Elizabeth Smart on learning and growing from her abduction
“It is important to remember that just because something bad happens to you, it doesn’t mean you are bad. You are still entitled to every possible happiness in life.”
Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted and imprisoned in 2002, is now a 20-year-old music major at Brigham Young University.
A drifter named Brian David Mitchell kidnapped Elizabeth, then 14, at knifepoint from her bedroom. He and his wife Wanda Barzee held her captive for nine months.
Mitchell was a polygamist who believed it was his religious right to have more than one wife, even by force. In 2004, Mitchell and Barzee were found mentally incompetent to stand trial on charges including kidnapping and sexual assault.
In a new People magazine interview, Elizabeth Smart talks about what has helped her heal and grow from the experience:
“I always knew that no matter what, I’d still be part of my family. They could change my name, change the way I look, starve me to death. But they couldn’t change that I am Ed and Lois Smart’s daughter. That was a very powerful thing to me.
“It’s just not worth holding on to that kind of hate. It can ruin your life. Nine months of my life had been taken from me, and I wasn’t going to give them any more of my time.
“Before, I was just your average Mormon girl. And since everything I’ve gone through, there’s been a lot of learning and growing. I’ve learned to listen and not jump to conclusions. I’m not sorry this happened to me anymore, because it made me grow up.”
She emphasized, “It is important to remember that just because something bad happens to you, it doesn’t mean you are bad. You are still entitled to every possible happiness in life.”
Her perspectives and attitudes are great examples of resilience and applied positive psychology.
Clinical neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., elaborates the ideas of “Stress Induced Growth” (SIG) and adversity inspired creativity in his book The Beethoven Factor: The New Positive Psychology of Hardiness, Happiness, Healing and Hope.
In an interview, Dr. Pearsall comments, “I’ve long ago learned the P’s of dealing with bad news and toxic people. I don’t take criticism or adversity Personally, and do not view setbacks in one area of my life as Pervasive to all other areas, and most of all, I know that that nothing is Permanent.”
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