More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity—and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.
“I can’t imagine either, but I have no choice.”
I also know that talking about how to find strength in the face of hardship does not release us from the responsibility of working to prevent hardship in the first place.
I now know that it is possible to experience post-traumatic growth. In the wake of the most crushing blows, people can find greater strength and deeper meaning. I also believe that it is possible to experience pre-traumatic growth—that you don’t have to experience tragedy to build your resilience for whatever lies ahead.
Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.” Life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B. This book is to help us all kick the shit out of it.
We plant the seeds of resilience in the ways we process negative events. After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that three P’s can stunt recovery: (1) personalization—the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness—the belief that an event
will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence—the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever.
When I felt down, I also felt down that I was down. When I felt anxious, I felt anxious that I was anxious. “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.”
Counting blessings can actually increase happiness and health by reminding us of the good things in life. Each night, no matter how sad I felt, I would find something or someone to be grateful for.
I learned that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again.
When someone shows up with a cast, we immediately inquire, “What happened?” If your ankle gets shattered, people ask to hear the story. If your life gets shattered, they don’t.
Even people who have endured the worst suffering often want to talk about it.
People who have faced adversity tend to express more compassion 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.” Military veterans, rape victims, and parents whose children have died all report that the most helpful support usually comes from those who have suffered similar losses.
“Grief,” she writes, is “a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly.”
We put off calling or offering help until we feel guilty that we didn’t do it sooner…and then it feels too late.
“Before, we were inseparable,” Alycia told us. “But when she found out about the rape, she said, ‘I can’t talk to you.’ ” Alycia sought support from other friends and got similar responses. One of them even admitted, “I know this has been really hard for you, but it has also been really hard for me.” The friend was feeling guilty for failing to stop the assault and was personalizing the tragedy. Alycia reassured her that she wasn’t to blame, but the friend stopped talking to Alycia, choosing escape over empathy.
For friends who turn away in times of difficulty, putting distance between themselves and emotional pain feels like self-preservation. These are the people who see someone drowning in sorrow and then worry, perhaps subconsciously, that they will be dragged under too. Others get overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness; they feel there’s nothing they can say or do to make things better, so they choose to say and do nothing. But what we learn from the stress experiment is that the button didn’t need to
stop the noise to relieve the pressure. Simply showing up for a friend can make a huge difference.
But when someone is suffering, instead of following the Golden Rule, we need to follow the Platinum Rule: treat others as they want to be treated. Take a cue from the person in distress and respond with understanding—or better yet, action.
“Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried,”
“Footprints in the Sand.” It was originally a religious parable, but to me it
also expressed something profound about friendship. The poem relates a dream of walking on the beach with God. The storyteller observes that in the sand there are two sets of footprints except during those periods of life filled with “anguish, sorrow or defeat.” Then there is only one set of footprints. Feeling forsaken, the storyteller challenges God: “Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?” The Lord replies, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, are when I carried you.” I used to think there was one set of footprints because my friends were
...more
Self-compassion often coexists with remorse. It does not mean shirking responsibility for our past. It’s about making sure that we don’t beat ourselves up so badly that we damage our future. It helps us realize that doing a bad thing does not necessarily make us a bad person. Instead of thinking “if only I weren’t,” we can think “if only I hadn’t.” This is why confession in the Catholic religion begins with “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” not “Forgive me, Father, for I am a sinner.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation,” psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed, “we are challenged to change ourselves.”
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.
“In prosperity our friends know us. In adversity we know our friends.”
A brush with death can lead to a new life.
It’s not surprising that so many trauma survivors end up helping others overcome the adversity that they have faced themselves. “There is nothing more gratifying than helping someone else escape this quagmire of despair,”
It is a unique source of meaning because it does not just give our lives purpose—it gives our suffering purpose.
“Both deaths are woven into the fabric of my life, but they’re not what define me,”
‘You become stronger as you seek solutions to seeming roadblocks or dead ends,’
I would
never wish for anyone to gain this perspective—but perspective it is.
is not a fixed personality trait. It’s a lifelong project. Building resilience depends on the opportunities children have and the relationships they form with parents, caregivers, teachers, and friends. We can start by helping children develop four core beliefs: (1) they have some control over their lives; (2) they can learn from failure; (3) they matter as human beings; and (4) they have real strengths to rely on and share.
These resilient children shared something: they felt a strong sense of control over their lives. They saw themselves as the masters of their own fate and viewed negative events not as threats but as challenges and even opportunities.
asking for help is in all four categories. Now I see that this is at the heart of building resilience.
Every survivor’s story shared a common theme: a key to their resilience was hope.
hope keeps people from giving in to despair.
that it’s actually a sign of strength to recognize when you don’t have the skills to do something—and reach out for help. Wanting to improve is not a sign of weakness.”
“The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn’t go our way,”
“Sometimes it takes going through something so awful to realize the beauty that is out there in this world.”
But just as grief crashes into us like a wave, it also rolls back like the tide. We are left not just standing,
but in some ways stronger.
