Speaker 1: Today we have Richard Dedeski on the podcast. Doctor Dedski
Speaker 1: is Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina
Speaker 1: at Charlotte. He is a licensed psychologist specializing in bereavement
Speaker 1: and trauma and has led support groups for bereef parents
Speaker 1: for over twenty years. With his colleague Lawrence Calhoun, he
Speaker 1: has published books on post traumatic growth, an area of
Speaker 1: research that they have developed that examines personal transformations in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of traumatic life events. Their books include Trauma Transformation,
Speaker 1: post Traumatic Growth, Facilitating post Traumatic Growth, Helping Berief Parents,
Speaker 1: A Clinician's Guide, and The Handbook of Post Traumatic Growth. Richard,
Speaker 1: it's so great to chat with you today on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you pleasure. So I'm wondering, how in the world
Speaker 1: did you get involved in this topic. This was not
Speaker 1: when you were at work, probably working on your dissertation.
Speaker 1: This was not a topic that was first and foremost
Speaker 1: in the trauma literature, right. Well, I've been around for
Speaker 1: a long time, so I've been around before PTSD was
Speaker 1: even a diagnosis, right right, Well, what was your dissertation on?
Speaker 1: My dissertation was on basically trust in psychotherapy, so it
Speaker 1: was a there's a therapy, analog study of how trust
Speaker 1: develops among between therapists and clients based on some of
Speaker 1: their personal characteristics and their similarities to one another. So
Speaker 1: that's what I was looking at then. So I was
Speaker 1: really interested coming out of graduate school and the concept
Speaker 1: of trust. Gotcha, and like, where did things transition into
Speaker 1: this line of research that you currently work on. What's
Speaker 1: the origin story of it? Yeah, I guess it. It
Speaker 1: came out of some questions I had in my own
Speaker 1: mind about my career and what I really wanted to do.
Speaker 1: By the time I got tenure at the university, I
Speaker 1: was really wondering how to combine more of my clinical
Speaker 1: interests with my research interests. And I was talking to
Speaker 1: my colleague Lawrence Calhoun about this and talking about what,
Speaker 1: you know, what I got started in psychology for in
Speaker 1: the first place, And now that I had tenure, I
Speaker 1: felt free. I could do whatever I pleased and not
Speaker 1: get fired. So I told him I was most interested
Speaker 1: in how people learn to live well and how people
Speaker 1: become wise about living. And so we started with the
Speaker 1: idea of wisdom and we wanted to know more about that.
Speaker 1: And in the literature of the time, this is a
Speaker 1: mid nineteen eighties, there wasn't a whole lot of good
Speaker 1: psychological study of wisdom. So we thought we'd tackled that,
Speaker 1: and we tackle it first by doing interviews with people
Speaker 1: we thought might have some wisdom and learned some things
Speaker 1: about living well in life. And so we talked to
Speaker 1: older people. These were especially bereaved, older women, widows who
Speaker 1: had lost their husband's later in life. We talked to
Speaker 1: people who had suffered physical disabilities and adulthood. We'd become paralyzed,
Speaker 1: blinded and such because of illnesses, accidents and whatnot, but
Speaker 1: it had done very well in their rehabilitation, and we
Speaker 1: thought maybe they knew something about how to live life
Speaker 1: well given the struggles they've been through. So we started
Speaker 1: with interviews and we transcribed these interviews. We listened carefully
Speaker 1: what people were telling us, and some of the themes
Speaker 1: of what we later called post traumatic growth started coming
Speaker 1: through in these interviews. So it all came about by
Speaker 1: listening carefully to people who knew more than us because
Speaker 1: they had lived through the things they were explaining to us.
Speaker 1: That's wonderful. Well, how would you define post traumatic growth
Speaker 1: or how do you define it? Post Traumatic growth is
Speaker 1: the positive changes that people report often report as a
Speaker 1: result of the struggle in the aftermath of traumatic events.
Speaker 1: So that definition, although it sounds very straightforward, has some
Speaker 1: important elements to it. A couple of things that point
Speaker 1: out is these are positive changes that are really transformative.
Speaker 1: They're not simple, they're not easy, and they represent major
Speaker 1: changes in people's lives. They occur. These changes occur in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of traumatic events, so they're not caused by
Speaker 1: the traumatic events themselves. The changes happen in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of these events as people struggle through this aftermath. So
Speaker 1: it's a struggle. It's not an easy process for people
Speaker 1: because life has handed them in situations which have disrupted
Speaker 1: their understandings of their own lives, the world they live in,
Speaker 1: what kind of future they have what we call core
Speaker 1: beliefs about themselves and their lives and their world. So
Speaker 1: this disruption leaves people very anxious and very much at
Speaker 1: sea in terms of how to go forward and what
Speaker 1: to do next and what sense to make out of things.
