Knowra Post-traumatic growth Post-traumatic growth Post-traumatic growth is positive psychological change that some people report after struggling with highly challenging experiences. It can include changed priorities, stronger relationships, and a greater sense of personal strength.
Psychological trauma : Psychological trauma is lasting psychological distress following an event experienced as threatening or overwhelming. Growth is discussed in relation to the struggle that can follow traumatic experience.
Cognitive processing : Cognitive processing is the mental work of attending to, interpreting, and revising thoughts about experience. Repeated reflection can help people reconsider assumptions disrupted by trauma.
Posttraumatic Growth Inventory : The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory is a self-report questionnaire measuring perceived positive change after crisis or trauma. It operationalizes reported growth across domains such as relationships, strength, and appreciation of life.
Perceived growth : Perceived growth is a person's retrospective report of positive change following a difficult experience. Many growth measures capture perceived change rather than change independently verified over time.
Resilience : Resilience is the capacity to adapt or recover amid adversity. Resilience concerns maintaining or regaining functioning, unlike reported change beyond an earlier baseline.
Rumination : Rumination is repetitive thinking about distress, its causes, and its consequences. Deliberate reflection may support meaning-making, while intrusive repetitive thought can prolong distress.
Tedeschi and Calhoun model of posttraumatic growth : The Tedeschi and Calhoun model describes posttraumatic growth as change arising through struggle with crisis. This influential model links disrupted assumptions, cognitive processing, and perceived change.
Actual growth : Actual growth is demonstrable positive change from a pre-adversity baseline, assessed with evidence beyond retrospective self-report. Comparing perceived and measured change tests whether reported growth reflects lasting transformation.
Post-traumatic stress disorder : Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental disorder involving persistent symptoms after exposure to trauma. Growth can coexist with trauma symptoms, so it is not evidence that distress has ended.
Narrative identity : Narrative identity is a person's evolving life story that links remembered experiences with identity and future aims. Integrating adversity into a life story can reshape how people understand themselves.
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