In this episode, we dive into the transformative journey of post-traumatic growth with the renowned Dr. Richard Tedeschi. A pioneer in the field, Dr. Tedeschi unveils how traumatic experiences can lead to profound personal growth and a renewed sense of purpose.
Key Highlights:
This episode is a must-watch for anyone looking to understand the psychological impact of trauma and the potential for positive change in its aftermath. Whether you are navigating personal challenges, supporting a loved one, or simply interested in psychological resilience, Dr. Tedeschi's insights offer a beacon of hope and a roadmap to recovery.
Today's Guest: Dr. Richard Tedeschi
Dr. Richard Tedeschi is Executive Director of the Boulder Crest Institute for Posttraumatic Growth, in Bluemont, Virginia, where he has been one of the developers of programs based on posttraumatic growth principles to help combat veterans and first responders. He is also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he served for 42 years.
He has published nine books and numerous professional articles on posttraumatic growth, an area of research that he developed while at UNC Charlotte.
Dr. Tedeschi serves as a consultant to the American Psychological Association on trauma and resilience, and is a Fellow of the Division of Trauma Psychology and the Division of Psychotherapy. He is also a member of the Division of Military Psychology and the Division of Independent Practice. He is a Past President of the North Carolina Psychological Association.
LINKS:
https://bouldercrest.org/
Read More About Post Traumatic Growth
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com
Thanks for listening!
Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
In this episode, we dive into the transformative journey of post-traumatic growth with the renowned Dr. Richard Tedeschi. A pioneer in the field, Dr. Tedeschi unveils how traumatic experiences can lead to profound personal growth and a renewed sense of purpose.
Key Highlights:
This episode is a must-watch for anyone looking to understand the psychological impact of trauma and the potential for positive change in its aftermath. Whether you are navigating personal challenges, supporting a loved one, or simply interested in psychological resilience, Dr. Tedeschi's insights offer a beacon of hope and a roadmap to recovery.
Today's Guest: Dr. Richard Tedeschi
Dr. Richard Tedeschi is Executive Director of the Boulder Crest Institute for Posttraumatic Growth, in Bluemont, Virginia, where he has been one of the developers of programs based on posttraumatic growth principles to help combat veterans and first responders. He is also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he served for 42 years.
He has published nine books and numerous professional articles on posttraumatic growth, an area of research that he developed while at UNC Charlotte.
Dr. Tedeschi serves as a consultant to the American Psychological Association on trauma and resilience, and is a Fellow of the Division of Trauma Psychology and the Division of Psychotherapy. He is also a member of the Division of Military Psychology and the Division of Independent Practice. He is a Past President of the North Carolina Psychological Association.
LINKS:
https://bouldercrest.org/
Read More About Post Traumatic Growth
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com
Thanks for listening!
Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
is likely that nearly 100% of people probably in the world, but at least in America have experienced or will experience trauma in some way. Today I'm speaking with Dr Richard Tedeschi. Dr Tedeschi has been a pioneer in the field of what he has coined as post-traumatic growth and how people can actually grow and experience purpose in life after experiencing really hard things, experiencing situations to where there's been a challenge to their core belief system. We're going to dive in way more to that in today's episode. It's one of my favorites that I think I've ever done, so you'll definitely want to listen to this whole thing, but Dr Richard Tedeschi is the executive director now at a nonprofit called Boulder Crest Institute for Post-Traumatic Growth.
Speaker 1:As I said, he is a researcher. He was also a clinician. He received his PhD in clinical psychology, but then he also taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So he has been a professor, he's been a researcher, he's been a clinician. He's a very wise individual who has done some great work in the field, and today he's going to help us understand how we can grow from traumatic experiences that we experience. Let's dive into today's episode. Dr Tedeschi, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. Glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Let's start with asking you the question I'm sure you're asked often, which is what is post-traumatic growth?
Speaker 2:Post-traumatic growth is the process that people often go through in the aftermath of traumatic events or aversive life events. That involves a struggle to come to terms with how their core belief systems about things that they've always assumed to be true are challenged by these events and, as a result of that processing of all of that, they experience certain positive changes in their lives.
Speaker 1:So then, how would you define? I mean, you just said it, but one of the working definitions that I've been using of trauma for probably about two years now has been when a person feels overwhelmed by a situation and powerless to do something about it. But the way that you just described it is when a person experiences a situation that creates a challenge to their core belief system. So do you think that those are two different definitions, the one that I've been using and the one you've been using, and can you give us some examples of what yours means? Because I think a lot of times when people hear the word trauma, we think of very heavy situations. Is that really what trauma is? Is it only those heavy situations?
