Growing Better Together
The Power of Hopes, Dreams and Aspirations
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, trauma results from an event, series of events, or circumstances that adversely effects a person’s mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.
Trauma is an equal opportunity employer, affecting the lives of people across the spectrum of human existence. Trauma is no respecter of persons. Impacting every generation, irrespective of age, gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or gender expression.
Trauma crisscrosses daily life showing up in families, relationships, workplaces and community spaces. The root causes are as diverse as the people who inhabit the world. A few of the more common causes include:
- Acts of violence
- Abuse
- Neglect
- The death of a loved one
- The loss of a friend
- Gun violence
- Mass shootings, and
- Emotionally harmful experiences.
Regardless of when, where and how the exposure occurs, the aftermath and consequences of trauma can be disturbing, unsettling, and harmful. Leaving many children, youth and teens ill-equipped to grapple with issues beyond their years.
Being ill-equipped is how the story begins, but that’s not how it ends. The challenges and struggles children, youth and teens face provides an opportunity to share insight about a topic near and dear to my heart – Post Traumatic Growth.
The sharing of information is based on my lived experience and hard-earned wisdom. This article presents lessons learned, evidence-based research, and practical insight to support the heart-centered contributions of parents, caregivers, and adoptive parents dedicated to helping children, youth, and teens thrive.
What Is Posttraumatic Growth?
Post traumatic growth refers to the positive change that occurs as a result of struggling with challenging life circumstances. Unlike resilience, which is the ability to bounce back from adversity, post traumatic growth hinges on the emergence of two things:
- A shift in perspective and
- An optimistic attitude about your future, the people you interact with, and the world in which you live.
There is a palpable and substantive difference between resilience and post traumatic growth. We often equate resilience with the ability to bounce back, like memory foam to the original shape we occupied before experiencing a challenging situation. But in bouncing back, we may or may not experience a change in thoughts, attitude, and behavior.
On the other hand, post traumatic growth is like a power boost. Something that produces a sustainable inner shift which empowers us to experience a change in thoughts, attitude, behavior, intention and inner strength.
What’s Post Traumatic Growth Got To Do With It?
Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, who pioneered the concept in the 1990s, identified five key areas where people often experience posttraumatic growth. Those areas include:
- Increased Personal Strength.
- Improved Relationships and Social Connections
- New Perspectives on Life
- A Greater Sense of Purpose and Meaning, and
- Increased Spiritual Growth.
The evidence-based factors supporting posttraumatic growth include:
Supportive Relationships – Consistent emotional support from family, friends, teachers, mental health professionals and peers makes a difference. A secure environment where a child feels safe and supported helps them process trauma constructively.
Healthy coping mechanisms – Encouraging the use of coping strategies like problem-solving, mindfulness, breathwork, journaling, creative expression and participation in sports, can help children, youth and teens manage their emotional responses to challenging life circumstances.
Open communication – Being able to talk openly in a supportive, empathetic, and non-judgmental environment can help children, youth and teens make sense of their experiences, and
Positive role models – The exposure to adults or peers who share a similar lived experience and have grown from it can serve as inspiration, showing that it’s possible to thrive after hardship.
During my stay in foster care I learned it’s easy to fall into the habit of operating on auto-pilot without focus or intention when these evidence-based factors are lacking.
The Power of Hopes, Dreams and Aspirations
As a high schooler I excelled academically, but I lacked a sense of identity. I orbited through life as a ball of confusion. Tethered to habits that did not reflect my true and authentic self. Totally disconnected and out of sync with my unspoken hopes, dreams and aspirations.
As I inched my way towards the end of a stay in a group home for girls, I realized the caregivers during my adolescent and teen years never asked what I wanted to do with my life. No one asked what I planned to do when I turned 18. On the other hand, my anxious preoccupation with fear, survival, and aging out, thwarted my ability to think about the future.
In the absence of open communication, healthy coping mechanisms, and a role model or mentor to call my own, I fell into a pattern of committing senseless errors and mistakes. But one day I discovered my repeat performance arose from habits etched into memory by the adverse effects of trauma.
Researchers and mental health professionals are lining up in droves to talk about what I knew back in the day — When we experience trauma our brains do not function like they normally do. The exposure deprives us of the ability to break free of learned helplessness fueled by dysfunctional behavior.
We Become What We Behold
While there are many paths children, youth, and teens can take to change the trajectory of their lives, at the end of the day we become what we behold. I embraced education as a tool to ascend to higher ground. My love of learning and self-education fueled by intrinsic motivation empowered me to believe I could fulfill my dream of living a better life than the one dealt by adversity, hardship, and trauma.
The day I synched up with my dream of living a better life I experienced a shift in perspective about myself, the people in my life and the world in which I lived.
One of my favorite authors, Brené Brown, in her book Rising Strong: The Reckoning, The Rumble, The Revolution, said:
“We must never forget, we are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings. We craft love from heartbreak, compassion from shame, grace from disappointment, courage from failure. Showing up is our power.”
My lived experience in winning the war against trauma bears witness to a simple truth —The call to live a life of significance does not discriminate, or come with an expiration date.
Our hopes, dreams, and aspirations thrive as unrelenting gifts of the spirit in the midst of family separation and loss.
Insight for Cultivating Increased Personal Strength
If I could roll back the hands of time, I’d offer the following insights to the resource families I lived with:
- It’s never too soon to ask about our hopes, dreams and aspirations.
- It’s never too late to empower us to see new possibilities by helping us break the code of silence obscuring the truth about who we are — Beautiful, Powerful and Creative.
- It’s never too early to nourish the seeds of greatness embedded in our DNA.
Our hopes, dreams and aspirations are the internal motivators of sustainable life change. Delving into the depths of this dynamic trio offers a practical tool for breaking the code of silence obscuring the brilliance of untapped gifts and talents.
Children, youth and teens deserve to be seen, heard and understood, no matter what. There are many ways you can begin laying the foundation for the emergence of post traumatic growth.
- Is there an evidence-based factor you can amplify to bring about a shift in perspective among the children, youth or teen in your care?
- Is there a safe and demonstrative story you can share to help your child embrace the benefit of adopting an optimistic outlook about their future?
- What’s your take on the use of positive affirmations?
An affirmation is a simple but powerful statement created to strengthen the connection between thoughts and behavior. Back in the day I discovered affirmations have the power to shape outcomes. With the popularity of cellphones here’s something to consider.
You can empower your child by inviting them to create and enter a positive affirmation into their cellphone with periodic reminders throughout the day. It’s a practical and creative way to increase their optimism and personal strength.
Post traumatic growth is not only possible. It’s transformative. It can help children, youth and teens shape the narrative of their lives from one of victimhood to one of empowerment and healing.
Here’s to Growing Better Together!
Lady D is a trauma survivor, foster care system alumni, and woman of faith who leads by example as a parent, colleague and advocate of transformational life change. Her writing extends the reach of the African Proverb, “Each One, Teach One” by encouraging and inspiring trauma survivors to embrace themselves as a gift to the world and masterpiece in the making.
For more information visit www.flytetimepublications.com
or Amazon.com to purchase Volume 1 of the Life Change Series.
Leave a Comment