Speaker 1: It's very confusing time, so it's a struggle to get
Speaker 1: through this and reconstruct set of core beliefs that make
Speaker 1: more sense. Yeah, and in your research, what are the
Speaker 1: main areas of growth you found that are replicable. Well,
Speaker 1: what we did was when we did our interviews, we
Speaker 1: took certain phrases that showed up among the people we interviewed,
Speaker 1: and we use those to construct a quantitative inventory, a
Speaker 1: research measure, a survey to try to measure this postmatic
Speaker 1: growth process. And when we subjected it to different kinds
Speaker 1: of analyzes as we gave it to people, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if your audience would probably know too much about
Speaker 1: some of the mathematical part. Surprise, It's a process called
Speaker 1: factor analysis, which okay, well, well good, We've got a
Speaker 1: very stupid audience perhaps. So we did this factor analysis
Speaker 1: which takes all these these items on this inventory and
Speaker 1: creates clusters out of them mathematically, and these clusters become
Speaker 1: essentially themes that are reflected in the measure. And it
Speaker 1: turned out that there's five themes or five domains of growth,
Speaker 1: five ways which people describe the post traumatic growth that
Speaker 1: they encounter. And so the five areas or domains of
Speaker 1: post traumatic growth are changed relationships with others, new possibilities
Speaker 1: for their lives, greater appreciation of living, a greater sense
Speaker 1: of personal strength and spiritual or existential change. So those
Speaker 1: are the five areas of post traumatic growth that we
Speaker 1: we've uncovered, and they've been pretty consistently discovered across different cultures.
Speaker 1: So our measure has been translated into over two dozen
Speaker 1: different languages. Now I'm losing track how many because they
Speaker 1: get across all the time for translation, but at least
Speaker 1: two dozen different languages and across all kinds of cultures,
Speaker 1: this measure seems to show these domains of post medic
Speaker 1: growth that I mentioned. Yeah, I would even perhaps add
Speaker 1: a candidate addition to that, Marie mccallague. Marie four Yard
Speaker 1: has shown that creative growth might be another one, So
Speaker 1: consider that. Okay, so you're saying, you're not sure how
Speaker 1: that works, right, because we've done analysis of our measure
Speaker 1: of post nic growth. So maybe she was using some
Speaker 1: different scale or items or something, So that may be.
Speaker 1: I was just talking about our measure and the ways
Speaker 1: we've seen it operate in several hundred different studies. Now,
Speaker 1: so gotcha. So if she's talking about, you know, people
Speaker 1: being more creative as the result of going through some
Speaker 1: traumatic event, you know that may show up in our
Speaker 1: measure in a different domain. So it could show up,
Speaker 1: for example, in the domain of new possibilities. So that's
Speaker 1: where people find new priorities in their lives. They emphasize
Speaker 1: different things, they may do different kinds of work. They
Speaker 1: so maybe they engage in some more creative endeavor as
Speaker 1: a result of some of the trauma that they've gone through,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's what she is finding. Yeah, yeah, she
Speaker 1: wasn't using your scale, but she was just looking at
Speaker 1: the role of post traumatic growth on self perceptions of
Speaker 1: creative change, and she's found significant effect, which actually makes
Speaker 1: me think of a question I wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: which is, how do you distinguish properly between self perceptions
Speaker 1: of change? You know, because these are self report questionnaires
Speaker 1: you're using versus actual change, they're not always the same thing,
Speaker 1: Is that right? No, that's not right. When people report
Speaker 1: change on our inventory and we interview, then they're usually
Speaker 1: representing themselves very accurately. And if you follow people across time,
Speaker 1: you generally find that these trajectories stay quite stable with
Speaker 1: the majority of people. Now there is a small minority
Speaker 1: for whom the growth seems to decline over some period
Speaker 1: of time. Now, why that happens, you'd have to get
Speaker 1: into the stories of people's lives. And this is where
Speaker 1: it's a real challenge for researchers, because you really have
Speaker 1: to know people intimately in order to understand some of
Speaker 1: these things. So we could say, for example, in some
Speaker 1: of these people that some things happened that have created
Speaker 1: some sort of a disruption of further disruption in their lives.
Speaker 1: Perhaps we could say, if we follow them, that they're
Speaker 1: For some of them, maybe their original ideas of growth
Speaker 1: didn't stand the test of time for them for one
Speaker 1: reason or another. But for the vast majority of people,
Speaker 1: we find that these experiences of growth are quite robust
Speaker 1: and represent real change. Now, when some people say it's
Speaker 1: not real or it's not actual, they say, the only
Speaker 1: real growth is that which can be observed from the outside,
Speaker 1: that people can see, and it's behavioral change. And that's
Speaker 1: what some people have said about post traumatic growth, that
Speaker 1: some of it may represent behavioral change, that's what they
Speaker 1: call actual growth, and then the rest of it is
Speaker 1: illusory and people are fooling themselves. But the thing about
Speaker 1: postramatical growth it's so important is perspective change means a
Speaker 1: lot to people, and that may be an internal experience
Speaker 1: that may not be so clear to the outside observer,
Speaker 1: but it is very meaningful to the individual. So we
Speaker 1: don't just dismiss people's reports of growth just because it
Speaker 1: means that they haven't embarked on a new career or
Speaker 1: done something, started a foundation or something like that. There
Speaker 1: are more subtle changes that are very important. So for example,
Speaker 1: I had a client one time, and I'm a clinician.
Speaker 1: You know, I do psychotherapy all the time, so I
Speaker 1: hear stories in depth, and that makes me think. That
Speaker 1: makes me think in some ways I'm different from a
Speaker 1: lot of researchers who don't do this kind of clinical work.
