How People Create Growth and Find Meaning Out of Trauma and Suffering

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The Concept of Resilience

Resilience reflects individuals’ ability to recover or progress without many challenges from traumatic events or any changes experienced in life (Gohde, 2015). The concept of resilience ensures that a person can maintain equilibrium of health when faced with adversity. Individuals who are resilient demonstrate positive adaptation and thrive, notwithstanding adverse events that affect health and well-being.

According to Gohde (2015), resiliency consists of both biopsychosocial and psychogenic factors that affect health. For instance, psychogenic factors influence mind and body health.

It is imperative to note that resilience is not genetic, but rather is a concept that can be learned. Individuals can learn to master elements of resilience and change their traumatic experiences. Resilience ensures that one can develop abilities to change traumatic events into growth experiences and advance in life.

These learned experiences should help one to cope in adverse situations, handle problems, and failures indicates potential vulnerability to stress (Gohde, 2015).

As previously mentioned, resilience reflects ability to cope or adjust easily after experiencing traumatic events. Since it affects mental processes, resilience requires one to develop cognitive coping styles. This would define how one faces, handles life problems, and subsequent stress and vulnerability too deeply rooted in negative emotion conditions (Gohde, 2015).

The fundamental role of resilience is to assist in managing negative emotions. That is, the real ability to demonstrate equilibrium and sustain positive health in both mind and body during traumatic experiences. Consequently, one can effectively handle such situations and progress in life.

Resilience focuses on behavior modifications in order to develop coping skills (Gohde, 2015). It requires better knowledge of the world, self-awareness for belief systems, social support from interpersonal relations and strong personal belief systems. Hence, one may be able to understand how negative emotions affect human mind and body and the importance of resilience in overcoming such challenges.

The Event the Client Experienced

Malala Yousafzai was shot by Taliban in October 9, 2012 when she was 15 because of her open views on women’s right to education and anti-Taliban campaign. Malala survived after being taken to the UK for specialized treatment. She spent time going through skull reconstruction, cochlear implant surgeries and recovery (Zahra-Malik, 2013).

Although Malala survived after successful treatment and rehabilitation, she continues to face resentment from her hometown in northwestern Pakistan. Some members of the village and Taliban have insisted that she is out to destroy Pakistan and therefore not wanted. Many villagers and Taliban have insisted that she is propagating Western ideas and more harsh on activities of Taliban.

Malala has continued to defy Taliban rule in her hometown and vowed to promote women’s right to education.

These events have led to traumatic events after surviving the head shot. Malala has developed hope and is now a symbol of unity.

The events that Malala experienced after the fetal shooting and subsequent survival were highly traumatic and painful. Apart from physical pain and anguish, she also experienced psychological trauma. After successful treatment, the teenager had to relocate to a new school in Britain.

Malala has lived in a violent neighborhood in northwestern Pakistan where the Taliban have vowed to spread their strict rules and limit women’s right to education. The militancy rule and subsequent violence against the natives naturally result in traumatic experiences. For Malala only aged 16, these traumatic experiences may present severe psychological problems later in adulthood. Moreover, she lives in fear because of constant death threats issued against her by the Taliban.

Other villagers have accused Malala of insincerity in her campaign. In fact, they argue that it is a ploy to get her family to move to Britain. Malala continues to encounter hatred even on social media (Zahra-Malik, 2013). Eventually, these events persistently result in trauma.

Interpreting and Overcoming the Event using meaning-making, sense-making and benefit-finding

Scholars have focused their attentions to understand the concept of meaning-making following traumatic experiences. Critical traumatic experiences or major losses usually result in traumatic experiences that may shatter individuals’ normal world, leading to a constant search for meaning (Steffen & Coyle, 2012). In this regard, the goal of Malala was to find positive effects, integrate the loss and adjust better to trauma. This would overcome the loss in her meaning system, assumptive world or self-narrative by meaning reconstruction processes, including sense-making, benefit-finding, and identity change (Steffen & Coyle, 2012).

Once Malala finds benefits in her traumatic experiences and loss, benefits and meaning would lead to various positive outcomes, including ‘post-traumatic growth’. A wide range of positive outcomes can only be realized through better adjustment to trauma.

To some extent, the perceived better adjustment after traumatic experiences may be associated with spiritual and religious beliefs, which lead to discovery of beliefs and hence meaning in life (Steffen & Coyle, 2012).

It is known that after successful recovery of Malala, she found a sense of meaning after the traumatic event. To Malala, meaning in her traumatic experiences could only be captured by writing a book and advancing her enduring campaign against Taliban and promoting right to education for children.

These changes took place in response to traumatic experiences of Malala (Draucker et al., 2009). They were triggered by tensions inherent in how individuals respond to traumatic experiences endured. Engaging in meaning-making led to a more satisfying means of living.

Writing and reading were forms of sense-making to manage unpleasant memories and avoid emotional distress for Malala. Luckily, she found several methods to manage memories and escape them too. Malala now actively works to fill in the gaps of unpleasant memories, even if she occasionally thinks about the trauma.

