Post-traumatic growth article for all of us

[razz]

This twice weekly article has given me new ways of viewing today's events but this one seemed especially helpful for those struggling with changes with family and relationships so I posted in the Family form.
https://painterskeys.com/post-traumatic-growth-2/

“Pay attention to the places where you are not getting your needs met right now,” she said to her kids. “You are the future architects of the transformation.”

Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, as part of their University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Post-traumatic Growth Research Group, have identified seven areas of growth that spring from adversity:
Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, as part of their University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Post-traumatic Growth Research Group, have identified seven areas of growth that spring from adversity:

A greater appreciation of life

A greater appreciation and strengthening of close relationships

An increased sense of compassion and altruism

The identification of new possibilities or a purpose in life

A greater awareness and utilization of personal strengths

Enhanced spiritual development

Creative growth"

Do you see this happening in your life?

[Tybee]

I personally do not think trauma as it is traditionally defined works the way that these folks say.

I say that as someone who has suffered from PTSD from a near death event, and what they are talking about here is more along the lines of a Victor Frankel examination of one's experience and growing through it, which is very different than trauma that leads to psychological and physiological changes.

More power to anyone who can do the things that are stated here, but it is way too early to talk about this and it dismisses what trauma is and how it works.

In my opinion, anyway, informed by a master's degree in Counseling, if that means anything.

When one is undergoing an unfolding event, one is not able to place it in some newly framed context, the way they are suggesting.

[Teacher Terry]

I totally agree with Tybee.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Frankl, ha the #1 lesson anyone should have got from the Nazi's was a new found appreciation of human evil. That's about how I feel stuck in Trump's America as the bodies pile up. An appreciation for evil. If they took other lessons fine but that's the most glaring one.

Sorry if that's not the politically correct answer. One doesn't have to take any lessons, one can see this time period as one of pure suffering to be endured with little but pain and for those whom loved ones are dying right and left, it is impossible to argue otherwise. One can see it as better than the already painful status quo in some ways if they do (except for you know the mass death - one is a monster if one favors that). But in other ways liked slowed pace of life or less pollution or more solitude for the introverts or even more housing if one was say one of the homeless, it could at times.

[catherine]

People are talking about cultural, political and personal transformation, but I'm very, very skeptical that anything will change based on COVID-19. I look at the disruption in the Industrial Age brought on by two world wars, a flu pandemic, and the Great Depression, and everything was business as usual once they passed.

Will people quit their jobs because they loved being closer to their kids every day?
Will people find the idea of going to bars, restaurants, and malls less attractive?
Will people emerge from this feeling transformed in any way, other than being afraid to shake hands with other people?

I think that if you approach this crisis with no tools to handle adversity, you may suffer.
If you have already an arsenal of coping skills based on prior life experiences, you will overcome the challenges, and in that case, you probably already can check off the boxes on the list in the article.

I've seen more than one reference on social media to Anne Frank, and how they were able to accept and survive great hardship, and how what we're going through now is no comparison. (Please--Not to minimize the tragic experiences of illness, death, and financial incapacity--I'm talking about people who complain about not being able to go out)

As for me, six weeks of isolation in a lakeside cabin with my family has not effected any huge change in my spiritual transformation . But interesting article.

[SteveinMN]

Will people quit their jobs because they loved being closer to their kids every day?
Will people find the idea of going to bars, restaurants, and malls less attractive?
Will people emerge from this feeling transformed in any way, other than being afraid to shake hands with other people?

Some will. I think it depends on how you define "transformation".

Of course, it's difficult to see what will stick while we're in the middle of it.

Personally, I don't see fear of shaking hands with other people getting much traction; the practice already has survived too many other pandemics. I don't see that this pandemic is notably different except for its recency and, maybe eventually, its scale.

The hospitality industry is going to hurt for a few years yet, I think. People will be more sensitive to being in spots where many others have been. But airlines and hotels and restaurants will adapt. Many people swore after 9/11 that they'd never get into an airplane again. Yet they have. Enough changes were made to give air travel at least the perception of safety. It helped that we don't have a real alternative to air travel for longer trips. But now we look at movies from the 80s when passengers leaving the plane are greeted by their loved ones (or a limousine driver) and think it quaint.

People will be transformed. For as much feeling as the anniversary of 9/11 brings up in most of the U.S., the level of emotion around the anniversary in the New York metro area remains orders of magnitude stronger for their direct experience, even a generation after the event. The Great Depression? Same; we all know/knew people who never spent an extra dime today, almost a century afterward, even when it's against their own interests, because of the lessons they learned during that time.

We have no idea at this point. But there is no normal for us to return to; things will change, sometimes almost imperceptibly until we look back ten or twenty years down the road and point at movies in which grocery store cashiers aren't behind polycarbonate partitions.