Professors Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun have suggested that many people who face crises often experience "post-traumatic growth" and that this manifests as an "appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life."

many people who face crises often experience “post-traumatic growth” and that this manifests as an “appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life.

many people who face crises often experience "post-traumatic growth" and that this manifests as an "appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life.

post-traumatic growth could take five different forms: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and seeing new possibilities.

the reality is posttraumatic growth happens more than posttraumatic stress.

Pain, death, and loss never feel good, but they're unavoidable in our lifetime. Yet the reality is posttraumatic growth happens more than posttraumatic stress.

Often times of crisis are times of discovery, periods when we cannot maintain our old ways of doing things and enter into a steep learning curve. Sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate growth.

In a word, growth and improvement can come through pain and conflict.

Shirk not these crises, hard and difficult though they may appear to be. Difficult they are. Forget not that the habit of confronting crises, is a long-established one within the consciousness of humanity. Man has the "habit of crisis", if I may so call it. They are only the points of examination as to the strength, purpose, purity and motive and the intent of the soul. They evoke confidence when surmounted, and produce greatly expanded vision. They foster compassion and understanding, for the pain and inner conflict they have engendered is never forgotten, for they draw upon the resources of the heart. They release the light of wisdom within the field of knowledge, and the world is thereby enriched. p. 477

If terrible things have happened to you, you ought to have grown wise. If the worst possible events have befallen you, you should be the wisest of the lot. But instead of growing wise, most people become wounded. In a state of conscious response, it is possible to use every life situation — however ugly — as an opportunity for growth. But if you habitually think, “I am the way I am because of someone else,” you are using life situations merely as an opportunity for self-destruction or stagnation.

The old idea is that when tragedy strikes or when an obstacle blocks us, there are only two possibilities. We either become a smaller person or we become a bigger person. If it’s a real life change you cannot come out the same. So therefore, you’re either going to come out smaller or you are going to rise up and ultimately come out of it a bigger person.

When we’re willing to face, process and heal from our trauma, we often reveal the hidden gifts and learnings concealed within the darkness. When we avoid trauma, we relive it continuously.

Hundreds of studies have shown that children and adults recover more quickly when they realize that hardships aren’t entirely their fault, don’t affect every aspect of their lives, and won’t follow them everywhere forever.

It can be said that deeply traumatized children grow into adults who live in the minefield of their own extreme emotions. Plus ca change.