Hannah Keeley addresses Eleven from Stranger Things, arguing that instead of making sense of trauma, you can reframe past pain into strength. You become more compassionate, more powerful, and able to move forward.
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If I could coach 11 for one minute. Sometimes with a traumatic childhood, we spend time going back, trying desperately to make sense out of a situation that doesn't make any sense, because parents should be nurturing to their children. But we know the shoulds don't always happen. When they don't, we can't make sense of it. Instead of trying to make sense out of our past, why don't we just make good out of it? It's a process called reframing. We can take the situation that was painful, traumatic, and then we can create something that helps us move forward. If I could take that pain, instead of making it something that damaged me, I could turn it into something that created me. It created me to be stronger, more powerful, more compassionate, kinder. By reframing this traumatic childhood, now we're empowered to go forward instead of going back.