Speaker 2:Well, I think this is getting to something that's very important to kind of core our conversation, because in many circumstances people try to define trauma according to kind of a list of things. This is the traumatic list and you know you can check the boxes and have you experienced this, that or the other thing? And that assumes that certain events strike people in the same way. But I don't think that's true. In my experience working with people over the years, I've been surprised sometimes that, you know, have some events that we might assume to be traumatic for a person are not for certain people and have some events that are traumatic for people we find surprising.
Speaker 2:So it's really very individual and we have to pay attention to the effect on the individual. So the effect you're talking about on the individual is they might feel powerless and overwhelmed. I also agree that we have to look at the effect of the individual and what we're looking at is how people find themselves questioning some understandings of themselves and the world they live in that they have just accepted to be true until these events have occurred. And as a result of the disruption of these core beliefs, they often feel very anxious and that's kind of the overwhelmed stuff and they're not sure how to proceed and how to navigate their situation now because they've lost their moorings, and that may leave people feeling powerless, certainly confused and anxious. So let me give you examples.
Speaker 2:So in terms of core beliefs, we're talking about things like how benevolent the world is or other people are.
Speaker 2:Do people have good intentions or bad intentions?
Speaker 2:And sometimes people go through events where they're confronted with what appears to them to be some kind of evil and they're shocked by this.
Speaker 2:They thought people were good and then they've been betrayed or taken advantage of or abused, and it's a shocking development when you think that people are essentially good and then you find out maybe not so much, or maybe an event challenges your idea that things are predictable, that you, you know, we all have a life path, that we think we're following a kind of a plan and we anticipate a certain kind of future and whatnot, and then something completely derails that and sends us in a different direction. This wasn't the plan, you know. Or maybe we think that we're basically in control of things, and then things happen and we feel like, oh, it's all out of my control. I thought I had this and maybe I don't. So it's those kinds of things that are traumatizing for people, because what happens is you don't know what to believe and what to think anymore. You don't have a firm understanding anymore that you can rely on to navigate your next moves.
Speaker 1:What makes it trauma Is it that they are shaken, that there's a negative effect of their core beliefs being challenged.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. So the negative effect is I'm confused, I'm highly anxious, I don't know what to do, I don't know to believe anymore in the world that I thought I understood. I don't understand so well. And if you don't understand the world or yourself or what's happening to you with that lack of understanding, it's hard to know what to do. So that's very anxiety arousing for people.
Speaker 1:But there's also a difference in someone having experienced this type of trauma and then something like PTSD. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, ptsd is, of course, defined by our diagnostic and statistical manual and you have to meet certain criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD. But there are aspects of that diagnosis of PTSD that correspond to the sort of things that we're talking about here with the core belief challenge, and that's the cognitive difficulties that people's report when they have PTSD, when they have a lot of uncertainty about themselves and what's happening to them, and certainly PTSD is characterized by a lot of anxiety. So there's that too. So there's some connections with this. But you can experience trauma without necessarily having all the symptoms of PTSD that check all the boxes and result in that diagnosis.
Speaker 1:A percent of people, let's just say, in America, do you think, have experienced trauma?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean there's we have data on that and it depends on the groups of people that you're talking about. You know, some people in this country are exposed to circumstances that are more likely to be traumatizing for them because of where they live and the kind of circumstances they live in, where people with certain jobs are more likely to be traumatized because they're in that kind of situation where they're confronting emergencies and difficulties of various kinds. So it depends on what group of people you're talking about. I think probably overall, we can say that it's hard to get through life without experiencing something that's traumatizing, even though you may not experience post-traumatic stress disorder. So if you look at post-traumatic stress disorder, you know, maybe you know somewhere around a quarter of the population, maybe in general. But if you're looking at, if you're looking at, traumatic circumstances, you know almost everybody goes through something at some point in life that may shake their core belief system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking it has to be nearly 100, it has to be nearly 100% of people that at some point in their life, go through that. But the research that you've been doing has been on what happens or what can happen after someone experiences this shaking of their core belief system, and you've coined it. Did you coin the term? It's called post-traumatic growth and I'm assuming you coined it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, myself and my colleague Lawrence Calhoun. I did most of this early work with Lawrence and I coined the term post-traumatic growth back in 1995.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. How cool is it to know that you added a term to the psychological field of study. That's just.
