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If you’ve been on a healing journey for a while, then you’ve no doubt heard placating cliches like, “My trauma has made me a better person.” This is a narrative that many a self-help guru likes to spread. Even our therapists will tell us to be “grateful” for the life-changing experiences that have forced us into places of higher awareness (and endless psychological healing).

Sympathies like this are a heady temptation. Repeating mantras like the one above allows us to feel better about the traumatic experiences that have shaped us. They give us “meaning” but sometimes there is no meaning. We shouldn’t have to experience trauma in order to be better people, and we shouldn’t have to thank the people who dump trauma on our doorsteps.

There’s a better way to be better people, but we have to be brutally honest about our delusions and our Hallmark card approaches along the way.

Trauma is a life-altering experience.

We are a society that is waking up to the reality of trauma, but there is still much work to do. Too many people use the term trauma “flippantly” using it to refer to the most basic of human frustrations, rather than the life-altering experience that it really is.

Because that’s the truth. Trauma isn’t something that simply makes you sad or anxious. It’s not an uncomfortable experience in which you have to be accountable. It’s a major event in which your ability to emotionally and cognitively process is outstripped by something immensely more dangerous.

To be traumatized is to be pushed to the point of extreme fear. It’s to feel yourself tiptoeing on the edge of that chasm, even if you aren’t in actual physical harm. Your nervous system, your primitive brain, becomes convinced that you are in a place of danger. It scans the environment in a desperate attempt to find some way, any way out.

Dissuade yourself of the idea that trauma is strictly an emotional experience. It’s not. When trauma is experienced, at any age, it takes a major toll on the nervous system and the rest of the body too.

• Prefrontal cortex: This is part of the brain which is associated with rational thought. For trauma survivors, it’s common to see less active prefrontal cortexes (especially in those with PTSD and CPTSD), which can mean that they struggle to learn new information and they may also struggle to control their sense of fear.
• The hippocampus: Located in the rear of the brain, the hippocampus is the center of learning in the brain. It’s where most of our cognition takes place, which means it includes memory, language, and thought processing. When you survive trauma, however, this area of the brain is damaged.
• Nervous system (major): The rest of the nervous system is likewise affected by trauma, getting stuck in a “fight v. flight v. fawn” response loop. Ultimately, trauma kicks it into overdrive which creates a hyperarousal that feeds into anxiety, depression, and a host of other issues.
• Physical body: Every corner of the physical body is affected by this damage to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Hormones are sent into chaos, being both overproduced and underproduced to create chronic illness, mental health problems, and a host of other complications that can touch the heart, lungs, and muscular, and skeletal systems.

If those physical symptoms were not enough to convince anyone of the seriousness of trauma recovery, then the emotional experiences surely would. There is no such thing as one and done when it comes to the emotional scars left behind by every sort of trauma.

Our emotional core is reshaped. Through trauma, survivors are taught to be fearful, to be insecure. They condition themselves to accept less, to settle for absolute misery in life and in their relationships. The trauma becomes the narrative of their lives. Addicted to the drama, convinced there is no way out, trauma can create emotional loops that keep victims punishing themselves for generations.

Is it possible to turn your trauma into strength?

Looking at those facts, recovering from trauma can seem like an impossible climb up the side of Mt Everest. If our brains our damaged, our bodies, how do we come back? Is it even possible to make something of ourselves after taking on so much mental, emotional, and physical pain?

Anger-inducing as it may be to accept, our trauma can become a strength that we use to change our lives and the lives of others by:

• Giving lessons to share in the world
• Teaching us how to love ourselves
• Showing us who we don’t want to be
• Creating new opportunities for growth

When you find the power to face your trauma or your triumph over it, you create a roadmap for others around you. After doing the work, you can share that work as a lesson with others. It’s like shining a light on a dark path for a lost passenger. That becomes a powerful motivator and silver lining for those who have made it through the darkness.

The depths of the darkness encountered can also be a powerful lesson to the traumatized person. In that space, you have no choice but to learn how to love yourself. It’s the rope ladder out of the deep, dark hole.

