The Trauma of Struggle

Hindy* is not a troubled child in the conventional sense of the word. There is no major trauma in her life that has turned her world upside down and necessitated professional intervention. But Hindy is struggling. Her social situation is precarious, with some days better than others. She stands on the outskirts of her class’s social circles, longing for someone to let her in. On a good day, someone does; on a bad day, they mock her. Her focus and organization is abysmal and she therefore struggles to follow the daily lesson, constantly falling behind and throwing her hands up in frustration. There are more pieces to the puzzle of Hindy’s struggle, but they still don’t add up to a dramatically challenging situation. So when the subject about helping Hindy comes up in meetings between parents and school faculty, the options are usually dismissed. After all, Hindy is managing. She is doing okay, most of the time. She has problems, but not major enough to necessitate intervention because, after all, she is managing. She’ll get by. Hopefully.?

With so much deep trauma and severe struggle in the world, it is no wonder that Hindy’s parents eschew professional intervention for their daughter. They look around at a world of sorrow and know that Hindy’s troubles are nowhere near that level.?

The thing that Hindy’s parents don’t realize, though, is that often, the struggle itself is the cause of its own trauma. When a child goes through the entire duration of their formative years struggling, the result is often an ongoing trauma that is extremely difficult, stunts a child’s growth, and can cause long term repercussions.?

There is a concept called white knuckling. Often used in the field of addiction, white knuckling occurs when an addict who is attempting sobriety but is determined to rely on willpower to overcome their addiction. Instead of doing all the deep inner work necessary and instead of creating a new life for themselves, they ignore the roots of their issues and take each situation as it comes. When temptation arises, they grit their teeth and hold onto their self-control? ever so tightly,? until the urge passes and they can breathe again. Think about how tightly you hold onto the bar of the roller coaster as it navigates the most terrifying plunge of the ride. If you are brave enough to open your eyes and look at your hands, you will notice your knuckles are white from the effort of gripping so tightly.?

This might work for the addict in the short term and in the moment—as he does resist temptation—but it is so incredibly hard and often doesn’t work long term. It takes everything out of him to hang onto that willpower long enough for the pull to pass. And then he has to do it again every time. He’s pushing through mountains and using up all of his emotional reserves in the process. He might brush away people who encourage him to seek help, because so far he is managing. And yet, his life could be so much more bearable, he could have so much space and energy for bigger and better things if he weren’t constantly clutching that safety bar. Imagine if, instead of waiting for each giant wave to come and then surfing it while holding on for dear life to his errant surfboard, he could restore the ocean itself to a state of tranquility.?

This is analogous to our fictional Hindy and so many real children just like her. Yes, she might be managing, but at what cost? She is white knuckling her way through her childhood, expending enormous amounts of emotional energy just to confront each problem and get through it. What a tremendous service it would be to her if the adults in her life would only work together to get to the root of her struggle and guide her toward the tools that would help her uproot it!

It’s an unfortunate reality that I see often in my work, where people of all ages refuse to take care of their problems because they feel they are managing. There are three major flaws with this approach:

Firstly, and this is so important for all of us to understand, is that often, the greatest trauma a child can experience is not a single overwhelming trauma, but rather the trauma of ongoing struggle. Never having that safety net of a solid and secure foundation, the sheer difficulty of getting through life is traumatic and also holds the child back from truly thriving. Because she is constantly facing failure and struggle (and even getting berated by those around her) she can never maintain the necessary confidence to strive further. She’s treading water—barely—and because she is not drowning, no one is throwing her a lifeline or jumping in to rescue her. But if we leave her treading water all these years, she will soon grow exhausted—and she won’t actually learn how to swim. Looking back at her life, the child won’t have a single major trauma to point to as the cause of her misery, but she will have been set back tremendously by this ongoing cycle of struggle.

Second, this cycle is unnecessary because it could be avoided by addressing the root and getting the child the help she needs. When the struggle itself is traumatic, we are doing a tremendous disservice by not addressing the root of the struggle. We have to recognize, and then pass onto our child, that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can stop the cycle. Like the age-old science experiment with vinegar and baking soda, if there is too much baking soda in the bottle, adding vinegar will cause it to explode. We can attempt to ward off the explosion by carefully adding vinegar, just a little bit at a time, constantly in fear that the next drop will set off the explosion, or we can clean out the baking soda from the jar, so that life, when it happens, as it inevitably will, won’t cause an explosion. There are answers out there. Let’s find them for our children’s sake.?

And third, going through life this way is unsustainable. Children growing up in a state of unease might stumble through childhood somewhat upright, but they often fall apart in adulthood. Growth only comes when we’re at peace with ourselves, and a child who white knuckles through life misses so many opportunities for growth because their every fiber is focused on just holding on. Missing opportunities for growth leads to stunted emotional development into adulthood. These children have never fully discovered themselves, never fully embraced all they could be, and this trauma impacts their adulthood and their functioning and maturity in a very real way.?

To summarize, a childhood full of struggle is traumatic, avoidable and unsustainable. When we see our child struggling, we must not wait until they hit rock bottom and then employ every resource out there to pick them up. We need to act now, with compassion and alacrity, to get them help that will dig deeper into the root of their struggles and give them the tools to cope. When we are proactive and responsible, we will B”H soon see our child swim through the sea of their life with sure and strong strokes that will carry them far.?