Speaker 1: But for example, I remember a client I had who
Speaker 1: had two strokes. After his second stroke, the doctors told
Speaker 1: him that he had an aneurysm that could kill him
Speaker 1: at any time, and what he had to do was
Speaker 1: remove all stress from his life. He had to stop
Speaker 1: physical activity, as a guy in his fifties, stop physical activity,
Speaker 1: quit his stressful job, and basically stay at home and
Speaker 1: just relax and be out of any kind of stress.
Speaker 1: So he did this, and he became depressed, as you
Speaker 1: might expect that could happen. But you know, when I
Speaker 1: started seeing him, we started talking about how he could
Speaker 1: live this life if he thought that this is how
Speaker 1: he had to live in order to survive. And what
Speaker 1: he started doing was taking a walk every day around
Speaker 1: his yard and practicing a mindful meditation around his yard,
Speaker 1: and he would notice things he never noticed before. He
Speaker 1: would look very carefully at things and experience everything in
Speaker 1: a very very careful, slow paced, deliberate fashion, and he
Speaker 1: said he started to feel much better, and he realized
Speaker 1: that he was missing out so much on life in
Speaker 1: his fast paced old life, and he really appreciated this
Speaker 1: way of seeing the world that he hadn't seen before.
Speaker 1: So his whole perspective on how to view the world
Speaker 1: out there shifted into something that he said was much
Speaker 1: more profound than they ever experienced before. To the outside observer,
Speaker 1: it might look like he wasn't doing anything, but for him,
Speaker 1: it was profound. So who's to say what's actual growth
Speaker 1: and what's not. That's a judgment from the outside. But
Speaker 1: you have to get inside people's lives, understand things from
Speaker 1: their point of view, or to know the real story.
Speaker 1: It seems analogous to me like life satisfaction questionnaires. I
Speaker 1: mean those come those are self report and no one
Speaker 1: would say that someone's self reported to life satisfaction questionnaire
Speaker 1: is not as valid as their actual I don't even
Speaker 1: know what actual life satisfaction is compared to someone's subjective
Speaker 1: view of their life satisfaction, but it just seems somehow analogous. Well,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting comment because I've often thought that when
Speaker 1: people say, post my growth questionnaire, the inventory is just
Speaker 1: self reports, I can trust it. But we trust all
Speaker 1: kinds of measures of things like depression anxiety PTSD, self
Speaker 1: report of all sorts of negative horrible things. We don't
Speaker 1: question whether those are valid. You know, we've psychology is
Speaker 1: built on self report pictures. I mean, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: ninety percent of our research is on self report measures,
Speaker 1: and we sort of accept those. But some people have
Speaker 1: had trouble accepting these reports. They just don't believe that
Speaker 1: people can make these kinds of transformations. For some reason
Speaker 1: or other, it's it's some kind of cynicism, perhaps, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. Well, what what are some things that some
Speaker 1: of the critics do get right? I've been following the
Speaker 1: work of Ronda Jack or Ra Krim. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've you've been reading his most recent papers on
Speaker 1: trying to tighten up the field scientifically. Yeah, some familiar
Speaker 1: he says, Yeah, are there are some points here from
Speaker 1: what he is that well, I think, and maybe I
Speaker 1: misrepresent I'm not sure. I haven't read everything he's written,
Speaker 1: but I remember that he said that unless there's personality change,
Speaker 1: that we should be looking at personality change as a
Speaker 1: as a indicator of growth. And you know, personality, you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on how you define personality, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I taught personality for forty years at the university, so
Speaker 1: I'm well familiar with all the different kinds of approaches
Speaker 1: to personality that are out there. And and you know,
Speaker 1: there are there are some things about personality that seem
Speaker 1: to be pretty much baked in and aren't and don't
Speaker 1: change very much. So it's hard to get some essential
Speaker 1: things changing about personality, but around the edges of it
Speaker 1: to some degree, when people are confronted with something that
Speaker 1: is what we call the core belief system or the
Speaker 1: assumptive world, like Ronnie job Bowman talked about in the
Speaker 1: past in the nineties, the assumptions that we make about
Speaker 1: our lives and how they're going to go, or if
Speaker 1: we take a narrative approach you know, the idea that
Speaker 1: people are essentially internally writing their own autobiographies and looking
Speaker 1: into their futures, or the idea of the possible cells
Speaker 1: and the future cells that we have in mind. All
Speaker 1: those are personality constructs, and we can use those constructs
Speaker 1: to understand pretty well in some of these transformative experiences.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say, for example, that we'd see a great
Speaker 1: deal of change in the Big five personality factors or
Speaker 1: something like that, but we have found things like openness
Speaker 1: to experience or extraversion tend to be related to post
Speaker 1: traumatic growth in a small way that you know, these
Speaker 1: aren't huge correlations, but there's a little bit of indication
Speaker 1: of that, and there's a good reason why that may
Speaker 1: be the case. So you know, if you're open to experience,
Speaker 1: open to novelty, and you have that kind of creative
Speaker 1: sense of yourself, you're more likely to be able to
Speaker 1: create a different kind of future for yourself. So post
Speaker 1: mental growth is a creative process if you have if
Speaker 1: you're extroverted, if you look at the dimensions on extraversion
Speaker 1: in the Big five, you find things like positive emotions
Speaker 1: as well as a connection with other people. So people
Speaker 1: experience positive emotions may be more likely to see into
Speaker 1: a future that's essentially positive for them. And if you're
Speaker 1: willing to connect with other people, you're going to find
Speaker 1: some people who help guide you in some ways into
Speaker 1: a future that's better for yourself. And we've talked a
Speaker 1: lot in our work about these kinds of guides, these
Speaker 1: expert companions. So so so that's you know, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's a role for understanding how personality fits with all this,
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't define post and my growth very narrowly.
