Post-traumatic growth

If you are eager to make sense of life’s inevitable adversities, read this book. Akhtar reminds us that our future can be bright perhaps not in spite of the adversity we face, but because of it.

It may be easier to advocate for positive psychology when life is on an upward slope, but for me, it has been the tough times that have truly shown me the value of the science. In July less than 24 hours after facilitating the Penn Resilience Program I got a phone call which would plunge me into a test of my own resilience.

It’s Memorial Day, a time to think about people who are gone. It’s also a good time to think about posttraumatic growth, the experience of positive change that comes through struggling with loss. Growth emerges from struggling with a broken picture of the world, putting it back together in new ways. What kinds of posttraumatic growth are there? What behaviors or social contexts accompany growth?