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“Hard times” do not make for strong people. Not strong women or strong men. “Hard times” make for damaged people that are in need of healing. What’s more, when someone is damaged and does not receive understanding and support from their community, if the feedback they get is more like “walk it off” and less like “I’m here to help”, that damage is likely to continue to grow and put them in an early grave.

We know this from quite a lot of studies, but let’s look at two of those.

Back in 1998 Dr Felliti gave a questionnaire to thousands of medical patients of all varieties in San Diego that asked the patient two sets of questions. The first was had they experienced any of a set of ‘hard times’ as a child, things like physical abuse, sexual assault, neglect, etc. (later becoming the “ACE score”) And the second asked if they had or were suffering as an adult from things like obesity, addiction, depression, etc. The correlation was so dramatic that they had to double check the results. These ‘hard times’, especially when there were multiple ‘hard times’, put these patients at a 1100% increased risk of these negative health outcomes.

What’s more, they expanded the study. When these patents would come in for their next visit the doctors were given a script that went like “I see here on your chart that you experienced [the hard time they mentioned]. I’m so sorry to hear that happened to you. That never should have happened to you. Would you like to talk about it?” About 60% of people did want to talk about it and on average those conversations lasted 5 mins. And for those people that did talk about it, just those 5 mins led to a significant fall in depression and anxiety. And those that were randomly assigned to a therapist to talk about it further, had an even bigger decrease in depression and anxiety.

In conclusion, hard times fuck you up, and community support heals.

https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/s0749-3797(98)00017-8/pdf

And let’s do one more along those lines. Of all the things you can do to increase both your life span and health span, eating well, sleeping well, working out, etc. What do you think has the biggest impact?

A supportive community.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development or “Grant Study” started tracking 724 men in 1938(back before women were included in medical research) and out of the 10–20 predictors used, the most impactful was community. It was the quality of relationships, and very importantly, not just relationships with immediate family, but relationships with those outside the immediate family… community.

https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/

‘Hard times’ damage people. And unacknowledged hard times, and going through hard times without an understanding and supportive community to help you, not only fucks you up, it puts you in an early grave.

“Hard times” ≠ strong people.

HannahMR 1mo ago

We can add some nuance here too! Are all 'hard times' trauma?

Where do we draw the line between ‘hard times’ and trauma? And this is a tough one as it differs from person to person. But there is a difference. I’d define trauma an experience that so overwhelms your nervous systems ability to cope with it that it gets stored in sort of fragments in your brain and nervous system and these fragments are occasionally activated in ways that interfere with your ability to function.

Hard times aren’t necessarily “trauma” it depends on the nervous system of the person experiencing it. It’s complex. And one thing that I find fascinating is that a situation can be traumatic or not depending on whether the person experiencing it is supported by others in their life and doesn’t feel alone. ...it’s sad but fascinating stuff!

What I dislike about the ‘hard times’ meme is that it promotes the, very false, idea that ‘good times’ are bad for the world. That is just about the most backwards thing one could think of.

This life, just existing here, in a body, subject to the confines of time and space, is a difficult life. Nothing additional is needed for character building. In this limited existence we all have a lot of decisions to make on how we spend our limited time and energy.

When we venture into saying that competing with one another, or fighting to get to the top of hierarchy, etc is good for us in some fashion… this is very easy to prove as false. You can checkout the Forest Troop study by Dr. Robert Sapolsky. TLDR: He was studying a troop of Baboons in the 70’s. Via a fluke, all the “alpha males” died off and were never replaced. The troop became more cooperative and stayed that way. And health outcomes for the troop members improved.

Human strength, the human survival strategy is cooperation. One tiger vs one human, the human is lunch. One tiger vs 10 humans, the tiger is lunch. And all that we have as humans, we gained through cooperation.

We really are not wired to hurt one another, we are wired for connection. Violence and hatred, working against one another instead of with each other, damages everyone involved. Ugly behavior damages everyone, not just the victims but the perpetrators as well. Our minds and bodies do not function properly when we are in ugly situations. Our minds and bodies are not built for that. We are built for love, connection, and cooperation. That is how we thrive.

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