Speaker 1: Is personality change fair enough? And that's the question of
Speaker 1: personality change is also a different question that you just raised,
Speaker 1: which was are there certain individual differences that make it
Speaker 1: more likely for someone to go through post traumatic growth?
Speaker 1: And that's a very interesting question too scientifically, and the
Speaker 1: openness to experience one makes a lot of sense to
Speaker 1: me because that's a topic that's a personality trade. I've
Speaker 1: studied my career and it is so strongly correlated with
Speaker 1: with a search for meaning, which is so core to
Speaker 1: what to the kind of growth you're talking about, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to I want to say something about current
Speaker 1: work that I'm doing. You know, in your introduction, you
Speaker 1: mentioned professor at University of North Carolina, Charlotte. I'm actually
Speaker 1: Professor Emeritis. I retired from unc Charlotte, and I've been
Speaker 1: working for the past during the latter parts of my
Speaker 1: career there and since my retirement at Bouldercrest Institute, which
Speaker 1: is Bouldercrest Institute for post Traumatic Growth is a is
Speaker 1: founded for veterans and first responders who have trauma histories,
Speaker 1: and we have developed programs to help facilitate post traumatic
Speaker 1: growth in these folks, and well over a thousand people
Speaker 1: have come through our programs at this point, and we've
Speaker 1: just recently in the past year, published a program evaluation
Speaker 1: of what we do and we get really remarkable results
Speaker 1: in terms of post traumatic growth in this in these populations.
Speaker 1: And we've designed a program that's based on our research
Speaker 1: and post traumatic growth process where we've come to understand
Speaker 1: how postraumatic growth develops and our program focuses on these
Speaker 1: important parts of the process, and in doing so, we've
Speaker 1: come up with a peer based program to facilitate postraumatic growth.
Speaker 1: So all the people who are the facilitators in these
Speaker 1: programs are veterans themselves or first responders, and we train
Speaker 1: them to deliver the program, and they have all been
Speaker 1: through the program themselves, so they have a lot of
Speaker 1: cultural competence, they can speak the language, they understand what
Speaker 1: these people have been through. And this peer based model,
Speaker 1: I think is something that has a lot of has
Speaker 1: a lot of importance for how we deliver mental health services.
Speaker 1: If we can think about how to involve more peers
Speaker 1: in mental health service delivery, I think we can do
Speaker 1: a lot more to help people in this country have
Speaker 1: trauma histories. So we've had a lot of success in
Speaker 1: applying our research on post meatic growth in this process.
Speaker 1: And I would encourage people to look up Bouldercrest dot
Speaker 1: org on the website and you'll see we have two facilities,
Speaker 1: one in Virginia and one in Arizona beautiful rural ranches
Speaker 1: essentially where we give first rate accommodations to the people
Speaker 1: come to the program and it's all for free because
Speaker 1: it's funded by some generous donors, so no one has
Speaker 1: to pay for our programs. And we have people come
Speaker 1: for a week, but then we have them we give
Speaker 1: them up to eighteen months follow through with contact with
Speaker 1: us in various ways so that they can consolidate their
Speaker 1: learning that they've done during this week long program. And
Speaker 1: it's not a clinical program, it's not psychotherapy. It has
Speaker 1: a lot of recreational, outdoor activities involved in it for
Speaker 1: a good reason, because all those activities demonstrate some things
Speaker 1: that they're going to have to be able to do
Speaker 1: in order to live well and experience post traumatic growth.
Speaker 1: And then, ultimately, as you just mentioned, the meaning that
Speaker 1: they derive from this experience comes when they plan out
Speaker 1: a life of service going forward, so they have a purpose,
Speaker 1: or they benefit other people and do things for their
Speaker 1: greater community, or their families, or their country, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be, so that they re establish a sense of
Speaker 1: meaning and purpose in their lives, and that helps consolidate
Speaker 1: this post traumatic growth process. So this is a way
Speaker 1: that we're applying all this research to helping people in
Speaker 1: some ways that are really remarkable. And we've got also
Speaker 1: now eight different partners across the country, other veteran service
Speaker 1: organizations that we've trained up their staff to deliver these programs,
Speaker 1: so they're available not only in Virginia and Arizona, but Florida, Georgia,
Speaker 1: South Carolina, Maine, Washington State, Arkansas, different places in the country,
Speaker 1: all delivering these programs. So I'm really proud to see
Speaker 1: how this concept of post traumatic growth has been utilized
Speaker 1: for good for so many people, and we're going to
Speaker 1: do more than that. That is wonderful. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think of you know, well, let
Speaker 1: me phrase this a different way. I think that it's
Speaker 1: important to emphasize with this kind of research that it's
Speaker 1: not the event itself which automatically leads to post traumatic growth.
