1 Thing No One Tells You About Life After Trauma

Two little words have taken social media by storm: Me Too. A campaign started by activist Tarana Burke and made viral by actor Alyssa Milano, the Me Too movement gave voice, through stories and shares, to countless survivors of sexual violence.

At least part of the reason for the collective impact of Me Too was that there did not seem to be a lot of parsing about whether one bad experience was worse than another, or whether one industry or individual had more of a right to speak. Rather, a sudden conversation about sexual harassment in the entertainment industry quickly became a larger one about sexual harassment, assault and abuse in every field and in everyday life, all around the world. In this way, the words "Me Too" revealed the devastating, overwhelming magnitude of the problem and, at the same time, they communicated what may be the most powerful message of all: "You are not alone."

[pullquote align='center']Many people feel isolated with similar troubles, unaware that they are not as alone or as different as they think.[/pullquote]

I know this because, as a clinical psychologist, most of my clients are women and men who, almost as long as they can remember, have suffered from feeling alone. Most come to my office because they have experiences — including, but not limited to, sexual abuse — that they feel they have no one to talk to about, or they fear no one else will understand. As a result, I spend my days behind closed doors hearing about events that, often, have taken place behind closed doors, too. One thing I have learned is that many, many people feel isolated with similar troubles, unaware that they are not as alone or as different as they think.

In the middle of the twentieth century, psychoanalyst Heinz Hartmann suggested that normal development takes place in what he called an "average, expectable" environment. Something like what pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott referred to as a "good-enough" upbringing, the average, expectable environment is a home — or a school or a neighborhood or a community — where there is enough safety, enough food, enough affection, enough peace, enough supervision, enough love, and at least one good-enough parent or adult who cares. Yet, ironically, the average, expectable environment that Hartmann envisioned may be neither average nor expectable.

These are the most common adversities that children and teens face everyday: alcoholism or drug abuse in the home; death of a parent or sibling; divorce; bullying; emotional, physical or sexual abuse; mental illness in a parent or sibling; neglect; having a parent in jail. Considered individually, each of these experiences may affect only a minority of the population, but considered together under the umbrella of childhood adversity, multiple studies in the United States and around the world suggest that up to 75 percent of youth are exposed to at least one of these stressors by the ago of 20.

These might sound like problems that "other people" have, or ones that reside mostly below the poverty line, yet the landmark study that stunned the medical community with just how prevalent and harmful these early stressors are — the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, begun in the late 1990s and sponsored by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente and conducted by co-principal- investigators Vincent J. Felitti and Robert F. Anda — was an examination of nearly eighteen thousand mostly middle-class families. Of these, nearly two-thirds reported at least one of the aforementioned adversities, and almost half reported two or more.

In his classic, Stigma, sociologist Erving Goffman wrote that "the normals" in a society are those who do not depart from the expected. And after years of listening to men and women whose experiences, in some way or another, have departed from the expected, I cannot help but conclude — as has some research — there may be no more dangerous judgment about experiencing childhood adversity — or any adversity — than the notion that one is not normal because of it.

[pullquote align='center']"You are normal. There is no normal."[/pullquote]

Due to this belief, too many women and men deny themselves friendships and love, as well as full participation in the world, when these are the very things that may help them the most. Or they let people who are not good to them into their lives, not because of some sort of repetition compulsion, but because they feel unworthy of anything more. Or they collapse with relief into the arms of the so‑called normal, only to find out later that those with average and expectable lives have problems, too.

Maybe this is why sometimes I feel an almost desperate urgency to get through to such clients, to convince them that, contrary to everything they believe, and maybe have been told, "You are normal. There is no normal." Sigmund Freud himself said that normality was an "ideal fiction," and that "every normal person is only approximately normal." Or, if you prefer, take it from graphic novelist Alan Moore: "There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person."

It would be nice to be able to say that with a couple of quotes like the ones above, or with a few well-timed, well-crafted interpretations of my own, I have been able to free my clients from judgment that they are something other than normal, from the notion that they will always be alone with their most painful memories. But the fact that they are getting their reassurances from me, a clinical psychologist they have made an appointment with, almost seems like proof of just how abnormal and alone they are.

Here is where I struggle with the limits of being a therapist the most. For the most part, the Harvey Weinsteins of the world do not come to my office for help, and neither do the alcoholic parents or the predatory coaches or the abusive siblings or the school bullies. Those who come to me are those who have been harmed. They are the ones who wait in waiting rooms and pay the bills and receive diagnoses of depression or anxiety or insomnia or PTSD, not because they are indeed abnormal but because they are human and these are common sequelae of adversity — and even a part of overcoming it. As the American Psychological Association makes plain, "the road to resilience is likely to involve significant emotional distress."

Adversity is everywhere, and I say that not to accept its frequency or diminish its meaning, but to strengthen its power to unite us. When we include the voices of many different individuals and adversities together, it becomes a conversation in which we must conclude we are not alone in feeling outside the average and expectable. It becomes a conversation that forces us to reconsider what normal — or average and expectable — even means.

[pullquote align='center']Adversity is everywhere, and I say that not to... diminish its meaning, but to strengthen its power to unite us.[/pullquote]

Because I have wrestled with how to do this within the four walls of a therapy office, I wrote book about how common adversity is — and about what a complicated struggle resilience is too. As I worked on it, the question I was asked most often was this one: "Where will you find people to write about?"

"They are everywhere," I would say, "hiding in plain sight as doctors, artists, entrepreneurs, lawyers, activists, teachers, students, friends, partners, parents, you name it."

Every once in a while, the listener seemed genuinely taken aback, as if what I was saying could not possibly be correct. But more often than not, I received a surprised but knowing look, even a slight smile that hinted at something like, "Me too."

Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of education at the University of Virginia. She is the author of THE DEFINING DECADE: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now (Twelve; 2012), and SUPERNORMAL: The Untold Story of Adversity and Resilience, out now.