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5 Signs You’re Growing from Trauma
Posttraumatic Growth Research Defines 5 Indicators of People Who Not Only Recover but Radically Change for the Better.
They haven’t seen each other since they were young, since the Camps. But now they sit on a park bench — two old men.
The one on the left wears short sleeves and you can barely make out the faded string of hand-tattooed numbers on his left forearm when the sun hits it.
The long sleeves of the other man hide his tattoo but it’s still there after all these years. He looks out over the park, his eyes glassy, and says, almost under his breath, “It’s obscene to ever be happy again after the Holocaust.”
And the man in short sleeves sighs knowingly, looks down at his forearm, and then out over the same park and says, “It’s obscene to be anything but happy ever again after the Holocaust.”
Trauma affects people differently. Some people struggle. Some never recover. Most go back to normal, more or less, sooner or later.
But some people grow.
The New Science of Posttraumatic Growth
That third group is the subject of an exciting, new domain of research called Posttraumatic Growth (PTG).