Besides, she avoided her attackers by relocating to Britain where she sought to build new relations and interact with others who may help.

Malala constantly reevaluated herself for meaning. Through these efforts, she devoted to write a book, share her story with the world and eventually realized global recognition from various bodies and individuals.

The Post-traumatic Growth

From Malala’s traumatic experiences, one can conclude that trauma made her emerge stronger. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, so they say (Hanson, n.d). The case of Malala is a true reflection of post-traumatic growth.

Based on positive psychology ideologies, individuals need trauma, adversity and drawbacks to grow stronger, find meaning, discover fulfillment and develop resilience through inner strengths (Hanson, n.d). Previously, large volumes of literature had however indicated that trauma and stress had adverse effects on individuals’ mental and physical health. It was documented that chronic conditions such as anxiety, posttraumatic disorder and even heart disease could be triggered by stress and trauma. However, new literature seems to suggest that traumatic experiences, when managed well, are actually good for mental health (Hanson, n.d).

Trauma leads to the development of resilience. The notion is rooted in the idea that one can experience positive outcomes after extremely traumatic experiences. New studies relate such positive results to meaning-making, sense-making and benefit-finding, posttraumatic growth or stress-related growth (Hanson, n.d).

The focus of trauma is in benefits rather than negative experiences such as pain and anxiety. The case of Malala reflects the relevance of post-traumatic growth after a terrorist attack. One can identify the growth benefits of post-traumatic growth irrespective of causes of trauma. Individuals may emerge stronger and discover their hidden abilities and strengths (Hanson, n.d). Consequently, people change, for instance, Malala changed herself concept and became confident to face new challenges related to children’s right to education and a campaign against Taliban rule.

Growth is noted in new nurtured relationships. For instance, Malala found out who her true friends were after the attack and the trauma.

After her traumatic experiences, Malala focused on defining new life priorities and philosophies to lead a more focused life. She turned her attention on promoting children’s right to education, telling her story through writing and campaigning against Taliban.

Post-traumatic growth is considered as a coping strategy after experiencing a trauma or stressful events. Positive life changes, however, depend on individuals’ ability to transform their lives with assistance if required.

The Role of Resilience in Protecting Wellbeing

The role of resilience in protecting individual wellbeing is noted in developing positive emotions to cope with traumatic events. Positive emotion has been noted as a critical factor in enhancing adaptive responses to pain and its related consequences (Ong & Zautra, 2010). Apart from demonstrating psychological resilience, individuals who experience positive emotions also have adaptive advantage during stressing situations.

It is noted that resilience should lead to positive life changes following a traumatic experience. For instance, individuals may change their careers, pursue new roles or engage in more activities that are meaningful to themselves and the world (Hanson, n.d).

Resilience should be used to develop a coping strategy or plan. In this case, individuals use their resilient abilities to manage distress and control the interactions between post-traumatic outcomes and potential positive health outcomes.

Resilient individuals strive to control negative emotions and rely on their coping strategies that evoke positive emotions such as positive attitudes, humor and positive thinking among others.

The purpose of resilience should be to reduce the levels of depression and focus on more positive affect following traumatic experiences to maintain wellbeing. Specifically, positive outcomes due to resilience were attributed to individuals who sought for benefit-finding following traumatic experiences. They realized greater improvements in health (Hanson, n.d). However, it is imperative to note that the role of resilience could be affected by other factors such as individuals’ belief systems or ethnic background. Personal traits such as optimism could also affect resilience and attendant outcomes. For instance, only optimistic individuals may be able to derive benefits and ensure wellbeing following such traumatic events (Hanson, n.d).

In fact, such experiences should drive people to derive positive outcomes from bad experiences. Hence, individuals who have experienced a great deal of trauma could possibly experience increased positive post-traumatic growth.

Given these variables, it is possible that resilience will not completely guarantee wellbeing and therefore stress and anxiety such as posttraumatic disorder may result from traumatic experiences (Hanson, n.d). This could occur when people cannot adapt and improve their situations.

References

Draucker, C. B., Martsolf, D. S., Ross, R., Cook, C. B., Stidham, A. W., & Mweemba, P. (2009). The Essence of Healing from Sexual Violence: A Qualitative Metasynthesis. Research in Nursing & Health, 32(4), 366–378. doi: 10.1002/nur.20333.

Gohde, J. H. (2015). Introducing Resilience.Natural Health Perspective.

Hanson, K. (n.d). Post-traumatic Growth.

Ong, A. D., & Zautra, A. J. (2010). Psychological Resilience Predicts Decreases in Pain Catastrophizing Through Positive Emotions. Psychology and Aging, 25(3), 516–523. doi: 10.1037/a0019384.

Steffen, E., & Coyle, A. (2012). Sense of presence’ experiences in bereavement and their relationship to mental health: A critical examination of a continuing controversy. In C. Murray (ed), Mental Health and Anomalous Experience (pp. 33-56). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.

Zahra-Malik, M. (2013). Malala, survivor of Taliban, resented in Pakistan hometown. Reuters. Web.

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