> anything that does not break you, will make you stronger.

Not even remotely true. Plenty of people have to spend years in therapy to undo their parent's trauma.

Let's put it another way, do you think a rape victim in college will have better outcomes than someone who is not raped in college?

The "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" thing is ironically an example of black-or-white thinking which psychologically works to prevent people from dealing with the complexity and nuance of emotion.

It's a positive dismissal.

It makes people weaker.

It is some sort of "cope".

The best counterexample is freezing damage. Each time makes you weaker.

I believe both e.g. participating in war or being a victim of a crime makes you mentally weaker.

Many veterans seems to be the brink of collapse and those people were probably better suited mentally than the average man for ensuring war since they self selected for it? Or maybe less naive people would fare better?

'positive dismissal' seems intuitively useful and i do appreciate the nuance of weakening emotions that can be converted into productive assets with this kind of thinking.

not sure about the rape analogy thou

It isn't useful, it is used to avoid going through a healthy emotional arc.

It is reflective of a society that sees emotions that don't feel productive as "bad" and to make excuses or falsely positive reasons to dismiss them.

The classic example is the British attitude of the "stiff upper lip".

These narratives result in lower happiness, compassion and generally poorer mental health.

Don't let a society that encoded outdated views on emotional health dictate that you shouldn't freely allow emotions to complete their cycle and be expressed.

I truly cant express how bad perpetuating this kind of thinking is on an individual and societal level.

>anything that does not break you

I think in your cases it "broke" them

If we're defining "break" as "weaken," than the old saying is a nearly useless tautology.

Of course things either break you or make you stronger. The unexpected outcome would be for to leave you exactly the way you were before.

ime it's true for most ppl that manage to find another focus in life than their own problems, but yea, therapy is useful.

That's not the only outcome: what doesn't kill you can also leave you diminished or disabled, and may try again.

true

then again it can hardly be denied that a reoccurrence is seldomly an equally devastating experience

Man that stirs up some great memories.

Sometimes memories are great merely for the fact that they're the past ;)