.” Bless you. Empathy was nice but encouragement was better.
every situation they would encounter. I didn’t have to help them cope with a lifetime’s worth of sadness every time they cried. I just had to help them with what they were facing right then. I did not have to take even ten turns. I just had to help them take one turn at a time.
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. —ALBERT CAMUS
A traumatic experience is a seismic event that shakes our belief in a just world, robbing us of the sense that life is controllable, predictable, and meaningful.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation,” psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed, “we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Joe learned that post-traumatic growth could take five different forms: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and seeing new possibilities.
Nietzsche famously described personal strength as “what does not kill me makes me stronger.” Tedeschi and Calhoun have a slightly softer (one could say less Nietzschean) take: “I am more vulnerable than I thought, but much stronger than I ever imagined.” When we face the slings and arrows of life, we are wounded and the scars stay with us. But we can walk away with greater internal resolve.
“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.”
‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’ Marina and Nessie, you are my WHY.”
Some of her friends have followed her lead, showing pre-traumatic growth. They learned lessons in life that I learned only from death.
“In prosperity our friends know us. In adversity we know our friends.”
In Viktor Frankl’s words, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”
“What triggered resilience for me,” he said, “was God giving me strength and my mom telling me, right before she died, that no matter what happens, you keep the family together. I turned to football to save my family. When they measured my stature, they failed to measure my heart.”
Although it can be extremely difficult to grasp, the disappearance of one possible self can free us to imagine a new possible self. After
As Helen Keller put it, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
After undergoing a hardship, people have new knowledge to offer those who go through similar experiences. It is a unique source of meaning because it does not just give our lives purpose—it gives our suffering purpose. People help where they’ve been hurt so that their wounds are not in
vain.
To quote the Roman philosopher Seneca (and the song “Closing Time”): “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
When people say they have found comfort or strength in what I’ve shared, it honors the life Dave lived. He did so much to help others, and I hope this book reaches people and becomes part of his legacy. Perhaps this is our co-destiny.
