How to be resilient after you experience a trauma or loss
What a bouncing ball can teach you about life after tragedy
Newsflash: life can be hard – sometimes soul-crushingly hard. And rarely do our difficulties get wrapped up in a pretty little bow like at the end of a TV sitcom. Still, experiencing devastating events or losses doesn’t mean your only choices are to break like an egg, or lay down like a beanbag and give up on the rest of your life. I believe we all have a third choice. I believe we can all choose to bounce.
What does bouncing have to do with living after feeling devastated?
Let’s start by looking at the word “resilience,” one of my favorite words. The reason I love that word so much is because it comes from the Latin word “resilire,” which means, “to spring back or rebound.” Think about that. When something hard happens, we can spring back.
That doesn’t mean we can “spring back” to exactly how and where we were before the traumatic experience. We can’t. By definition, surviving a traumatic experience or loss changes you. You will never be the exact same person you were before the event. Your life will never pick right back up where it was before and continue on the same trajectory.
But you can rebound and discover in yourself new wisdom, new compassion, and new strength (maybe more strength than you ever thought you had). The bounce is growth. Now, you might be thinking, “Screw growth. I just want my old life/love/family/friend back.” And I’d agree. I wish life allowed us to rewind and rewrite our tragedies, our losses, and our mistakes. I wish.
Ode to the super ball
This idea of springing back into a new trajectory makes me think of the super balls we played with as kids. Remember them? What happened when you threw them to the ground? They didn’t break like an egg. They didn’t sit there like a beanbag. They bounced. In fact, the harder you threw it (a.k.a. the bigger the trauma), the higher they would bounce back. All the energy from the “trauma” of hitting the ground was transferred to their elastic guts and released in an explosion of growth.
But if you remember, that explosion never sent the ball in an exact, predictable trajectory right back into your hand. It wasn’t a yo-yo. If your super ball experience was anything like mine, that ball flew off in new, unpredictable directions. In fact, trying to catch it was half the fun because I never knew exactly where it was going to bounce next. The possibilities of where it would end up were virtually limitless.
Life after traumatic experiences provides us that same opportunity. You can be a super ball. You can respond to the hard things that happen to you with an emphatic, intentional bounce. Where that bounce takes you, you may not be able to predict. It might even take a few bounces to figure out the right place to land. And here’s another important point; we’re talking about a bouncing ball here, not a rocket ship. Just when the ball reaches the top of its bounce, it inevitably starts falling back to the ground. And so it goes for us survivors. One moment you feel like you’re on the rise, and the next moment you feel yourself sinking back down. Each time you hit bottom, the force of the fall feels like a new trauma (or a terrifying, heart-wrenching revisit to the original trauma).
When you do finally come to a rest and the energy of the original trauma is exhausted, you’ll find that where you land will be different than where you started. You’ll be different, the world around you will be different, and how you view that world will most certainly be different. And, like the super ball, You. Will. Not. Be. Broken.
Important note
Before you think I’m reducing life after a traumatic experience or great loss to simple platitudes like, “Come on, look on the bright side. You have all these possibilities in front of you.” HARDLY. The kind of growth I’m talking about doesn’t come right away. It can be agonizingly slow and heart-breakingly exhausting. It requires the courage of a warrior and the self-compassion of a saint.
Even the strongest, most resilient warriors don’t necessarily bounce back right away or in a constant upward direction. Take another look at that super ball. If you could watch it bounce in slow motion, you’d see that there’s a moment when all the force of the throw flattens it to the ground. That’s where the energy collects.
If it were never flattened to the ground, it would never bounce. Adjusting to life after traumas and losses works the same way. You have to allow yourself to feel flattened because the flatness is where the transition to growth can happen…if we let it.
Help yourself bounce
While allowing yourself to feel flattened is important, there are things you can do to make your eventual bounce more likely and more fulfilling. This is not an exhaustive list, and I’d welcome your comments about how you’ve helped yourself bounce after a traumatic experience or loss.
Take care of yourself physical, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. (Check out my blog full of ideas on ways to do this.)
Seek out a therapist you feel comfortable and safe with. Building a therapeutic relationship with a professional can provide important support, opportunities to challenge old beliefs that may not be helping you now, and a chance to learn and practice new skills related to bouncing.
Train yourself to look for good and beauty. (Read my blog about this.)
Surround yourself with supportive people who can lift you up, keep up with your ever-changing trajectory, and prevent you from careening through a plate glass window. (Check out my blog about “foxhole friends.”)
Your bounce is your business
While you don’t have to bounce alone, your bounce is your business. That’s why the most important part of learning to bounce is giving yourself permission to be exactly where you are. Avoid the temptation to judge yourself or feel embarrassed or ashamed by the shape of your bounce. Everyone’s bounce looks different and goes in different directions, at different speeds, to different heights.
At the end of the day, nobody – not your therapist, not your family, not your friends, nobody – has the right to judge your response to a trauma or loss. Your response is yours and yours alone. You get to decide how you respond to your situation; how and when you begin bouncing. And you get to take the credit for any hard-won growth you experience.
About the author
Dave Wyner is a Licensed Professional Counselor, National Certified Counselor, Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, and Certified Grief Counseling Specialist with a practice in Louisville, Colorado called A Path Forward Counseling. He’s passionate about helping people rebuild their lives and thrive again after painful losses or traumatic experiences. His abiding desire is to help people affected by trauma and grief tap into their own strength, courage, and resilience in order to find meaning and purpose in their lives. In addition to traditional office-based counseling, he also offers equine-assisted psychotherapy with a herd of six horses at a small, private ranch. In his spare time, Dave enjoys hiking the beautiful Front Range with his wife and dog, nature photography, and catering to the two cats who graciously allow him to live in their house.