Have you ever been sitting with a cup of tea, and suddenly realized that the period when you thought the world was ending was actually the best thing that ever happened to you?

Not because it was easy. But because that’s exactly when you became who you are.

We are used to treating suffering like a glitch in the system—something unnecessary we need to escape as fast as possible: a pill, a new relationship, a move to another city, a bigger car bought on credit. Yet there is one strange thing psychologists noticed a hundred years ago and thousands of studies now confirm: pain doesn’t just break us. More often than not, it is the only thing that truly builds us.

1. When everything inside falls apart, space appears for something new

In the 1970s, researchers Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun started interviewing people who had survived serious trauma: car accidents, the loss of loved ones, severe illness, and war. They expected to find only depression and PTSD. Instead, they discovered a strange phenomenon they eventually named Post-Traumatic Growth.

People didn't just survive; they evolved. They said things like:

• “Now I know what really matters and what was just noise.”
• “I grew closer to the people who stayed and learned not to waste time on those who aren’t worth it.”
• “I’m no longer afraid of death, so I stopped being afraid to live.”

Today there are over 300 studies on this topic. On average, 60–70% of people who go through a major crisis report that they became stronger, wiser, and even happier than they were before. This doesn’t mean trauma is “good.” It means the mind and soul have a built-in mechanism: when the old version of “me” cracks, a chance appears to rebuild yourself—often better than before.

2. Suffering works like a gym, but for character

You know how muscles grow. Micro-tears occur in the fibers, the body senses the stress, sends protein to repair the damage, and makes the muscle thicker so it can handle more next time. The human psyche works the same way.

Psychologist Jordan Peterson often notes that “The person who has never fallen has no real stability.” Science agrees with this assessment. People who have experienced a moderate amount of adversity (not catastrophic, but scenarios where “life hits hard but doesn’t finish you off”) score significantly higher on psychological resilience than those whose lives were perfectly smooth.

There is even a term for this—Antifragile—coined by the scholar Nassim Taleb. The distinction is crucial: Fragile things break under stress. Resilient things withstand stress. Antifragile things get better because of stress. It turns out that human beings are designed to be antifragile.

3. Pain is the most honest teacher

When everything is fine, we lie to ourselves easily. “I’m strong,” “This relationship works for me,” “The job is fine.” When a crisis hits, the masks fall. You see yourself naked. It is terrifying. But it is the only moment when you can honestly say: “This is what actually matters to me. And this isn’t.”

In one psychological study, people were asked to recall the hardest period of their lives and describe what they learned about themselves. The most common answers were:

• I’m stronger than I thought.
• I can be alone and still be okay.
• I don’t need all these people, things, or statuses to feel alive.

In other words, suffering acts as a lie detector for the soul.

4. Why we start crying when we remember “those” years

You open an old diary, look at photos from that time, hear that specific song—and suddenly tears come. Not from pain. But from tenderness toward the version of you who was fighting back then.

Psychologists refer to this shift in perspective as a form of meta-emotion. You are no longer trapped inside the pain. You are looking at it from above, like an adult watching a child who fell and scraped their knee. You already know everything turned out okay. And you are grateful to that child, because without their tears and bruises, you wouldn’t be who you are now.

Sigmund Freud called this Nachträglichkeit—deferred understanding. In the moment of crisis, we are blind. Only later does the brain stitch meaning onto the chaos. And suddenly you realize that the divorce, the firing, the depression, the move, the betrayal—they weren’t punishments. They were labor pains for the new you.

5. What to do with this right now

You don’t need to go looking for suffering. Don’t worry—it will find you on its own. But the next time life hits you below the belt, remember:

This isn’t the end of the story. It’s only the middle.

What looks like destruction today may look like a life-saving surgery five years from now. You are not a victim of circumstances. You are raw material being sharpened by circumstances into something sharp and beautiful.

And most importantly:

One day you will be sitting in a warm apartment, with someone you truly love—or alone, but no longer out of loneliness, rather out of choice. And you will remember these days when it was so hard to breathe. And you will smile through tears.

Because that’s when you were truly being born.

And that, perhaps, is the most beautiful thing life can do to a person—let the old “you” die so the real living can finally begin.