10/20/2025
**Trauma doesn’t make people stronger.** It damages their nervous system. It hijacks their digestive tract. It keeps their mind and body trapped in a constant state of alert — always scanning for danger, even when there isn’t any. Trauma rewires the way a person experiences the world. It doesn’t create strength; it forces *survival.* And there’s a huge difference between surviving and thriving.
When people say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” they often don’t realize how dismissive that can sound to someone who’s lived through real trauma. Because the truth is, trauma doesn’t build you up — it breaks you down. It changes the way your brain processes safety, trust, and love. It creates patterns of anxiety, overthinking, people-pleasing, and fear of abandonment. It teaches your body to live in defense mode, ready to fight, flee, or freeze at the first sign of threat.
You might appear strong on the outside — high-functioning, resilient, calm — but inside, your body is carrying the cost of survival. The sleepless nights, the chronic fatigue, the digestive issues, the headaches, the emotional numbness — those aren’t signs of strength. They’re signs of *damage.* They’re the scars left behind from having to stay alert for too long, from living in a world that didn’t feel safe.
To tell someone they’re “stronger” because of their trauma is to overlook the invisible war they’ve fought — and continue to fight — every day. It’s to ignore the cost of rebuilding yourself from pieces, of learning how to trust again, how to breathe without fear, how to love without waiting for pain. Strength doesn’t come *from* trauma. Strength comes from healing — from facing the pain, feeling it fully, and still choosing to move forward.
If you’ve survived trauma, you don’t have to wear it like a badge of honor. You don’t owe anyone proof that it made you better. You have every right to grieve what it took from you. Because healing isn’t about becoming stronger — it’s about learning to feel safe again in a world that once broke you. And that, in itself, is the quietest, most profound kind of courage there is.