Self-love becomes the confidence to act in the name of your needs. It shines a mirror on the reality around you. There, the trauma you experienced also becomes a mirror. You are empowered to see exactly what you don’t and do want to become.

Healing and recovering from trauma opens doors. It creates new opportunities for growth not only in our relationships but also in our careers and in our families. All of the above.

Do we have to suffer trauma to be better people?

While our trauma may give us these powerful opportunities for growth, it leads to entirely different perceptions. Namely, it leads to the inevitable next question…Do we have to suffer trauma to become better people? Is our empathy shaped by our suffering alone?

Relievedly, no. We don’t have to suffer trauma to grow into self-realized, confident, compassionate human beings. The evidence is everywhere around us. It’s seen in the videos of children sharing their lunches with friends. It’s seen in the compassionate strides of those who emerged from caring families.

Kindness can be forged in kindness. It can be taught through love and softness, instead of the iron-clad gauntlets of brutal emotional trauma. We could hand our children the keys to this compassionate future by treating them with greater compassion, and by centering empathy in their growth.

We don’t have to suffer to be better people. We just happen to live in a world that is so brutal it creates softer people through constant emotional pummeling. A different way could be chosen, but it would require fundamental shifts in every single member of society.

How we could approach trauma and growth instead…

We shouldn’t accept the fairy tales around trauma and growth. The pain we inflict on one another is so unnecessary, and it brings all of us down as a species. When one person suffers, we all wind up suffering. A better path could be taken. A gentler way could be chosen. As a society, we could stop playing into the idea that “trauma makes us better” and strip that pain from our society as a whole.

1. Aim for a “trauma-free” society: As a society, we have become too flippant about trauma. Some act as though it’s a natural rite of passage. While some traumas may be inescapable (ie natural disasters) the greatest portion of them are. We could aim to be a “trauma-free” society that holds every citizen in compassion. We could rebuild our connection from a trauma-informed place and make incredible improvements.
2. Build around a quest for knowing: The beauty of living in the modern age is the incredible advances that are made every day. Human psychology and neurology are a part of these advances. We learn more about trauma and how it shapes our experiences by the day, the month, and the year. If all of us build our lives around this knowledge (and a quest for it) we would have greater emotional intelligence all around.
3. Raise standards, lower tolerance: If we want to escape the trauma cycles we exist in as individuals and as a society, then we need to lower the tolerance we have for it. That would mean raising our standards in family, parenting, and our romantic relationships. More importantly, however, it would require holding those who inflict trauma accountable.

Could the steps above lead us to a perfect society? No. But the aim isn’t perfection. The aim is an improvement. The aim should be arming ourselves with knowledge and choosing a more positive way to interact with one another as human beings on a similar journey.

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Our trauma may shape our lives, but it also the power to make us better people. In some, their trauma gives them the keys to incredible personal growth. But that isn’t the case for everyone…some are so broken by their trauma that they never fully recover. Their brains, their bodies, become hardened and warped by the emotional pain that haunts them from within.

We should have to be traumatized to become empathetic people. Other futures are possible. It’s powerful that we acknowledge the growth, it’s a silver lining for survivors who have experienced the darkest parts of this world. Trauma should never be celebrated. It should never be expected or accepted as a standard for becoming a “better self”.

Instead of feeding this unhealthy narrative, we should aim for a better future. Compassion can be learned, not through trauma, but through emotionally intelligent people. We could learn to be better through softness, instead of brutality.

Is that a future you have the courage to shape? All of us are needed. Can you look inside for a more compassionate self? Can you choose a gentler way — even with those you don’t understand? You are a part of the solution. Right here. Right now.

De Bellis, M.D., Keshavan, M.S., Clark, D.B., Casey, B.J., Giedd, J.N., Boring, A.M., Frustaci, K. and Ryan, N.D. (1999). Developmental traumatology part II: brain development∗∗See accompanying Editorial, in this issue. Biological Psychiatry, [online] 45(10), pp.1271–1284. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/s0006-3223(99)00045-1.