\u201cWhat doesn\u2019t kill you makes you stronger.\u201d That was Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s idea, way back in his 1888 book Twilight of the Idols. <\/p>\n
As someone who studies trauma and resilience<\/a>, I hear this idea all the time, and people often repeat it to me as if it is fact. <\/p>\n But 1888 was a long time ago. Some readers of Psychology Today might know that was before psychology truly took off as a scientific discipline, which didn\u2019t happen in earnest until the second half of the 20th century.<\/p>\n This was a data-free hypothesis. It\u2019s been a sticky one, admittedly. Nietzsche\u2019s idea fits in with the concepts of \u201crugged individualism\u201d and the \u201cself-made\u201d person that are so popular among certain segments of society, especially in the capitalist countries of the global north.<\/p>\n If you think about it for even a second, as a scientific hypothesis, this idea starts to fall apart almost immediately. The more really bad things in your life (that stop short of killing you), the stronger you are? How would that even work? Studies support the exact opposite finding\u2014the more bad stuff in your life, the harder it is to acquire strengths and the more likely you are to experience negative outcomes, from post-traumatic stress disorder<\/a> to heart disease<\/a>. <\/p>\n