Does Adversity Really Make us Stronger?
You hear it all the time, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”…but it’s actually more common that “What doesn’t kill you wears you down emotionally and just creates depression and anxiety”.
So how do we deal with that?
A problem I always found during my years of depression was when someone would say to me, “don’t worry it will make you stronger”, or “there are people worse off than you”. All that ever did at the time was to make me feel like I was weak and pathetic for feeling the way I was. It didn’t help at all… in fact it made things much worse.
Having said that, what also didn’t help was sympathy. Some people would be very concerned about my state and try to make me feel better by telling me that yes things were bad and it wasn’t my fault and I wasn’t to blame. All that did was make me feel like my state was outside my control, and made me feel helpless.
Maybe I’m just a difficult human, but what did work for me was the very odd person, who ignored my plight and simply made me get out doing something I enjoyed. They didn’t talk about what was bothering me, they just grabbed hold of me and got me doing things that stopped me sitting around feeling sorry for myself…and they made me laugh.
In the end only we ourselves can deal with our problems. I’m not saying therapy or talking about your problems isn’t good, but you need mental space to be able to get out of your head and be able to look at your problems rationally. By the simple act of getting me out and laughing gave me the mental space to be able to look rationally at my problems in my own time and my own way.
So when you see a mate who is down, don’t try and solve their problems…make them laugh.
