Dealing With Adversity

March 4, 2011

Interview with Bev Smallwood, author of the book This Wasn't Supposed to Happen to Me: 10 Make-or-Break Choices When Life Steals Your Dreams and Rocks Your World

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Mike Carruthers:
If you live long enough bad things happen to you. It's called adversity. And the question is…

Bev Smallwood:
Whether that adversity you go through is going to take you under or whether you're really going to come out on the other side even stronger.
 

Dr. Bev Smallwood, author of the book This Wasn't Supposed to Happen to Me...

The truth is we can be victimized by somebody or by a life circumstance. But we don't have to become a chronic victim. Because chronic victims complain more than they act, they're always in a pity party, they're always looking for someone else to blame and if somebody else is to blame then someone else needs to fix it. And instead I advocate looking at responsibility, which I define as - doing all you can with all you have where you are right now.

Dr. Smallwood says it's OK to feel bad when bad things happen.

Sometimes feeling really bad is part of getting better. That's grief; grief is a very normal, natural reaction when you go through significant loss that has horrible sadness to it. But don't get stuck in depression - in depression you start to think this will never end, so you lose hope. And you aren't specific about it, you're not dealing with specific loss but you're telling yourself, "My whole life is a wreck." But grief is very natural, very normal and yes, you may be feeling compassion and sorrow for yourself because this hurts a lot.