What people call “post-traumatic growth” is actually recovery after the allostatic load is reduced.
People sometimes tell me I am experiencing “post-traumatic growth.” They say it like it’s a compliment, and I should feel encouraged. As if this is the gold at the end of seven years of fighting for my life. That’s a falsehood.
In reality, I can finally function a little better after years of severe trauma followed by even more severe trauma at the hands of people and systems that claimed to help. And now that I’m not actively drowning every second, people want to rebrand that as growth.
NO.
I am trying to recover what I once was. I am working doggedly to reclaim capacities I had before I asked for help and paid for it with my body, relationships, sense of safety, and my future. I am still a fraction of who I was. I have recovered only a fraction of the range, stamina, and level of well-being I once had.
From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, trauma does not create growth, but narrows life. It forces survival and strips choice. It demands constant threat detection at the expense of connection, creativity, learning, and rest. Nothing about that produces expansion.
What people call post-traumatic growth usually shows up only after the threat finally decreases and some safety is restored. After connection becomes possible again. When the relentless demands on the system ease just enough that life can start to re-enter the picture.
That’s not trauma making someone better. That’s recovery: capacity slowly coming back online once it is no longer being crushed.
When I hear “look how much you’ve grown,” I’m reminded that my massive losses are still invisible: years I didn’t get to live, work I couldn’t do, relationships I couldn’t sustain, and capacities that vanished when survival took over. The person I was before asking for help, before being harmed again and again for being honest about the egregious harms done to me throughout my life by people in positions of power.
Calling this growth skips over the brutal truth. It smooths the story into something palatable. It lets people avoid grappling with how much damage was done, how preventable it was, and how long recovery takes when harm is chronic and institutional.
It also quietly puts the burden back on the person who was harmed. If trauma leads to growth, then suffering is reframed as meaningful. Necessary, even. The abusive systems don’t have to change if the injury becomes the teacher. It lands like being met with what pain specialists call “the C6 salute.” Middle finger up!
But what I’ve learned did not come from trauma. It came from surviving it without adequate support. I had to see clearly because denial was no longer an option, because I experienced what happens to human beings when hierarchy, cruelty, and neglect are built into the structures that claim authority over our lives.
From an IPNB lens, humans grow in environments that support safety, dignity, and mutual care. Trauma disrupts that process. Prolonged threat reshapes what is possible in the moment because survival demands it. When the pressure finally eases, the nervous system does what it has always tried to do: return toward life. Toward homeostasis.
That return can look dramatic from the outside: insight, boundaries, refusal to tolerate harm, and clearer values. But none of that requires trauma as a prerequisite. Those capacities flourish in supportive environments, too. The difference is that trauma makes naming the cost vital.
I don’t celebrate “post-traumatic growth.” I present recovery as what it is: slow, uneven, incomplete, and hard-won. I share the truth that I am still rebuilding after years of being pushed past human limits. I present the loss alongside the persistence.
The only thing that deserves recognition is the relentless drive toward life that keeps showing up even after everything that tries to shut it down. That, and the rage and determination that kept me fighting a “healthcare” system and domination culture that drove me excruciatingly close to death.
Calling this “post-traumatic growth” is an egregious falsehood, and I won’t stand for it. It erases loss, launders harm, and turns recovery into a feel-good story so no one has to look too closely at what was done or why it keeps happening. Trauma did not give me anything. It stole from me, repeatedly, and what you see now is me fighting to reclaim ground I already had, under conditions that should never have existed. I will not let language be used to soften cruelty, excuse systems that overload human beings, or rewrite survival as transformation. Recovery deserves honesty. Anything less is just another way of treating harm as acceptable.
