Post Traumatic Stress, or Post Traumatic Growth?

How our mindset shapes our interpretation of the past

My daughters and I, riding the highs and lows of life, together

This has happened to me several times with a Substack post: I sit down to write something light, but once I get going, I become inadvertently ‘deep and meaningful.’ And still I barely manage to scrape the surface of the topic I began to explore. This was the case with my post from two weeks ago, Teaching Our Children Resilience, in which I was having a little debate with myself about what makes resilient parenting.

Firstly, let me clarify an important point: everything I share with you in this post is written in the spirit of an honest exploration. I don’t pretend to be that expert who has everything figured out, but rather, a writer and parent who likes to ask herself tough questions and work out a possible answer by writing.

When I became a mother I remember being bombarded with an overwhelming amount of conflicting expert advice on how I should care for my newborn: have her sleep with me and carry her in the baby-carrier at all times. Other experts argued for separation and sleep-training. I was told to lay her on her back and was warned against crib bumpers that could suffocate her. I was told to breast-feed. Some experts said for a minimum of six months, others said a whole year. Others advised me to stop only when the baby wants to stop. I’m so glad I had the instinct to reject all this wisdom and create instead my own parenting rules, based on what I felt worked best for me and my daughter. This is the only parenting advice I dare to offer you: listen to your inner wisdom and ignore what the ‘experts’ say if it doesn’t resonate with you. This includes what I write here.

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1. BREAKING TRANSGENERATIONAL TRAUMA

The premise of my resilience post, in a nutshell, was that the ‘trauma’s (my divorce, immigrant status, and now raising my daughters as a single mother in a “low-income household”) that I was told by experts would disadvantage my daughters, I have noticed, have also made my daughters incredibly self-reliant and resourceful. I shared my thoughts with CBT Therapist Aleks Balazy-Knas, writer of the excellent Substack Unscrewing Motherhood. She wrote the following comment:

As millennial/Gen X parents, we often don’t give ourselves enough credit for the tremendous work we put into breaking transgenerational trauma. We are the first generation to tackle this challenge.

Does this work come easy? No. Do we make mistakes and sometimes repeat the patterns our parents set? Yes. But we also acknowledge those mistakes, apologise to our children, and strive to improve. This willingness to admit our faults and say “I’m sorry” sets us apart from previous generations.

We try harder to be better for our children, modelling resilience and demonstrating the courage to admit our mistakes and share the lessons we've learned.

We must remember that the companion to this work, shame, is a generational inheritance. Healing and liberating ourselves from it will take time. But with effort, we can hope not to pass it on to our children.

Aleks raised an important point that I had overlooked. The hard lessons that I have learned from my own challenging childhood (my mother defecting with us to Israel, growing up in a kibbutz as a ‘yaldat hutz,’ serving in the IDF) are the driving force behind my parenting style, yet I rarely stop to appreciate my efforts of wanting to be there for my daughters in the way I wished my mother had for me as a child.

This reminds me of a beautiful, poignant moment in which my fifteen-year-old daughter asked her father to tell her more about his past. She said, “mum has spoken to me honestly about her childhood so I understand why she is the way that she is; why she has certain rules. But when it comes to you dad, I don’t know much.”

So, If you are like me, I suggest you pause here for a moment and appreciate all that you have done, and keep doing for your children. It’s not a small thing.

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2. THE WISDOM OF TRAUMA

Dr. Gábor Maté, subject of the widely-seen documentary The Wisdom of Trauma and author of many great books, including most recently The Myth of Normal, defines trauma as “the wound that you sustain. It is not what happened to you, but what happened inside of you as a result of an event.”

When I watched The Wisdom of Trauma in 2021, the word ‘trauma’ was not yet a buzz word. I was grateful to Dr. Gábor Maté for shining light on the subject of trauma and encouraging us to approach it with “compassionate inquiry.” But in the three years since that documentary I feel that we have shifted from one extreme (denying our wounds) to another perilous extreme: allowing these traumas to define our identity, and in some cases, wearing them as a badge of honour.

In my post on teaching our children resilience I was attempting to challenge this new trend. What I tried to argue, and will reiterate here, is that a difficult/painful event that we are quick to label as ‘traumatizing’ can also turn into something empowering, if we choose to view it in that spirit. A challenge that we can rise up to and triumph over (with great effort, no doubt, and sometimes, with great difficulty).

3. POST TRAUMATIC STRESS VERSUS POST TRAUMATIC GROWTH

This reminds me of two very different outcomes/ responses to stress that health psychologist Kelly McGonigal outlined in her book The Upside of Stress. Stress, much like trauma, is something that we are advised to avoid at all costs. Similarly to trauma, stress is viewed as a bad thing, so bad in fact that it can kill us. But McGonigal argues that stress is harmful only when we view it as harmful. She rightly, and humorously points out that we don’t stress about things that don’t mean much to us. “Stress,” she says, “is something that arises when something you care about is at stake.” Therefore, “stress and meaning are inextricably linked. A meaningful life is a stressful life.” And “you are more likely to feel a victim to your stress,” she argues, “when you forget the context it is unfolding in - the purpose.”

Her advice? Don’t avoid stress. Allow it to awaken courage, connection and growth - also known as… “post traumatic growth.”

4. FROM VICTIMS TO CREATORS

In The Way of Integrity author Martha Beck writes that “creativity is the opposite of violence.” This is a point that I resonate with as a creative writer. Beck makes a distinction between the mindset of a victim and a creator. The victim says: the situation is unbearable and I am helpless; the creator asks themselves: This situation is messed up. What can I create from it?

Beck suggests that if we can find a way to see ourselves as creators, regardless of the situation, we can turn any drama into empowering dynamics. This is a process that my friend Andrea calls “spinning shit into gold.”

What I personally like about this approach is that it puts me in the driver’s seat of my life. It’s the healthy middle ground between two extremes where I acknowledge my wound, but ultimately ask myself: how can I turn this disadvantage to an advantage and an opportunity for growth?

I won’t lie to you. It is not easy. It is often a painful process. No wonder many choose to avoid doing the work. But what I have found is that trying to bury my pain will only make it worse. It means that my unresolved trauma will drive every ‘triggering’ decision and interaction I make in the present, subconsciously. By contrast, when I write about my wounds honestly, it is not to indulge them, but quite the opposite: to honour and release them. And like a phoenix that rises from the ashes, I want to allow a new Self to emerge from this experience. Someone who has no doubt experienced hardships, but someone who, thanks to those very hardships, is the resilient and loving parent that she is today.

And this is what I try to model to my daughters.

Until further thoughts arise on this subject, I want to leave you on a hopeful note. A little story

Last week, right after our first orthodontist appointment (that was a strain on my modest budget), this is what my daughter said to me as we were locking our bikes: “Mum, I just have a strong feeling about you. You are going to be one of the greatest writers. You are already that writer, only people don’t know it just yet. But I do.” I was holding back tears. There is no one else in the world whose opinion is more important to me than my daughters’. But my daughter’s words echoed the same unwavering confidence I had in her when she presented me with a detailed plan of how she was going to study law in Oxford. “I have no doubt that you’ll succeed,” I said to her. And I wasn’t lying.

Imola Zsitva writes The Art of Lite Living