Opinion: Mass trauma can be followed by “post-trauma growth”

COVID-19 has rocked our collective ways of knowing and doing to the heart. We live in a group shock, but we don’t have to bow under its weight.

CAITLIN OCHS / Reuters

Opinion: “In the aftermath of an earthquake, why don’t we build something better? Don’t just live under the rubble.”

Citizens in more than 170 countries around the world face a collective shock. Within weeks or months, an unseen enemy – a virus that is not well understood – has killed thousands, disrupted the global economy, and suspended almost all of our social interactions. Workplaces and schools were reinvented, health-care supply chains overwhelmed, and travel and business were interrupted by screaming.

What we all face is the collective shock.

It stems from the “fighting, escaping or freezing” response that asserts itself when a stressful event shatters our sense of safety. At one point or another during this period, we may witness everything from feelings of helplessness, trauma, denial, or disbelief. We may find ourselves easily confused, find it difficult to focus, and spend sleepless nights. Some of us will recognize every possible negative outcome, while others may feel a strange breakup. Even more disturbing is the repulsion that we experience when we capture moments of joy.

In short, we may all ask ourselves, “What is wrong with me?” The truth is that we are naturally responding to an abnormal situation, but there may be ways to help us avoid these emotional waves. The inevitable result should not be net negative. Over time, many people recover from shock after they have grown from the experience.

While the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder did not enter our dictionary until the early 1980’s, today it represents a well-understood and almost predictable response to a frightening experience that separates us from resourcefulness, safety, and love. The shock force comes from making us powerless.

But what is less well understood is the ability that we sometimes have to restore that strength.

There are many intelligent thinkers whose humanity and rhetoric have risen within miles of their suffering, providing a 30,000-foot perspective on the deepest realities of life.

Perhaps there is no greater example than Victor Frankel, a young neurologist and successful psychiatrist, who endured Auschwitz’s unspeakable horrors. In his book, The Man Searches for Meaning, which he wrote just a few months after the end of World War II, challenged traditional psychology, assuming that finding meaning in a person’s suffering was an attempt to change life – in his condition, to save life -.

But in today’s society, in our relentless pursuit of happiness, we have lost the value of staying with our suffering. We may be more comfortable with the idea that trauma cannot have any value because a different possibility requires us to research hard work in introspection.

There’s nothing easy to do – and it’s especially true for those who are able to paraphrase their negative experiences as a way to increase self-awareness, increased empathy and deeper relationships – yet these are precisely the kinds of insights researchers have consistently associated with PTSD.

Veteran journalist Jim Rendon writes in his book “Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth”, “The suffering … has proven to be a kind of catalyst that pushed people to find a new meaning in their lives.” He cites the work of Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who are two psychologists who have attached the title of post-traumatic growth to the concept of emerging, like the Phoenix, from the ashes of a tragedy.

When they interviewed widows, prisoners of war, and persons with disabilities in accidents, a trend was emerging.

Rendon wrote that “painful experiences certainly caused suffering … but the suffering was part of a much larger experience.”

He quotes Tedeschi saying: “In the wake of an earthquake, why don’t we build something better? Don’t just live under the rubble, don’t just build the same bad building that you had before.”

In short, COVID-19 shook our collective ways of knowing and doing basic work. We live in a group shock, but we don’t have to bow under its weight.

Even with our suffering, we can ask ourselves, how can we – as individuals and societies – get out of this better, stronger and nicer than before?

Louise Bradley is President and CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Authority. Marika Sandrelli is a leader in Knowledge Sharing, Mental Health and Drug Abuse Services, at Fraser Health.

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