Trauma: You Are Not Broken, You Are More Valuable

Trauma. In its wake, especially with childhood trauma, our experience can leave us feeling like something is wrong with us or that we are broken or less than in some way.

Bad things happened to us and we believed it was because we were bad or deserved it. As young people we did not have a vast world view and lacked maturity and flexibility in our thinking to see that it was the situation that was broken, not us.

We saw ourselves as less valuable than others —something to hide and cover up for fear of being found out. I must be bad, damaged, and less valuable because this happened to me.

The truth is that being a trauma survivor deepens our human experience, not diminishes it. Experiencing trauma makes us more empathetic and compassionate to the suffering of others because we know firsthand how it feels to hurt. People who are more empathetic and compassionate are better able to join and support others who are struggling because we have walked that path ourselves.

Additionally, from our traumatic experience we gained wisdom, strength, and perseverance. We learned how to survive the abuse, neglect, loss, accident, illness, disaster, violence, discrimination or bullying by developing strengths to overcome or move through the adversity. All of these attributes make us more valuable as humans, not less.

How did you survive? Take a moment to reflect on this question. Your traumatic experience caused you to develop strengths to survive. Often, the negativity bias of the brain prevents us from focusing on the strengths we were forced to grow and instead focuses only how we were harmed. Reflecting on the strengths that we developed is part of the post-traumatic growth process.

Post-traumatic growth refers to positive psychological changes that can develop as a result of struggling with and overcoming adversity or trauma. Research in post-traumatic growth suggests that individuals can experience personal growth, transformation, and positive changes following a traumatic event. Post-traumatic growth does not negate the distress or challenges caused by the trauma; instead it acknowledges that individuals can experience transformation and positive outcomes alongside the negative effects.

Stop discounting your value and stand in the truth of who you are— more valuable, not less.

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