To Be Brave Is To Bring Together Your Broken Pieces To Be Stronger

Life is not always easy. In fact, it is never easy or does not seem so. But we hide much of our suffering in our interior, with the intention of reducing it in the eyes of others. Only we know the exact location of our injuries and how vulnerable they make us. It is only we who can heal them by bringing together each of our broken pieces to become stronger.

Because even if having an experience that breaks us from the inside is undoubtedly one of the most difficult moments that we have to face, it also supposes an opportunity to make ourselves aware of things, to restructure the way we understand. the world and after a while we rebuild again. The question is: How to do it?

“When we cannot change the situation we are facing, the challenge is to change ourselves.”

-Viktor Frankl-

The weight of suffering

No one is immune from suffering. This foreign parasite that comes to interrupt our life from time to time without announcement or invitation. And even if most of the time, we try to run away from it or hide it in the darkest attic, to hide its presence, that does not prevent it from continuing to affect us … and that it is this dark corner. that we have buried continues to exert its influence on us. An influence that, on the other hand, we see less because the darkness prevents us from identifying or anticipating its movements.

The more time our suffering spends in the shadows, the more power it has over us.

Some will make up their negative feelings with fake smiles, others will do a thousand and one activities to not leave themselves a free minute to think and others will lie to themselves with the intention of patching up their discomfort. And we are necessarily one of those people, whether it is occasionally or out of habit.

Despite all the obstacles we want to put on ourselves, sooner or later suffering returns to center stage, with the intention of breaking us down. Whether through physical or emotional pain.

Whether we like it or not, suffering is a part of life. Danger takes place when it becomes heavy and takes so many forms that it extends over time and ends up becoming a lifestyle, permeating our surroundings with a dark gray, almost black color.

In fact, most (not all) of the suffering we experience has developed from an experience of pain, which is nothing more than the experience of losing something or someone we like. So when this loss is not accepted, we resist and persist in making things different, unknowingly giving rise to suffering. A suffering which is at the same time pain and refuge when it begins to rain in the midst of mourning and the water freezes us with sadness to the bones.

The death of a loved one, the breakdown of a relationship, the disappointment of a friend or a farewell are examples of loss and which in the long run make us suffer as if we were stabbed a knife directly in the heart. Wounds that, if not taken care of, will never stop bleeding, turning us into broken pieces that are difficult to put back together.

Dawn of Resilience

While it is obvious that some people develop a disorder or real difficulty because of their suffering, in most cases this is not true. Some are even able to come out strengthened after this traumatic experience. An experience that causes pain, but also that makes them grow and which, in a way, represents a benefit.

A study by Wortman and Silver asserts that there are people who resist life’s assaults with unsuspected strength. The reason lies in their capacity for resilience, through which they manage to maintain a stable balance, without the traumatic and pain experience affecting their performance and their daily life too much.

This leads us to think that we are stronger than what we believe. That even when our strength falters, there is a little ray of sunshine that illuminates us so that we gather our broken pieces together and so we can recompose ourselves. It is the dawn of our resilience, the exact moment when our sorrows and the weight of suffering give rise to the healing power of our strength to resist and recompose us.

“The world is full of suffering but also of surpassing oneself”.

-Hellen Keller-

It is not a question of ignoring what one feels, but of accepting it as a learning of life and going through it with open eyes, so that you can get used to it, just like what happens with l ‘darkness. Even when life hits us with intensity and is able to break us, this ability to feel strong helps us to move beyond what we are going through and to recompose our identity, bringing together our broken pieces one by one.

It is resilience, one of the most beautiful skills that we have and that we should all learn in school. To learn to heal our wounds, to treat them with tenderness and to extract the best learning from them. But how to do it ?

Putting together his broken pieces to rebuild himself

As we have seen, blooming after a storm of pain is possible, but not easy. It is a complex and dynamic process which, as the psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik pointed out, involves not only the evolution of the person but also a process of structuring his own life history. So, there are factors that help stimulate our capacity for resilience and help us put our shattered pieces together to rebuild ourselves, such as:

• Confidence in oneself and in one’s capacity for confrontation.

• Acceptance of their emotions and feelings.
• Having a life goal that makes sense.
• Believing that one can learn not only from positive experiences, but also from negative experiences.
• Receiving social support.

Additionally, as Calhoun and Tedeschi, two of the most researched authors on post-traumatic growth, reported suffering and pain cause us to experience changes not only at the individual level, but also in our relationships and relationships. our philosophy of life.

Facing painful experiences scares us, but escaping them only prolongs our suffering, which mutates into a more dangerous form. True courage is to keep going despite the fear, to move forward when our body is shaking and breaking from the inside.

In life, we need time to take in what is going on and be alone with our suffering. In this solitude, the pause is born which allows us to understand it. It is a question of continuing to walk with big or small steps. Because the person who falls the least is not the strongest person. The strongest is the one who is able to get up stronger after falling.

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