Speaker 1: It's that, though there are a lot of various things
Speaker 1: that could go under the brill of trauma, and trauma
Speaker 1: in a certain degree is kind of the eye in
Speaker 1: the eye of the beholder, but it's the meaning making
Speaker 1: that and the sort of cognitivey structuring that happens as
Speaker 1: a result of the situation. So am I fair to
Speaker 1: say that you've a pretty broad umbrella of what you
Speaker 1: include under the idea of trauma. I think you've said
Speaker 1: it very well that it's in the eye of the beholder.
Speaker 1: So we do not define trauma according to certain kinds
Speaker 1: of events like you find a DSM and whatnot. Instead,
Speaker 1: trauma is a disruption of the core belief system the
Speaker 1: assumptive world. That's what qualifies things as trauma to an
Speaker 1: individual if they thought of themselves, their lives, and their
Speaker 1: world a certain way, and then they experience this psychological
Speaker 1: earthquake which disrupts that whole infrastructure, so they can't make
Speaker 1: sense of how to live anymore. That's traumatic, no matter
Speaker 1: what the event is that set it off, And you're
Speaker 1: right that it's not the event that creates the growth,
Speaker 1: it's what happens afterwards. What do they do with that disruption?
Speaker 1: How do they recreate a system of understanding how to
Speaker 1: live in a particular kind of world which makes sense
Speaker 1: to them and allows them to go forward in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way. So we find trauma not according to events,
Speaker 1: but according to impact, and we see things from the
Speaker 1: point of view of the person that we're working with.
Speaker 1: I remember, I tell this story. I remember a long
Speaker 1: time ago I was working with a fellow who had cancer,
Speaker 1: terminal cancer, and I made the mistake of saying to him,
Speaker 1: this must have been this must be the toughest thing
Speaker 1: you've had to deal with. And he said, no, actually not.
Speaker 1: My divorce was a lot tougher than this. And he
Speaker 1: explained to me why. He said, I always figured I
Speaker 1: was going to die. Everyone dies, and this is the
Speaker 1: way I'm going to die. So this is not surprising
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, everybody's got to die. This just happens
Speaker 1: to be the way I'm going to go. I'm not surprised. However,
Speaker 1: my divorce was a shock. I never thought that I'd
Speaker 1: lose my wife and my kids and my family. That
Speaker 1: just disrupted my whole life and my sense of myself
Speaker 1: as a married man with a family. I never thought
Speaker 1: that that would happen. So he talked about a disruption
Speaker 1: of his core belief system essentially with the divorce, but
Speaker 1: not with the cancer. So who's to say what's traumatic?
Speaker 1: You know from the outsider again, you know, outsiders making
Speaker 1: judgments about people is a problem, and we have to
Speaker 1: understand people's experience. So yeah, as a researcher, I know
Speaker 1: that I'm sometimes doing kind of research which just gets me,
Speaker 1: you know, scratching the surface and I don't know the
Speaker 1: story of As a clinician, I get to know the story,
Speaker 1: and that's what's informed me a lot, just listening to
Speaker 1: stories and understanding this process. I love that you bring
Speaker 1: those multiple perspectives to the table. It's not just about
Speaker 1: checklists and quantitative like scales, but you also care about
Speaker 1: the experience and listening to the experience of the person
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. That's a very humanistic psychology
Speaker 1: perspective of you. Are you well, It's interesting you mentioned that,
Speaker 1: because I think that's where I started. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I was in graduate school. My first clinical supervisor was
Speaker 1: a student of Carl Rogers, Who's some listeners might like
Speaker 1: fans the early humanistic psychologists. All right, so I was.
Speaker 1: I was taught by Carl Rogers student a guy who
Speaker 1: did some of the original psycho therapy process research with
Speaker 1: Dodger in Ohio State. That was William Snyder's name was
Speaker 1: William Snyder, and he you know, I remember, I'll just
Speaker 1: go off on this tangent if you don't mind. I
Speaker 1: remember when he was teaching a psychotherapy we had to
Speaker 1: record all our sessions. We had to listen through every session,
Speaker 1: transcribe every session, and everything that we did. We had
Speaker 1: to say something about how we came up with that
Speaker 1: comment and how why we're responding to the client this way.
Speaker 1: He made us really think hard about how we're responding
Speaker 1: to people and really think in ways to kind of
Speaker 1: justify anything that we would say, because he thought listening
Speaker 1: was important. If we're going to say something, it better
Speaker 1: be important, you know, because we got to pay attention
Speaker 1: to that person. So that's where I came from originally. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I really love that perspective. I've been trying to resurrect
Speaker 1: humanistic psychology for what it's worth. You know. Another point
Speaker 1: that seems to be very worth a lot. Oh great, great, Sorry,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a delay, so if I
Speaker 1: could talk over you. It's not intentional, Please know that.
Speaker 1: Another another point that I think is really important to
Speaker 1: make here is that you're not making the case that
Speaker 1: growth requires suffering. There are certainly multiple paths to growth.
Speaker 1: And it also seems like you're not making the case
Speaker 1: that the person necessarily is grateful and and and would
Speaker 1: prefer the trauma over not having the trauma. It seems
Speaker 1: like you're not making that case either. Is that correct? Well,
Speaker 1: let's take the first thing the other two things. There
Speaker 1: are various roots to growth, of course, so this isn't
Speaker 1: the only way people become wise or learn things, or
Speaker 1: live better or discover meaning or amount. I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: saying that there are various roots to growth, and this
Speaker 1: is this is one way that this happens in human life.
