How trauma can lead to growth — for you and for society.
Today, we oft study the idea of “failure” across all sectors. Luminaries speak about the importance of failing before achieving success. We see it printed on inspirational Instagram posts from influencers we admire. But studying “failure” is a relatively new concept in the world of psychology, coming into play as recently as the 1970's.
I had an opportunity to interview Dr. Ali Mattu from the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety-Related Disorders (CUCARD), who shed some light for me on the evolution of our understanding on the usefulness of failure.
According to Dr. Mattu, the study of failure originally focused more on overcoming obstacles, specifically on younger populations. As an example, clinical psychologists became very interested in understanding the differences between kids growing up in urban versus suburban environments. If we look at that era, there was a huge growth of people moving to the suburbs. The general assumption that spurred this research was, “‘inner-city kids’ lives must really suck, and their mental health must be poor, so let’s try to understand their experience and see what we can do to help them.”
As they began to study inner-city kids, one of the things many psychologists had predicted was confirmed: inner-city kids did deal with more stressors, more violence, and more drug-use. However, their mental health was not as poor as expected. In regards to depression and anxiety, in many ways, they were doing better than kids in the suburbs. It was a total shock to the psychology world. It led to the development of the concept of resilience, which comes from the engineering term used to describe how much a metal can bend before it snaps. The more it can bend, the more resilient it is.
Resilience is one of Dr. Mattu’s favorite concepts in psychology, and he offered an example about it that we can all relate to: “You may be on a plane and see the wing moving up and down and get scared, but it is supposed to happen. That is resilience. We want resilience in our materials, and in psychology, we want it as well. We as a collective community realized that a lot of kids growing up in an urban environment were learning how to navigate the stressors of their lives and thus were becoming more resilient. The research then went on to discover what the variables were that went into developing resilience.”
Dr. Mattu pointed me to a summary of this research known as “Ordinary Magic.” The title reflects that the ability to overcome obstacles in youth is more common than psychologists originally thought: “Resilience is common and it typically arises from the operation of normal rather than extraordinary human capabilities, relationships, and resources. In other words, resilience emerges from ordinary magic.”
According to these studies, the following factors are responsible for resilience in young people:
- Effective parents and caregivers
- Connections to other competent and caring adults
- Problem-solving skills
- Self-regulation skills
- Positive beliefs about the self
- Belief that life has meaning
- Spirituality, faith, and religious affiliations
- Socioeconomic advantages
- Pro-social, competent peers and friends
- Effective teachers and schools
- Safe and effective communities
How do we get people from struggling to thriving?
Resilience is not only the ability to overcome obstacles; it is the ability to grow from them. “It makes me think of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD),” said Dr. Mattu. “There is a whole field called positive psychology that looks at not just mental illness but the psychology of happiness. How do we get people from struggling to thriving? And one of the ideas that has come out of this field is the idea of post-traumatic growth: that in the struggle, in the aftermath of a seismic change in your life that results from a trauma like losing a child or having a near-death experience…going through a traumatic experience at war…the struggle that results after that can often lead to growth.”
Think, for instance, about the victims of the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut. “While we would never wish that experience on anyone, some of them have changed the focus of their lives,” said Dr. Mattu. “They have dedicated themselves to stop childhood gun violence. That’s what we call post-traumatic growth. Again, we would never wish these experiences on anyone. But if they happen, how can we try and nurture the variables that lead to growth?”
We are, collectively, living through a period of seismic change and trauma. On a global scale, the coronavirus has cost lives, livelihoods, and mental stability.
Of course, we would not wish this experience on one another nor certainly on ourselves. But this is the reality we have experienced in 2020.
As we look at a new year, and the promise of vaccines and treatments that will hopefully put this vicious disease in our rear-view sooner than later, we each have to think about how we want this period to impact us moving forward. Because the loss, the pain, the anxiety — those are givens. Those will leave indelible marks on our psychology. But where will you go from here?
Perhaps you will choose to pursue a new career. Perhaps you will find contentment in the simple pleasures and spend more time with family or with friends you love.
To me, this period has taught me to let my schedule have less ownership over my relationships, and to instead focus on letting my relationships drive my schedule. Depending on your level of loss or trauma, this process may need to start by seeking professional therapeutic support. But all of us have the capacity to do grow — to make 2020 a period of darkness that catapults us into a new, collective light. How are you prepared to grow?
This article is adapted from a section of my second book, “Success Disconnect: Why the Smartest People Choose Meaning Over Money.”
Sources:
Masten, Ann Phd. “Ordinary Magic.” PBS. Web. 3.28.15.