Speaker 2:That's a good legacy to leave. It is a cool thing. The reason that we came up with a term is because we had been researching for 10 years before that this whole phenomenon where people change in positive ways as a result of the encountering adversity, and there wasn't any good term for it. You know, in the literature there were all kinds of things people called it. We had been calling it for much of that time a perceived benefit. That's what we were talking about, perceived benefits, which we never liked because it sounded like it was just a perception and not kind of a real thing. So we didn't like talking about it that way. But that's the way a lot of people talked about it. And other people said these were kind of positive byproducts of trauma or something. And it didn't ring like that. It sounded like sausage making or something.
Speaker 2:So we thought we have to attract attention to this, because people weren't paying attention to this phenomenon very much. Psychologists were really enamored with PTSD for good reasons. But we found out that that wasn't the whole story by a long shot about what people go through. So we just came up. You know, I remember one day, you know, walking from my office down to Lawrence's office and saying Lawrence, how about post-traumatic growth? How's that for a way of describing what we've been trying to talk about? He said, yeah, yeah, that's work. That will work, because we want some way to attract attention to this, something that people would pay attention to and research and learn about. So that's what we started talking about post-traumatic growth.
Speaker 1:How did you begin to realize this was a thing? I mean, you're a unique blend in the fact that you were a researcher and a clinician, so were you doing therapy with people who had experienced trauma and you would begin to see differences in these groups of some people who grew and some people who didn't. Can you tell us the origin story?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, briefly, the origin story was as a researcher up until the early 80s or so that's how old I am, it's a little time ago. Until the early 80s or so, I was doing most of my research on social psychological concepts and things, but I was a clinical psychologist and teaching therapy and doing therapy, and so my research and my clinical work were mismatched. And after I got tenure at University of North Carolina, at Charlotte, where I was teaching, I said to my friend Lawrence. I said you know, I want to change my research direction and do something that's more clinically oriented and fits with what I am interested in as a clinician. And I said and Lawrence said something like well, you know, what do you want to do? I mean, what really interests you? And I said I think I became a psychologist originally because I wanted to learn about how people became wise, how people lived particularly well the best people around us. Now they get to be that way. So he said, well, let's check that out.
Speaker 2:We started looking at the literature at the time on wisdom. There wasn't a lot in psychology about that, so we just decided to do the basics. Let's get some wise people and talk to them, let's interview some wise people. So that's what we did, and we decided that wisdom might come from two things. One is a long life so we got up with people who are in their later years and also from having to go through hard things and figure out how to live through things that are difficult. So we talked with people who have suffered physical disabilities in adulthood and done particularly well. So these are people who have come paralyzed, blinded and things like that, but had done very well. So we started with those interviews and people told us their stories and out of those stories that we examined closely, we derived a lot of these concepts that we ended up doing our research with. Thank you.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating. And then, how did you do the research for post-traumatic growth specifically? You found people who had I mean, what was the qualifying criteria of the group that you looked at?
Speaker 2:Well, what we did was we tried to turn these interviews that we had done and all those stories into something that we could put numbers on. Okay, Tried to make it quantitative. So we took quotes from what people were telling us and created like a survey instrument. Out of these things that came the post-traumatic growth inventory, which has been widely used across the world in the intervening years. So the items and questions on that inventory came from our interviews of people who had experienced traumatic events and then we just started sharing that with people who had been through things that they considered traumatic and asking them you know, have you experienced any of these kinds of outcomes?
Speaker 2:And kind of in retrospect, not surprisingly, people agreed with the folks that we interviewed and told us stories about these things and said, yeah, yeah, this is, yeah, I've changed in these ways. So we started measuring it and then creating some other ways of measuring the process, the core belief disruption process that we mentioned, how people kind of ruminate and think about these things and get to some position where they can come to some conclusion or resolution about, you know, a new way of believing or understanding themselves and their lives in the world. So we started looking at all those pieces of the puzzle over the years and then we were able to develop kind of a model of what the post-traumatic growth process looks like and out of that model came ways to try to help people move in those directions, to facilitate this process by understanding the process itself.
Speaker 1:So what is the process?
Speaker 2:Well, the process, as I mentioned first, involves the challenge to the core belief system, like I don't know what to think anymore, what to believe and how to understand myself and what's happened to me, and then people get very anxious and ruminate about it. This is where people can't get off their minds what's happened to them and what to do next, and then, because they're ruminating about this, call this intrusive thinking. You find this in PTSD. Because of that, people often look for a way forward to figure things out, and that might involve talking to other people about what happened to them or other ways to express what happened, not necessarily with talking, but other methods, artistic methods, other things people do.