Speaker 1: And I want to emphasize just because Lawrence and I
Speaker 1: coined this term post traumatic growth, doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: a recent development. I mean this goes back in human
Speaker 1: history of you if you study the Great Religions literature.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's all over the place. As
Speaker 1: long as there have been trauma, there's been growth, actually
Speaker 1: growth and change. And we you know, in our first
Speaker 1: book we wrote in nineteen ninety five, we tried to
Speaker 1: cover a lot of that point out how you know
Speaker 1: this is this part of human experience. So that's that's
Speaker 1: that's one thing. And then you know, post traumatic growth
Speaker 1: is certainly something that people value, but if they look
Speaker 1: at the event, which is the catalyst for it, you
Speaker 1: get different kinds of responses. Now, I like to quote
Speaker 1: Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote a book in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties When Bad Things Happen to Good People. His son
Speaker 1: Aaron died as a teenager, and there's a quote by
Speaker 1: him where he says, I have become, as a result
Speaker 1: of Aaron's life and death, a better pastor, a better rabbi,
Speaker 1: just a better person because of going through all of that.
Speaker 1: But I'd trade it for a second if I could
Speaker 1: have my son back and be just an average rabbi, right,
Speaker 1: But I cannot choose. So I worked for twenty five
Speaker 1: years for a nonprofit that served brief parents. Sat for
Speaker 1: twenty five years and brief parents support groups, and no
Speaker 1: parent would say, oh, my child died was a good thing.
Speaker 1: It produced this growth in mean parent would ever say that,
Speaker 1: but they would talk about change and growth, but they
Speaker 1: realized it's because what happened in the aftermath. Right now.
Speaker 1: I also in our first book, on the first page
Speaker 1: of our first book, quote one of our first research
Speaker 1: participants who was paralyzed, and he was a young man
Speaker 1: in his twenties, and he said it was the best
Speaker 1: thing that ever happened to him. He says he doesn't
Speaker 1: regret it. He says, I know that's hard to swallow,
Speaker 1: but it's the truth. And if you understand my story,
Speaker 1: you know why. He says, I was living a life
Speaker 1: that was really self destructive and not meaningful. He was
Speaker 1: a musician, spoken a lot of pot in a rock
Speaker 1: and roll band and got in a motor vehicle accident
Speaker 1: one night with his band and got paralyzed, ended up
Speaker 1: back home in rehab, and I had to quit smoking pot.
Speaker 1: And in the rehab, one of his physicians asked him
Speaker 1: to talk to some of the other young men in
Speaker 1: the rehab we're also paralyzed and whatnot. Does he seem
Speaker 1: to have a pretty good attitude about it, and he
Speaker 1: found meaning in helping out these other young men, and
Speaker 1: he decided to go to college. He ended up getting
Speaker 1: a master's degree in rehabilitation Kylesling. When I interviewed him,
Speaker 1: he was directing an agency for disabled people. He said,
Speaker 1: this never would have happened to me if I hadn't
Speaker 1: become paralyzed in that accident. I don't regret it at all.
Speaker 1: This life is much better than where I was headed.
Speaker 1: So it depends. You know, you got Harold Kushner and
Speaker 1: the rest of the break parents. You've got this guy,
Speaker 1: And that wasn't the only story we've heard. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this so anyway, anyway, it depends. You got to
Speaker 1: listen to You got to listen to individuals and understand
Speaker 1: their stories and their perspective. But I tend to believe
Speaker 1: people's perspective. You know, you listen to people and you
Speaker 1: sit with them, and they're earnest and they tell you
Speaker 1: stories like that, I believe what they're saying. So some
Speaker 1: people do say, hey, this this terrible event. I don't
Speaker 1: regret it. Other people say I would undo it in
Speaker 1: a minute. I hear you, and I appreciate that that
Speaker 1: you acknowledge that some people's experiences that they they are
Speaker 1: grateful for the event itself. So I appreciate that. Something
Speaker 1: that interests me very much is the role of culture
Speaker 1: and context in facilitating growth, falling adversity. So I am
Speaker 1: wondering what degree you do culture shape the narration of
Speaker 1: people's stories about challenge, adversity and failure. Well, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if this gets to your question, but I'll answer
Speaker 1: it this way that we'll go from there. As I've
Speaker 1: mentioned to you, there's you know, a lot of cultures
Speaker 1: where post traumatic growth research has been done. And almost
Speaker 1: every day I get an email from someone somewhere in
Speaker 1: the world who is asking for permission to use the
Speaker 1: inventory or want some advice or whatnot. Often, not always,
Speaker 1: but often they are students doing their dissertations and whatnot.
Speaker 1: And they they may be in Pakistan, Indonesia, Nepal. Who
Speaker 1: knows just all kinds of places you know, it's amazing
Speaker 1: to me. And and they're picking up on this because
Speaker 1: they see these kinds of things in their own cultures, right,
Speaker 1: and they want to learn more about it. So it
Speaker 1: seems to be quite universe now how it shows up,
Speaker 1: what domains of growth tend to happen very So for example,
Speaker 1: I have a good friend colleague, Kanataku, is Japanese, and
Speaker 1: when she does research in Japan, she finds that one
Speaker 1: particular domain of post traumatic growth does not show up
Speaker 1: much in Japan, and that's the one on personal strength.
