I asked a psychologist (Dr. Judith Bernstein) if it's true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and she answered unequivocally, "Trauma never makes you stronger."

In a similar vein, with respect to "there are no atheists in foxholes", A three-tour-of-duty-in-Vietnam captain in the US Army (Harry McMenamin) said, "I was an atheist when I was in Vietnam, and I was in a lot of foxholes. There are atheists in foxholes."

Trauma is like a sunburn. Adversity will give your brain a "tan", letting you handle worse adversity over time, but too much at once and it's trauma. The problem is that the kind of teens who go into these programs are often the equivalent of ghost pale, and get traumatized by even mild adversity.

That’s a good analogy. It also covers the increased sensitivity to additional trauma/adversity that it seems many people can’t understand: If you already have a serious sunburn then just a little more time in the sun, something you could normally handle, can cause a lot of pain and damage.

It also covers the case where repeated sunburns increase ones chances of malignant cancers.

I think you just hit the nail on the head.

My family is forever destroyed from "tough love." I'm in my 50's and we still don't talk except for exchanging cards with the parents at various appropriate times throughout the year. They've apologized, but the scars are very deep.

We grew so distant that it is no longer repairable, and so we at least maintain that very distant relationship. I don't communicate in any way with the siblings since "tough love" taught me to despise them. Obviously I don't despise them any more, but the damage is done, and quite thoroughly.

There are many atheists in foxholes: actually a lot of people lost/lose their faith in a foxhole. How can you think deity exists in any, but especially, a crap situation?

Psychologists mostly mirror the cultural values they're raised in. A lot of historical figures contradict the prevailing narrative.

> A lot of historical figures contradict the prevailing narrative [that trauma never makes you stronger].

I'd argue that the key word here is "trauma"; I think _adversity_ can make you stronger (more disciplined, and more focused), but I think that Dr. Bernstein is using the word "trauma" in its technical, medical, sense, i.e. "Psychological trauma is caused by an adverse experience, or series of experiences, that result in an injury that changes the way the brain functions, impairing neurophysiological, psychological, and cognitive functioning." [0]

[0] https://www.med.upenn.edu/traumaresponse/trauma.html

That's a silly and highly unscientific definition that there is no way of demonstrating outside of "just so stories". Oh, someone had an experience and afterwards have symptoms - it must have been trauma.

There is large heterogeneity in the reaction of individuals to the sane exact experience, and sometimes what initially appears damaging ends up doing the opposite.

I would look up the life history of Temüjin, Viktor Frankl, and others. Seriously. Do a quick web search.

There is a circular definition here. If we define trauma in terms of harmful outcomes, it's bad by definition, but that's arguing semantics and not psychology. The slipperiness comes in when we switch definitions mid-paragraph.

They are the exceptions, that's why we talk about them.

No, they're not. Learn some history. You'll see profiles of many people have that pathway.

You'll also see virtually everyone 300 years ago was exposed to things which would be considered traumatic today. It's how we evolved.

We've got a bad theory of trauma and resilience.

Not all challenges are trauma.

The problem is, it's hard to define where the line is - and the line is different for everyone.

That's why, I think it's important the people who need to go through that should know and decide they want to do it.

As a parent, I would never force my kids to go through that, unless they understand what it implies and they want to.

Post traumatic growth begs to differ.

The heartbreaking suicide rate among veterans begs to differ with your begging to differ.

Because some people react badly means everyone does? Stellar logic there mate.

Trauma itself doesn't make you stronger, but learning to integrate and mitigate the impact of trauma absolutely does.

1. That's an argument from authority.

2. It's called post-traumatic growth, and there's an emerging mass of research on the subject.