Trauma can reveal personal strength

A couple of years ago the centenary died in Sydney Eddie Jaku, who became known at the end of his life for his biography The happiest man in the world. When reading the memoirs of this Jewish engineer, who in 1938 was arrested by the Nazis and interned in several concentration camps, happiness is conspicuous by its absence. However, his narration serves to illustrate the decision he made in miraculously saving his life. After managing to escape from the concentration camp in the last days of the war, he survived in a cave on snails, slugs and unhealthy water.

Having contracted cholera and typhoid fever, with his last strength he crawled to the road. The North American Army found him. He weighed only 28 kilos and had a 35% chance of survival. In that uncertain state, he made a decision: “I promised myself: if I get out of this, I will be the happiest man in the world. “I will be helpful, I will be kind.”

We don't know if this pact with himself helped Eddie heal, but in the life he would lead in Australia he did everything possible to be friendly and helpful to everyone. Proof of this is that he would live to be 101 years old, receiving awards and recognitions.

In 2019 he declared that he did not hate anyone, despite having lost a large part of his family and friends in the concentration camps, as he preferred to invest his energies in doing everything possible to help his community. Is this an extraordinary case? Or can you be happy after having experienced extreme adversity?

In one of his most memorable phrases, Nietzsche stated: “What does not kill us makes us stronger,” and some contemporary authors support this vision. In his essay Come out of the darkness, The psychologist Steve Taylor analyzed the cases of thirty people who had been awakened to life by an intense trauma.

One of the most shocking is that of the Australian Gill Hicks, a workaholic architect who was a victim of the attacks on the London subway in 2005. She was the last person to be pulled alive from the wreckage of the train and as a result of her injuries she Both legs were amputated. As she began her “second life,” in her own words, she began to value each day, hour, and minute in a totally new way. Perhaps because she had been on the verge of dying, she was finally able to enjoy “every drink of water, every drop of tea or coffee, savoring every bite of food and enjoying every glass of wine.”

In another testimony collected by Taylor, a suicidal man who jumped from the Golden Gate in San Francisco became aware, as he fell, that he wanted to continue living. After learning, in the rescue boat, that he belonged to the scarce 2% who survive the jump, he discovered that the depression that had relentlessly stalked him had disappeared. Suddenly, he felt enormous gratitude toward life that was giving him a new chance.

His transformation fits with the study that psychologist David Rosen carried out in 1975 with the 10 people who, at that time, had managed to survive the fall from the Golden Gate. All of them claimed to have experienced a spiritual awakening during or just after the jump.

These are extreme examples of resilience, a process that neurologist Boris Cyrulnik describes this way: “A trauma has upset the injured person and taken them in a direction they would have liked not to go. However, and given that he has fallen into a current that drags him and takes him towards a cascade of bruises, the resilient person must call on his internal resources (…), he must fight to not let himself be carried away by the natural slope of the traumas.”

Perhaps this is the secret of the people we have talked about: when you surpass the last limits of despair, you discover on the other side a strength and vitality that was anesthetized by the noise of negative thoughts.

The lesson we can draw from these testimonies is that we should be able to appreciate life without needing to be on the verge of losing it. Even if we feel like we are going through a tunnel, it will help us to know that there is light on the other side.

As the existentialist Albert Camus stated: “In the depths of winter I have finally learned that there was an invincible summer in me.”

An unexpected enthusiasm

— One of the most unique stories about adversity was the one published in 2012 by Olivier Bouyssi. After suffering a serious accident in 1988, a transfusion of HIV-infected blood caused him to suffer from several cancers.

— In his book he explains the constant visits to hospitals, as well as the disastrous diagnoses he received. Perhaps it was that provisionality that drove him to live with ferocious joy and enthusiasm.

—We do not know what has happened to Bouyssi since that publication, but we know that for at least a quarter of a century he was Happy against all odds, as his memoirs were titled.

Francesc Miralles is a writer and journalist who is an expert in psychology.

_