Speaker 1: And she tells me it's because in Japan you don't
Speaker 1: claim personal strength very much. It's a much more collectivistic culture,
Speaker 1: and you don't proclaim yourself above others, and so seeing
Speaker 1: yourself as kind of achieved more personal strength is a
Speaker 1: hard thing for a Japanese person to do. So there
Speaker 1: you start to see a cultural difference compared to Americans,
Speaker 1: who are all about you know, our rugged individualism and
Speaker 1: our egoism and all of that kind of stuff that's
Speaker 1: that's throughout our culture. So there are some variations like
Speaker 1: this across cultures and contexts, and so growth happens in
Speaker 1: maybe slightly different ways, in different situations you know, around
Speaker 1: the world, and of course certain kinds of events might
Speaker 1: might be more stronger catalysts for certain kinds of growth
Speaker 1: perhaps as well. So, for example, if if you have
Speaker 1: a kind of event where people come to your assistance
Speaker 1: and your aid more maybe in a natural disaster, for example,
Speaker 1: you might start to change perception of your relationships with
Speaker 1: others because you've been responded to in such positive and
Speaker 1: helpful ways. Perhaps so, the kind of trauma, the kind
Speaker 1: of culture you can create some variations on this, but
Speaker 1: generally the experience itself is very common across cultures. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I was wondering about that. Another thing I was wondering
Speaker 1: about is the link between post traumatic growth and PTSD.
Speaker 1: Can you have both at the same time? As what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to ask, Yes, absolutely, yes, yes, and so
Speaker 1: because the same kind of experiences that produce symptoms of
Speaker 1: PTSD are also the catalyst for post traumatic growth. I mean,
Speaker 1: something bad, right, something really bad, So you can get
Speaker 1: symptoms of PTSD along with post traumatic growth. And post
Speaker 1: ramatic growth does not wipe out symptoms of PTSD. They
Speaker 1: may co occur. Right, However, when we have done our
Speaker 1: studies at Bouldercrest with people who have typically quite a
Speaker 1: few PTSD symptoms. By the time they're through our program,
Speaker 1: those symptoms have alley have alleviate, alleviated to a great degree.
Speaker 1: They've dropped by more than half. So that's because our
Speaker 1: process of facilitating growth involves some things that at the
Speaker 1: same time address symptoms, especially a lot of emotion regulation strategies,
Speaker 1: and when people disclose to each other and support each other,
Speaker 1: that tends to alleviate a lot of the symptoms of
Speaker 1: PTSD as well. But what's really most interesting is that
Speaker 1: the enduring symp of PTSD carry less weight for people
Speaker 1: when they also experience growth, because they say to themselves, basically, Okay,
Speaker 1: I still have some nightmares, but you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: living a life of service and meaning and purpose. So
Speaker 1: if I have to have some nightmares, I don't care
Speaker 1: as much about it. I guess it's a price I pay,
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't concern me as much because I'm
Speaker 1: doing something important with my life, so I'll put up
Speaker 1: with some of this stuff. So PTSD and POSTMADA growth
Speaker 1: co occur. They're related, they're correlated about point two point
Speaker 1: two five, and a lot of studies because there has
Speaker 1: to be some kind of distress to create the fertile
Speaker 1: ground for post traumatic growth, So you get distress as
Speaker 1: part of the part of the picture. Thanks. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was wondering about that. How is your research on posta
Speaker 1: static growth or growth after positive experiences informed how you
Speaker 1: think about PTG if it's informed it at all, Well,
Speaker 1: it's I can't say I know a lot about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've read some of that network, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm focused on how people change their narrative and their
Speaker 1: core belief system as a result of the experiences in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of difficulty events. So you know, when I
Speaker 1: think of this ecstatic thing, it's it's like positive events,
Speaker 1: wonderful positive events. So to the degree that that changes
Speaker 1: your perspective in terms of core belief system or your
Speaker 1: life narrative, I can imagine how that might be. But
Speaker 1: there's something else I want to say about what post
Speaker 1: traumatic growth experience is like for people, and that is
Speaker 1: it's not an intellectual experience. It's an emotional experience. So
Speaker 1: people can I've heard this many times, people say I
Speaker 1: knew before these events in my life that I was
Speaker 1: supposed to live life in a certain way. Or live
Speaker 1: life meaningfully, would main this or that or the other thing.
