Thread by @dgurdasani1

I've felt like this all my life. Sometimes the grief of the past & the shadow it casts is overwhelming. I've had to adapt to survive - and it's been painful. It's shaped who I am - and allowing myself to feel the grief is what made me who I am. A thread on adversity and trauma🧵

https://twitter.com/HZiauddeen/status/1505552603383582726

I've faced a lot of adversity and trauma through my life. This doesn't mean I'm not privileged in many ways. I am. I had choices that many people wouldn't have had in my place. But I also worked hard to get where I am. And it was a struggle. All through my life.

I've met and loved others like me, who also faced adversity. In my experience, people respond to adversity in two ways - they either internalise it, and the grief, and it hits their sense of self so they struggle to define themselves and their own intrinsic value.

Their value depends on others, and on what they achieve. They're never good enough. They're never deserving. They're always on a self-inflicted journey on a hamster wheel going from one achievement to the next, but never quite feeling whole.

Internalised societal norms make this worse - especially for women who're expected to put up with abuse, or being devalued constantly. We all have these voices in our heads. The 'be a good girl', 'work hard to impress your value on them'. It can feel endless and exhausting.

The other variety I've met are people who deal with it by never making themselves vulnerable to anyone, and inflicting pain on others when their own sense of self is threatened. They seek emotional connections but can't make them, because they don't even have a model for how.

They often end up becoming abusive in their relationships where they so desperately want to feel valued & connected, but their fragile sense of self destroys everyone who cares and loves them. Because they lash out every time their sense of sense is threatened.

They don't allow themselves to feel pain. Because for them pain and vulnerability is weakness. Toughness is strength.

Which course we take depends a lot on who we are intrinsically, early life experiences, & how vulnerable we are able to be. Privilege also plays a part.

Through everything I've been through, the one thing I've realised is that vulnerability is real strength. To grow as you adapt, you need to process your pain. You need to trust people who love you, and be able to ask for help. That means making yourself vulnerable.

It's hard- because vulnerability also means feeling. Feeling every bit of grief. Not burying it. But working through it. I was lucky to have people who helped me do this. Created a safe place for me, where I could fall apart before building myself up again. Every single time.

And it is a matter of rebuilding every time. Recognising the grief you feel for a version of you that no longer exists. Feeling compassion for that person, but also letting them go, because you have changed. It doesn't mean becoming harder, just more informed. About who you are.

Vulnerability makes you stronger. Toughness isn't strength- it's what keeps you from growing, and trusting, and loving - yourself and others. Your pain always catches up with you. So it's much better to embrace it, feel it, and accept it. Because it's part of who you are.

You're a product of everything you've been through. But who you become is a choice you make- you're not helpless in that. You can choose to shut yourself down, or you can choose to survive, but in a way that keeps who you are alive. It's a journey of self-discovery & acceptance.

Self-compassion is key. Loving all those versions of you through the pain, the grief, the often misplaced guilt and the shame. You can choose to hold onto the people who love you, rather than lashing out at them, and losing everything you love.

Our trauma and adversity are an inextricable part of who we are- we cannot cut them out. But never listen to the voices who tell you that they make you weak. They don't. You can choose to move from surviving to living, but it' hard when you don't have a model for living.

I'm still trying to figure it out. And the grief feels overwhelming at times. But recognising the people who love you, and not turning away from them is the first step. And I'm so lucky to have people who've given me perspective I couldn't have had from where I was.

A lot of these feelings come from recently having watched Queen of the South on Netflix- I've never led a drug cartel (!), but I really identify with the sense of growing through adversity, but with compassion & without losing the essence of who you are.

By being true to yourself, but accepting that you need to change, and that means leaving parts of you behind. You can grieve for what you leave behind, but recognise that you're stronger for knowing yourself better. And understanding how to deal with the world better.

You can do it without becoming desensitised or numb. Because that only hurts you and everyone around you - I've been there when it was too much to process and the trauma was so immediate that letting myself feel everything wasn't an option.

But how you process it when you leave survival mode is the most important part. Embracing it was an important part of feeling human again. But feeling everything was painful. And I had to make space for it. Not everyone has that privilege. But if you can, take your time to do it.

I've been both these people at different points in my life, but more often than not I chose to make myself vulnerable - even if it meant putting myself out there. It meant I needed to be surer of myself, and get to a point where my value was defined by me. Not by anyone else.

This meant I could expose myself, because I knew what I was worth and didn't need others to affirm it. This is why I can write this thread today. Knowing that there are people who will use this against me. But I know who I am, and what I deserve because I earned it.

And I know whose opinions I care about. And whose I don't. My vulnerability is my strength. We're used to living in patriarchal societies where the concept of strength comes from how men define it. But there are many models of strength.

Embracing who you are, self-compassion and vulnerability can be a strength. And leading doesn't have to be about shows of strength and bullying others into submission. It can be about real strength- leading with compassion, trust, nurturing others and emotional maturity.

I wish there were more models like this in the world, in academia. I've searched for them all my life. I think it would really make the world a better place if we moved away from flawed ideas of strength & weakness & modelled what compassionate and smart leadership can look like.

All my life people have told me that my empathy was weakness. And someone like me wouldn't survive. And my sensitivity to the world and other people meant I wasn't resilient enough. They're wrong. Opening up yourself to the world, including the pain that it brings is strength.

And emotion doesn't mean your decision making is poor. It means its richer, and more informed. These are again patriarchal norms. It's logic or emotion (with women considered 'emotional'. But it can be both. And there's nothing wrong with that.