By JoAnn Stevelos, Psychology Today, August 21, 2020
As a child, I was an orchid but lived like a dandelion. I have always prided myself on my resiliency, for surviving a long and painful childhood filled with abandonment, psychological, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Child abuse can do that to you—give you a false sense of self and what resiliency really looks like.
Resiliency is not just surviving. This false narrative of resiliency can take years to undo. One approach is to try to uncover what your natural tendencies may have been outside the context of abuse. I have come to understand that like the orchid, I thrive in routines, structure, and consistency and wither in chaos, fallacies, and stress. Each relationship I am in—whether it is with a romantic partner, a family member, a friend, a colleague, a neighbor, and even strangers, brings me more clarity on how important it is that I articulate my sensitivities—my orchidness—so that I may accept love, feel accepted, and believe I am safe. Love, acceptance, and safety are three things child abuse survivors like me think we want, but often feel we don’t deserve. Where does that feeling come from? How does it persist no matter what I accomplish, achieve, or create?
Dr. Thomas Boyce’s, an emeritus professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of California, research on children’s resiliency has helped me understand the difference between people who seem unfazed by their surroundings and those who are highly sensitive to their environments. He calls these two types of children: dandelions and orchids. Dandelions are children who are resilient and learn to cope with stress in most circumstances. The orchid children are sensitive to adverse environments and susceptible to feeling stress in good environments as well. Orchids need extra care because they can have an intense biological response to good or bad stress.
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