http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/he...thanddisorders

[madisgram]

“Perhaps the one most fundamental thing you learn in living through an experience like this is that you can come out the other end of almost anything,” Dr. King said. “You say, ‘Well, it may have crushed me, but I survived.’ ”

byz, thanks for the article. that last sentence sums it all up for me. i believe having adversity/loss/hopelessness about a life event has strengthened me. it forced me to dig myself out of a hole. by "survivng" it enabled me to have more confidence in future upsetting events because i have learned new coping skills and ways to handle things that come my way in life. nothing is constant. for me a lot has to do with how i handle/react/resolve it.

[Perna]

Too, adversity can get the message "what I'm doing isn't working" through to us where other things might not. For me, sometimes adversity is just consequences in an easier to stomach, less personal fashion. Parents and others sometimes try to get messages across when you're young and refuse/can't hear them but later, they show up in other guises. I truly believe the Universe keeps dealing out your lessons until you learn them. I think recovery is just the flip side, getting the lessons finally :-)

[Gus1234U]

it was good to be reminded of Resilency,,, it is another of the skills we can cultivate and appreciate , drag out and use in the little game of surviving life's little trials ... thanks for always being on the lookout , and for thinking of us, to share these little gems,, Byz~ best wishes, Gus

[pachyderm]

In short, the findings suggest that mental toughness is something like the physical strength: It cannot develop without exercise, and it breaks down when overworked. Some people in the study reported having had more than a dozen stressful events, and it showed.

“These people were truly suffering,” Dr. Cohen Silver said, “and we do not minimize in any way the pain of such events when you’re going through them. But it does appear that if you’ve had several such experiences but not too many, you learn something.”