Freud grasped something counterintuitive here—that our wounds don't merely heal into scars we hide, but actually become the source of our resilience. Most of us assume strength means hardness, imperviousness, yet he's suggesting that precisely because we've *known* fracture, we understand how to hold ourselves together. A therapist who has struggled with anxiety, for instance, often becomes more attuned to her patients' fears than someone who breezed through life untouched, because she's mapped that territory intimately. The paradox is that acknowledging what breaks us doesn't weaken us further—it's the refusal to acknowledge it that leaves us brittle.