Experiencing fear can be traumatic, but it's only by experiencing it that we can lead to deal with it. There is a lot of talk about PTSD now days, which can lead us to thinking that all trauma is bad; but normally results in post traumatic growth, which makes us more resilient.
Most of the time, building resilience is the correct way to look at it. Life is filled with challenges and we don't grow if we don't face them.
Trauma (psychological definition) does not work this way. It's like tearing a muscle. Immediately going back to lifting the same weight you did before just causes more damage. You have to work on healing the muscle, but you need to do it carefully.
But not everyone develops PTSD precisely because they have innate resilience - at least that's how the theory goes. The resilience doesn't come from the trauma.
People respond in varying manners to traumatic stress. Post traumatic growth is simply the other extreme.
For example, some people take traumatic stress at really poorly (PTSD). Some people develop a world outlook to the tune of "well no matter what happens life is looking up from here" (post traumatic growth).
The counselor is looking at the glass half full. You kind of need to be a glass half full person to persist in that line of work.
Also, there's apparently evidence that prior trauma puts you at greater risk of PTSD from subsequent trauma. Which helps explain why different people in more or less the same situation can have very different responses, because of their different experiences earlier in life.
problem is, it's hard to even rationalize that traumatic experience is unimportant, because a hightened awareness and prediction of danger really can help prevent recurrence
I think a lot of success in life is actually turning trauma into a motivating force. That doesn't really help to resolve the trauma, but it does create an illusion of safety you can buy into, often helping to provide a space for processing.
I struggle with just how much traumatic processing is worthwhile. Like if you accept that everyone in life was always doing the best that they could in the moments in which they hurt you or themselves, or you replay the traumatic events and see them through your adult eyes, or if you try to recontextualize them some other way, at what point do you just put down the trauma and live?
Trauma comes in waves. It never really goes away as far as I can tell, you just develop a new relationship to it.
I am reminded continually of Dune.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
- Frank Herbert, Dune
I am continually reminded that there are deities in the South Eastern religions which have angry forms when they are unfed and benevolent forms when they are fed. The same deity can be a source of fear or a source of power depending on your relationship to it.
A concept I've thought a lot about recently is, instead of turning away from anger and fear, feeding my anger and fear until they are no longer angry gods but instead, benevolent beings who help me to contextualize my reality. I have found it is possible, at least for me, to do this without any outward expression of fear or anger, only inner acceptance that those feelings are real, valid, and not something that serves me at this time.
I'm not sure if these ramblings are helpful, but I hope you find peace on your journey, at least if that's what you're looking for <3.
The point is, people with PTSD suffer and their lives are influenced significantly. They have harder time to keep jobs due to symptoms, their relationships are influenced as they are harder to be around, they are more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, they generally need help.
Other people experiencing post-traumatic growth does not offset all that. It does not make for losses and answer to "is it overall beneficial for people to go through that" is still no.
Counselor answer suggests yes and that is what people take issue with. Whether one can have PTSD and post traumatic growth at the same time is different question.
This is certainly wildly untrue for many sorts of trauma. What doesn't kill you can leave you less capable, weaker, more vulnerable, etc...
You might have to be resilient to deal with the trauma without collapsing, and then find that you still have to be resilient to deal with your new, permanently changed life after the fact too.
I don't know if there are any controlled studies, but there's plenty of informal evidence that naive people cope poorly with traumatic events. Resilience is a product (though admittedly not a guaranteed product) of experience.
I’d like to add that this also sometimes goes along with either being in denial of having experienced trauma or convincing oneself that the experience “was not that bad after all”.
PTSD isn't universal. Not everybody that experiences trauma will develop PTSD. So it's not a matter of "you have PTSD but at least your outlook on life has improved."* Rather, sometimes with some people, trauma won't induce PTSD but will cause post-traumatic growth. Research suggests there is a correlation between PTSD and post-traumatic growth, but it's not a hard and fast rule.
Furthermore there are many factors in play. The nature of the trauma and the predisposition of the person experiencing the trauma both seem to play a big role in whether or not post-traumatic growth is likely to occur. People with social support networks or spirituality are more likely to experience post-traumatic growth. Perhaps for related reasons, trauma that is systematic or collective (such as being a prisoner of war) is more likely to induce post-traumatic growth than trauma which is personal or individual (e.g. sexual assault.)
(Furthermore, no matter how distasteful the possibility may seem, it is possible that post-traumatic growth can take people past whatever their baseline was prior to the inducement of PTSD.)
In my experience it's kinda the opposite. Realizing that stuff was trauma helped move on from it. Until I had a framework for why a fairly-normal-sounding experience was affecting my personality so much, I just felt like I was going crazy. It helped a lot to realize that ruminating on it was how trauma works: its purpose is to figure out how to avoid a recurrence at all costs, including warping one's behavior in aberrant ways.
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