Business leaders facing difficult times could gain inspiration, courage and lessons on emotional agility from a surprising place: children who have overcome childhood traumas.

In a recent interview with Dr. Meg Jay about her latest book, Supernormals, we discussed the real struggles, pain and the resilience of those who’ve experienced childhood traumas. Dr. Jay shares stories about patients who’ve grown up with adversity, trauma, tragedy or significant ongoing stressors and go on to do well in the world, not just in spite of the difficulties they’ve known, but maybe even because of them. From their experiences, they developed adaptive traits to survive that, in many cases, made them more competent than their peers later in life.

The stories are heart-wrenching, and the successes didn’t come without scars. Each individual demonstrated adaptive traits that offer lessons on resilience for the rest of us — business leaders, coaches, community leaders and those going through personal tragedies — on how to persevere, learn new skills and find success in the face of huge challenges.

These “supernormals” learned to focus with intensity on what they could control and developed a heightened ability to regulate their emotions when faced with constant stress. They found strategies to escape from toxic people and engaged in deep learning that resulted in acquiring an expertise that helped them break out of their circumstances, create new opportunities and thrive in entirely new lives.

I recently had the privilege of meeting a most remarkable person, LaTasha, who is in all respects a “supernormal.” As a toddler, LaTasha suffered from abuse at the hands of a family member, and was moved around throughout her early childhood and adolescence between many bad foster care situations. When her best friend in high school offered her refuge in her loving home, LaTasha felt hope that everything could turn around. She leaned into their support and began her own journey, studying hard in school, keeping a steady job after school and eventually attending college. She set a goal to do everything she could to be different from the people she lived with in foster care homes.

LaTasha admired the people she saw who worked hard, and she grew to despise a lifestyle that she saw as passive and slothful. She’s now happily married with a daughter in college and is the founder of an organization called The Purple Project, which helps foster care children who’ve grown out of the system with training, coaching and job placement, so they too can lead purposeful lives. LaTasha yearned to be self-supportive, to escape from the mindset of people who abused her and to follow the example of those who helped her — who were kind and industrious.

Supernormal gives the metastory to the full experience of being resilient to show us that what resilient youth do is both complicated and courageous. I asked Dr. Jay what survival skills we can we glean from the “supernormals” that could apply to people with ordinary stress in their lives.