Speaker 1: But I know it differently now, I know it in
Speaker 1: a visceral way. I get it in a way that
Speaker 1: I can't go back to the old picture, the old perspective,
Speaker 1: because I've been essentially changed. And so if that can
Speaker 1: if a positive experience can do that, well fine. You
Speaker 1: know there's that root to growth too. So there's a
Speaker 1: there's an article that Charles Carter wrote back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight about catastrophe theory in relation to this, and
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty interesting because catastrophe theory is built
Speaker 1: on the concepts that were applied to structures and materials,
Speaker 1: and materials can bend and then they have a point
Speaker 1: that they break, and once they break in this theory,
Speaker 1: they can't be reassembled in the same way. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's forever disrupted, right. That's the way we
Speaker 1: think about this change in the belief system. You know,
Speaker 1: the old system gets broken in some essential fashion that
Speaker 1: you just can't go back to seeing life in the
Speaker 1: same way used to. This catastrophe has happened that breaks
Speaker 1: the old perspective, and now you're at a new plane,
Speaker 1: a new level and that's why for people, post traumatic
Speaker 1: growth tends to be sustainable, sustained because of that sort
Speaker 1: of that sort of experience. Do you see the pandemic
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to category to catalyze PTG at all? Yes,
Speaker 1: for some people, you know, it depends. It depends, as
Speaker 1: a phrase that psychologists like to use a lot, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do, because there's so many factors involved the things, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, it depends on whether the situations in
Speaker 1: people's lives create a challenge to the core belief system
Speaker 1: of the assumptive world, the assumptions people have made about
Speaker 1: how life is going to go. And for a lot
Speaker 1: of us, you know, we might have assumed that that
Speaker 1: in our world, our first world, that we never suffer
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand deaths from some damn disease. We assume that,
Speaker 1: you know, we we be able to go to the
Speaker 1: hospital and get treated and instead of being turned away
Speaker 1: because it's all filled up, we always assume that, you know,
Speaker 1: we can go out and hang out with people as
Speaker 1: we wanted to. I mean, there have been maybe a
Speaker 1: lot of assumptions we've made that that have been challenged
Speaker 1: by this. So if that has really rocked people's worlds,
Speaker 1: so they can't go back to the way they used
Speaker 1: to function. Maybe there's post traumatic growth in that. Maybe
Speaker 1: they change the way they relate to other people, Maybe
Speaker 1: they shift their life in new directions. You know a
Speaker 1: lot of people are quitting jobs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I read a little blurb in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: and I think it was just today about the great resignation.
Speaker 1: People resigning from all kinds of things, just not doing
Speaker 1: what they used to do. And maybe that's a sign
Speaker 1: of some new possibilities for people, that they create something
Speaker 1: different out of their lives. Maybe this has been a
Speaker 1: spiritual and existential change for people where they realize how
Speaker 1: vulnerable we all are. And if that's the case, maybe
Speaker 1: you start living differently. These all kinds of things here
Speaker 1: that could be happening. We'll have to see. But for
Speaker 1: some people the pandemic hasn't changed things much. For other
Speaker 1: people it's been devastating, and for others it's been transformative.
Speaker 1: Yet it's right, you know, well, I want to end
Speaker 1: this interview today by just getting to the practical level.
Speaker 1: What are some tips or you know, how is PTG
Speaker 1: best facilitated? What have you found in your research. Well,
Speaker 1: if we look at what we've done at Bouldercrest, here's
Speaker 1: the facilitation process that we understand it. First, people have
Speaker 1: to be educated about why they've reacted the way they
Speaker 1: have psychologically and physiologically to the events that they've encountered.
Speaker 1: So it's important understand that it's important to understand the
Speaker 1: core belief process of disruption and to see the possibility
Speaker 1: of growth, to get a sense that that could be.
Speaker 1: In fact, when people apply or a program, that's one
Speaker 1: of the questions we ask them, can you see possibly
Speaker 1: into the future anything better for yourself than what you've
Speaker 1: been through? So there's that emotional regulation. People have to
Speaker 1: be able to regulate their emotions enough so that they
Speaker 1: can more deliberately think through reconstructing their core beliefs, figuring
Speaker 1: out what to believe, what makes sense to them, get
Speaker 1: past a lot of rumination that's very intrusive, and be
Speaker 1: more deliberate and reflective about their thinking process. So they've
Speaker 1: got to have some good emotional regulation strategies. And then
Speaker 1: they have to be able to disclose or express themselves
Speaker 1: in some way to get what's inside outside in some
Speaker 1: fashion can start to recreate some understanding of their lives,
Speaker 1: how they got to where they are, and where their
Speaker 1: life may be going. So they have a narrative that
Speaker 1: makes sense, and they can see a future for themselves,
Speaker 1: and that future should include some way to be of
Speaker 1: service in the world, some way to do something useful
Speaker 1: to benefit other people, not just live for themselves, because
Speaker 1: out of that work of service, people are energized. I
Speaker 1: mean those people. I mean it's commonplace for people to
Speaker 1: say that when they give and they help, they feel
Speaker 1: like they get more out of it than the people
Speaker 1: that they help. So it's energizing, it's meaningful, is a
Speaker 1: sense of purpose. People want to continue to do these
Speaker 1: things that are that feel so good good so that
Speaker 1: that continues that growth process into people's lives, into their futures.
Speaker 1: So that's what the process should should look like for people,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the way we kind of organize our program. Wonderful. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for appearing on my podcast, but
Speaker 1: even more importantly, thank you for spearheading this whole field
Speaker 1: of investigation, which has taken off in lots of exciting
Speaker 1: directions by other researchers. I've been trying to look at
Speaker 1: this topic I'm working a book about this topic actually,
Speaker 1: and you've inspired me a lot personally, and so I
Speaker 1: just I just must thank you so much for your
Speaker 1: time today and for all the great work you've done. Well.
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure talking to you, and I appreciate
Speaker 1: your your incisive questions and uh it's a great time
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with you. Thank you. I'm glad
Speaker 1: we finally got a chance to do it. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
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