Is there such a thing as "posttraumatic growth”?
This is an important question for pastors and other church workers, considering how often we deal with people in trauma--and how often we reassure people there are lessons to learn and growth to experience on the other side of trauma.
Gary Stix defines posttraumatic growth as "an arduous life experience—combat, cancer—that, once confronted, is said to engender psychological transformation that affords a more mature or positive perspective on things."
Stix also questions whether it exists--at least in the form that talk shows like to present it. He cautions against what he called "the Oprah narrative."
The Oprah mantra of strength through hardship is commonplace following a traumatic event but only materializes if the victim actually initiates some meaningful action to effect change....Simply saying “my life has changed forever” doesn’t cut it.
Citing research among those who claim that a dramatic crisis has "changed" them, Stix includes this illustration from Stevan Hobfoll of the Rush University Medical Center:
Hobfoll illustrated that point from his own experience by telling me about a friend who had provided assurances that he had “seen the light” after a heart attack that led to quintuple bypass surgery. “Another friend of mine and I take off work to go visit him when he gets out of the hospital and he’s not there when we get there, he’s late. And he comes in with the two cell phones going, one in each ear. His adult daughter is leaving in a huff because she’s been there three days to see her almost-dying father and he hasn’t given her a minute. So he gives us the one-finger sign to say he’ll just be a minute and 20 minutes later he gets back to us and says: ‘I’m a changed man.’”
So, is "the Oprah narrative" a fairy tale? Not entirely--which is why the blog post title is so curious ("Psychologial 'Growth' Through War and Disease: Sometimes Its Just a Cruel Delusion"). Defying the cynical title, Stix writes:
Growth is possible after potentially traumatic experiences, Hobfoll said, if the perception of it is coupled with specifc actions. Michael J. Fox as Parkinson’s spokesman and philanthropist has demonstrated as much. Victor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and helped pioneer the concept of psychological growth after hardship, wrote of “right action and right conduct” that, in the camps, translated into mutual aid that one prisoner would lend another at peril to himself.
As the old saying goes, "Experience isn't necessarily the best teacher: It all depends on what kind of student experience has to teach."
I also found the penultimate paragraph important:
Another way the “What doesn’t kill you…” meme can turn toxic stems from the unreasonable expectations it puts on the patient. “When people have undergone trauma, just getting to the next day may be enough,” Hobfoll said. “If clinicians and even the media start setting up that you have to grow from that experience, that really can be a burden and that can be an overwhelming burden, when you start feeling guilty that I’m just making it to work and continuing to be a parent to my kids and coaching the kids’ soccer team and they’re telling me that’s not enough and that I have to have grown and all I really want to do is get through this.”
As a pastor who has walked with numbers of people through crises--and as a man who's had a few of my own--I can tell you that this is true. Sometimes just putting one foot in front of another is success. As God promised in Isaiah 40:31
Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
Notice the order: soar...run..walk.
Some days, when you're not soaring or even running but just doing good to walk--well, that's a grace from the Lord.
Give Stix's blog post a look: Don't let the unfortunately-cynical title keep you from it.
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