Those who are resilient may not be Superman but maybe they are supernormal—a word that means “exceeding the normal or average.” If, as sociologist Erving Goffman wrote in his classic, Stigma, “the normals” in a society are those who do not depart from the expected, then maybe “supernormals” are those who depart from the expected in oh-so-many ways. Their daily struggles are above and beyond what we think of as “average and expectable,” and their subsequent successes exceed expectations, too. Beating the odds, they live improbable lives, and after decades of academic study no one knows quite how.
In the pages ahead, I lean on this word—supernormal—and I use it as both an adjective and a noun to refer to those who are resilient. This is meant to be an empathic choice rather than a clever one. I wanted to play some with language—and with the concept of normality—and to choose a word that resonates with what it feels like to be resilient, to live one’s life outside the average and expectable. It is my experience that many of those, like Helen, who most deserve to think of themselves as resilient do not identify with the term—yet. What they do often identify with, as we will soon see, are the stories of superheroes and other daring figures.
Superman was the prototype for almost all superheroes to follow, and the defining features that are common among most can be found in the lives of many supernormals, too. Like superheroes, supernormals dodge bullets and leap over tall buildings in their way when so many other people around them—even those who have been presented with fewer obstacles—do not. They fight back against the dangers at hand with what looks like ease. Yet as Helen suggested on that first day we met, this is only half the story. Many go on to achieve what feels like high-flying success only to wonder how long they can keep going, or when it all might come crashing down.
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As the culture that imagined both Superman and the American Dream, we romanticize upward mobility in all forms and sometimes forget about its difficulties: exhaustion, vulnerability, loneliness. Naturally, we are amazed by those who are resilient, yet as we have focused on How do they do it?, we have forgotten also to ask, How does it feel?
In the chapters ahead, Supernormal uses science and stories in an effort to take up both of these questions together.
How do they do it? Resilience is most certainly a phenomenon: a highly individual experience that we will never be able to reduce to a formula or algorithm. Yet after decades of study, social scientists do know something about how resilience works, and supernormals everywhere deserve to know it, too. The supernormal feel alienated—“not normal,” as Helen said—at least in part because they feel like curiosities not only to other people but also to themselves. They do not have words for what they have seen, for how they have coped, or for who they are. In the following pages, then, readers will learn the little-known facts about the most prevalent childhood adversities, as well as the latest research on how we adapt to them:
• What fear does to the brain, and how this results in keeping secrets.
• How chronic stress leaves our fight-or-flight mechanisms switched on, and how this contributes to our going through our days with remarkable vigilance and determination.
• How supernormals use anger to feel empowered and optimistic—and how self-control is a powerful weapon, too—but why both must be wielded with intention.
• How, as children, supernormals escape danger without leaving their homes or neighborhoods, and how, as adults, they use second-chance opportunities to get away for good.
• How the armor of achievement deflects slings and arrows from the past.
• How supernormals change their brains, their health, and their communities by forming secret societies, both big and small.
• Why doing good in the world is good for us, and why love might be the strongest—and most elusive—superpower of all.
How does it feel? As I worked on Supernormal, the question I was asked most often was this one: “Where will you find people to write about?” Part of the myth of resilience is that the truly resilient are outliers who need to be tracked down or who are in no need of help. The supernormal are all around us, and many have populated my private practice—and the community clinics and lecture halls where I have supervised and taught—for nearly two decades. In the chapters ahead, I tell the stories—in a disguised fashion—of everyday supernormals with whom I have had the privilege to work. The narratives that follow have been chosen not because they are the most shocking, unusual stories of hardship one might find. Rather, they are stunning examples of just how powerful and poignant our most prevalent adversities are, the ones that millions of children and teens wake up to each morning:
• How hard times divide the world into “insiders” and “outsiders,” and how they split time into “before” and “after,” too.
• How secrets can leave us feeling more abnormal than supernormal, more antiheroic than heroic.
• What it is like to be recognized for your good deeds or accomplishments while who you are underneath may not be known to anyone, even to yourself.
• What is it like to seem invulnerable and invincible such that few seem to realize that you are human.
• What it is like to manage a secret identity, and to grapple with how much to reveal about yourself and to whom.
• Why some supernormals are afraid to be partners or parents, sometimes missing out on experiences that have the power to make things right.
• Why supernormals’ greatest, and often last, battle is not between good and bad out in the world—it is between good and bad on the inside.
• Why for supernormals, in the end, it is the ordinary that may feel truly extraordinary.
Ralph Nichols, probably best known as the father of the field of listening, said that “the most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and to be understood.” It is my hope that, after reading the chapters ahead, supernormals everywhere will better understand their lives and themselves—and they will see that there are countless others who can understand them, too.
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One of the most often repeated, but perhaps inaccurate, sayings about families is this one by Leo Tolstoy: “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Those who grew up in unhappy situations may look different from one another from the outside, yet on the inside they have a great deal in common. Up until now, though, much of the conversation and research about childhood adversity have taken place in silos, which inadvertently keep supernormals separated from one another. Children of alcoholics feel they can only be understood by other children of alcoholics; sexual abuse survivors imagine they may find support only at sexual assault resource centers; research on emotional abuse is read mostly by other researchers. And while at any given time, about one-third of my practice is made up of men and women who were unhappy at home not because of their parents, but because of their siblings, their struggles are rarely included in discussions, or even counted in the estimates, of childhood adversity at all. When we include the narratives of many different adversities and individuals together—between the front and back covers of a single book—perhaps we can see there is a bigger story here. It is the untold story of a diverse group of women and men who are united by the experience of striving and thriving outside the so-called average and expectable. It is a story that begs the question of what normal—or average and expectable—even means.
Supernormal is that untold story of adversity and resilience. It is the tale of those who soar to unexpected heights after hardship and heartbreak in childhood. It shows