What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger? I Disagree

I’ve started off by providing a *certified BOP* by the lovely Kelly Clarkson. I wanted to put this song here because it is just one example of this rhetoric that is common in our society. Her chorus sings: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Stand a little taller. Doesn’t mean I’m lonely when I’m alone. What doesn’t kill you makes a fighter. Footsteps even lighter.”

Kelly Clarkson wasn’t the origin of the phrase. The German philosopher Freidrich Nietzche originally phrased it as “what does not kill me makes me stronger” in his book Twilight of the Idols (1888). It has become a common phrase and a sentiment that I hear often.

But I’m not sure that’s totally true.

Stress and Resilience

There are plenty of cases where difficult things foster resilience. You fail a test, learn to study harder, and get better. Stressful events have the opportunity to create resilience. Often, it’s how we learn.

There are many theories for stress such as the Yerkes-Dodson Principle, which is the upside-down U-shaped (also known as the bell curve) stress response. They hypothesize that performance will increase with stress up until a certain point in which performance will begin to decrease.

Maybe I’m just at that point. Maybe it’s all just gotten to be too much. Maybe I’m past the peak of the bell curve.

But the connection between science and real life is that I’m living it.

That’s the portion that we tend to forget.

The bell curve isn’t just a graph, it’s the representation of the lives we live. The end of the bell curve isn’t just a data point, it’s the lived experiences.

My Lived Experience

I’ve never met a chronically ill person who desired to be resilient. Who woke up one day feeling lucky that they went through the trauma that made them “strong”. This isn’t to say that they aren’t out there. I’m sure there are many people who can be grateful for what their chronic illness has given them. Someday I might get there. Not today though.

A year into being sick I went to my primary care physician for a wellness checkup. As I told her about my first year of college and all of the things that I was doing and achieving, she applauded me for doing it while dealing with my chronic illness. And for some reason, it made me angry.

I was just doing what I needed to do, I didn’t know anything different. I wasn’t asking to be strong, I was just expected to be. That moment hasn’t left my mind years later.

That sentiment continued as I progressed through my undergraduate program. I was inspiring.

I didn’t ask to be inspiring. I didn’t want to be inspiring. In fact, I resented being inspiring. I wanted my accomplishments to be because of my own will, not in spite of my illness. I can acknowledge now that it was probably both.

One of the problems of becoming sick at 18 years old is that so much of my growing up has been tied to my illness. I have to wonder how much of my resilience is due to the natural process of becoming an adult and how much of it was due to some coping skills I had to develop to deal with having a chronic illness. The unfortunate part is that I’ll never be able to twist apart the tangles of my adulthood. My chronic illness is irreparably and completely tied to my self-image and my perspective on the world. Has that made me a better person? Give me a few years and I’ll let you know.

What hasn’t killed me…

Now there are a few things I know now.

What hasn’t killed me has left me with medical trauma from being gaslit by doctors.

What hasn’t killed me has made me resent my body.

What hasn’t killed me has filled me with anger.

What hasn’t killed me has irreparably changed me.

Unlike Kelly Clarkson, I am not standing taller, and my footsteps are not lighter. I know she wasn’t writing about having a chronic illness, but the point still stands. I do not feel like I am a better or stronger person for having a chronic illness. I am still just surviving.

I often think about the version of me that would have existed without a chronic illness. That was my life for so many years and I find it still haunting me. I know that it isn’t productive, hell, it actively harms my mental health.

But if we’re sticking with the theme: What hasn’t killed me has left me with insurmountable grief for who I used to be.

What does this all mean?

Really, it means that I want people to stop telling me that I am strong.

I’ll probably revisit this article in a few years when I have learned more lessons; lived more years with this illness. Maybe I’ll still hate when I am admired for my resilience, maybe I’ll have learned to embrace it.

But for now, I will go cook dinner. I will go clean my apartment. I will go put away my laundry.

I will do it without ease, but I suppose it hasn’t killed me yet. 😉