Growth From Suffering

In their article, Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence,¹ Tedeschi and Calhoun create a valuable framework for evaluating a routine consequence of trauma - personal growth.

Traumatic events are “profoundly disturbing,” cause significant anxiety and stress, can give rise to “dysfunctional patterns of thinking,” including “repetitive intrusions of thoughts and images,” cause unpleasant, potentially significant physical reactions, and can cause or exacerbate psychiatric disorders. Said bluntly, traumatic events are bad.

Posttraumatic Growth (PTG) is how adaptive personal development arises from the harsh circumstances of traumatic events. PTG is the consequence of “the struggle with in the aftermath of trauma.”

Tedeschi and Calhoun:

In the developing literature of posttraumatic growth, we have been finding reports of growth experiences in the aftermath of traumatic events far outnumber reports of psychiatric disorders... The widespread assumptions that traumas often result in disorder should not be replaced with expectations that growth is an inevitable result. Instead, we are finding that continuing personal distress and growth often coexist...

An approach to a traumatic experience, however old, should focus on both the healing of the distress and the opportunities for development. Many of the self-selected avoidant-responses to emotional distress limit the capacity for PTG. Even more constructive coping strategies might also be too narrow in scope.

Growth is the consequence of suffering and struggle. Perhaps the more intentional the process of struggle, the greater the realization of self development. In this sense, the re-viewing of our collection of traumatic experiences is a necessary foundation for on-going personal development.

The contemporary, pop-psychology, self-help approach to past distress is to use a positive frame, and describe traumatic events as “opportunities,” or “challenges,” and focus on positive outcomes rather than the hardship. This bias limits the sense of suffering and struggling. Ironically, excessive positive thinking might diminish the opportunity for PTG.

Tedeschi and Calhoun:

PTG is not simply a return to baseline - it is an experience of improvement that for some persons is deeply profound...

The psychological processing of the crisis events has a highly emotional element connected to it. What makes these experiences transformative seems to be that they have this affective component, so that the lessons are not merely intellectual reflections...

PTG is most like a consequence of attempts at psychological survival, and it can coexist with the residual distress of the trauma.

Because a traumatic event involves attempts at psychological survival and are highly emotional, these events and their residual distress are likely to have significant body-based qualities. In general, we would expect that the memory of a traumatic event would be “visceral.”

Because of such a significant affective quality, traumatic events are likely to highly “instructive” and “informative.” These experiences are not just “lessons” in a simple cognitive sense, but rather in the experiential sense which alters internal working models, schemas, sense-making beliefs and even autobiography. Working with past traumatic experiences may be central to developing a constructive outlook on life and a durable sense of well being.

Trauma thoughts, such as “I’m unable,” “I’m unworthy,” or “I’m ignorant,” all have a strong aversive visceral feel and sense of vulnerability. Too often, the aversive visceral feel limits the capacity to be at peace with a deep sense of vulnerability. It triggers defensive responses such as avoiding or splitting off the pain and also stifles PTG. These defensive responses partly explain the difficulty in reworking aspects of a personal outlook based on trauma thoughts.

Tedeschi and Calhoun:

The identification of strength (to handle the suffering and struggle) is often correlated, almost paradoxically, with an increased sense of being vulnerable.

PTG is, in one significant way, the development of the capacity to sit with an increased sense of being vulnerable. We feel highly vulnerable with the archetypal trauma thoughts: “I’m unable,” “I’m unworthy,” and “I’m ignorant.”

The development of resources to sit with these thoughts, rather than simply push them aside, might be a significant quality to personal growth. The spirit is born of suffering.

I explore the subject of trauma thoughts in more detail in my essay: Peanut Butter: Able, Worthy and Wise.

I intend to write more on the article by Tedeschi and Calhoun.

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1. Tedeschi, R., & Calhoun, L. (2004). TARGET ARTICLE: "Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence" Psychological Inquiry, 15 (1), 1-18 DOI: 10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01  ↩