Adversity Builds Character, But What Kind?
It is not adversity that builds character. It is what you make of it, and whether someone helps you bear it.
Adversity Builds Character, But What Kind?
The cliché is true, but also misleading.
I recognize this saying from everywhere. From my youth, from coaches, from motivational speakers. Adversity builds character. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. This sounds like consolation, but it is also a dangerous obligation we impose on ourselves.
Because this saying does something cruel: it sanctifies suffering. It says that pain is good as long as you come out stronger. That you should be grateful for what went wrong. That you have no right to feel sorry for yourself if you do not grow from your pain.
The truth is more nuanced. Adversity does indeed do something to your character. But not in the direction the saying suggests. Research on war-traumatized people, refugees, people who have endured great pain, shows that trauma can make you stronger, but also embittered, paranoid, hardened. That depends on many things that have nothing to do with the trauma itself.
The first is support. A person who stays close enough to you not to let you get lost, but far enough to let you breathe. Someone who says: this is awful, and at the same time: you will get through this. Many people do not have that person. They go a different way.
The second is meaning. You must be able to say: this is worse, but it is not pointless. There is something I can learn from this pain that reaches beyond my own suffering. Without meaning, adversity is only adversity. Without meaning it becomes bitterness.
The third is time. Processing adversity is not something you do in a week. Adversity that pushes you directly toward strength without space for grief is adversity you have not processed. You carry that pain with you and later it explodes somewhere else.
What strikes me is that we use this saying to pressure young people. As if you are not allowed to complain, not allowed to grieve, not allowed to be afraid. As if you must accept and function. We use the saying as a club against emotion.
Adversity builds character, yes. But it can just as easily destroy character. It depends on whether you are supported. Whether you can make meaning of what happens to you. Whether you are allowed to feel what you feel without experiencing it as weakness.
The saying is true. But the fuller story is harder, because it first requires acknowledging pain instead of sanctifying it.
Sources: Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger; Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery; research on post-traumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun).
Source: Research on resilience and trauma; interviews with people from crisis zones