Does sufferings make you stronger?

 

In an article in the ST on 1 Dec 2023 "Some Suffering is just suffering, It does not make you stronger", Prof Chong Siow Ann thinks that some traumatic experiences make it difficult for people to "rebuild" themselves into "better human beings". He contends that he could not have fully comprehended the enormous sufferings and anguish of certain of his patients like those who have killed or caused the deaths of their closed ones in moments of delusion or mental incapacity. He also alluded to the immense hellish sufferings of war raining on civilians like the Israel/Palestinian crisis. 

It is widely accepted that post traumatic growth is possible among sufferers who "recast their lives in the most positive ways and extracts new meanings." Prof Chong quoted Victor Frankl who opined that the prisoners of the holocaust who held on to the future and found meaning in life survived less scarred. Prof Chong himself has witnessed that in some of his own patients. 

However he went on to say that not all people can muster enough energy and will to forge this transformation. Here Prof Chong quoted Paul Bloom a Yale developmental psychologist who casts doubt on the prevalence of post traumatic growth calling it the "myth of redemptive suffering". In fact this "myth" may have been a double whammy for sufferers who are expected to recover and come out stronger.

Prof Chong reckoned that people are unique and it isn't fair to impose on his patients this preconceived notion of redemptive suffering. Indeed sometimes he finds it hard to tell his patients who have been through horrendous losses that they could find something positive in their suffering. "Occasionally, their suffering compounded my sense of helplessness and made me wish, like a coward, that I wouldn't have to see them", was how he described his helplessness and how he then lends a listening ear while conveying to them that he too feels their pain.

I think many counsellors like me can relate (be it of milder intensity) when Prof Chong describes how he sometimes finds it difficult to tell his patients to think positive as he himself does not bear that conviction. Sometimes I do feel like a fake when encouraging my counselees to think positive , doubting whether I myself can do so when put in similar dire circumstances. However like how Prof Chong describes it, I think most of them do find some catharsis and relief when they walk out knowing someone feels their pain. 

Probably some statements of redemptive growth will dawn on them when healing takes place over time.