Speaker 2:They try to work out a new understanding and, if they're fortunate, two things happen. One, they may come up across companions who listen to them and help them in this process, and the other thing that hopefully starts to happen is they start to regulate their emotions well enough, all the anxiety, so they can think straight again and think more calmly and rationally about this and start to figure things out. And call that deliberate rumination or reflective thinking. So, with that reflective thinking and maybe people who are supportive and can help them find some growth in all of this. They start to reconstruct a belief system that they can make more sense and incorporates what's happened how to understand what's happened, and it allows them to move forward into a life that's a little bit different, redesigned in some ways that may be subtle or other ways, really substantial.
Speaker 1:So there, as you were saying that, I was kind of picturing it in my head. There's a trauma that happens, that challenges a core, someone's core, beliefs, which leads to anxiety, rumination, and then that's kind of where in my mind it broke and it was like there's a point here where someone's either going to choose to try and find a way forward or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is where very often that breaking point, that threshold you're talking about, I think, is dependent upon the appearance of an expert companion, a person who you find is willing to really listen to you in a way that they want to learn about you and what you've been through, who isn't just an advice giver or offering platitudes but really wants to understand deeply and sticks with you through what you're going through in the aftermath of all this, and that allows you to kind of think about things in a very different way than just the initial shock of it all, because you find yourself talking with this expert companion, trying to explain yourself, and in that process you start to understand better what's happened to you and what you're starting to know and realize. So that relationship between you and an expert companion can be crucial in this process. Now, sometimes the expert companions may not be there. Unfortunately that happens for people that don't always meet those kinds of folks in their lives. But you might learn from other places. Maybe people will listen to your podcast and our discussion and it might prompt them to reflect on themselves in different ways. Or somebody will read a story or go online and find some support online, who knows?
Speaker 2:And there's all kinds of ways that people can start to shift from that anxiety-driven, intrusive rumination to something that's more reflective. They start to think in terms of what makes sense now, what do I believe and what's going to be the point. Going forward after I've gone through something that's so horrible for me Whether that's a cancer diagnosis, loss of a loved one, being victimized in some way, abused, going through combat who knows what it is but coming to the terms with what does it, what does it do now? What's next for me? What makes sense? And then come to terms with those kinds of questions and developing a view of your life going forward, like a new life story that you can start to live and work on. So that's what can start happening for people. But expert companions can be critical in helping people move in those directions.
Speaker 1:So as an expert companion, could that be a friend who's gone through a similar situation, or does it need to be a licensed professional in some area? Like what is an expert companion in its definition?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't have to be a licensed professional Sometimes, where the most licensed professionals are the last resort for people, sometimes they can't find anyone else. But expert companions can be friends, family members, coaches, teachers, clergy, could be anybody. The thing about an expert companion is how they relate to someone who's suffering like this.
Speaker 2:And they relate by listening carefully, learning about that other person and what they've gone through, rather than making assumptions. That's crucial, being open to learning. You know what was that like for you. What did you go through? How did you feel about that? You know, explain to me what happened, what this is like. Someone who's really interested in digging down into that experience of the other person is going to pay attention that way, and someone who sees in that other person, as wounded as they might, feel possibility and a future and strengths and capabilities that that person, who's gone through the trauma, may not recognize in themselves anymore.
Speaker 2:And an expert companion kind of sticks around, you know, shows that. You know I'm not just going to be here and gone. I'll be willing to journey with you, I'll be your companion through this so you can continue with me, I'll continue with you. So it's that kind of relating that's important. So, for example, you know I work at Boulder Crest Institute, a nonprofit that serves veterans and first responders.
Speaker 2:All the programs we deliver are peer-delivered. So I don't I don't deliver any of those programs. I help design them, evaluate them. But what we do is we use peers. So when we're working with veterans, other veterans are the people that are the expert companion in these programs Working with police officers it's other police officers, firefighters it's other firefighters. You know it's so it's all peer-delivered, because these are the people that can naturally be the best companions because they have a natural way of understanding, because of their own experience with things. So anybody can be an expert companion who relates in this particular way. And that's and that's the beauty of this kind of thinking, because it means that in this country full of trauma, there's the availability of all kinds of people who can help healing.
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense. My husband was a soldier and then a police officer and we were just talking last night about he's when he was when he was a soldier and when he was a police officer. He would never admit that anything he had went through was traumatic for him and he didn't want to talk about feelings or any of that. And to an extent, they're taught that right, like you know, they're taught to put up walls and barriers and yes, and so he's been out of that for probably four or five years now and he's recently started going to therapy and different things, and I'm hearing him say things I've never heard him say before, like really being more in touch with his emotions and things like that.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that's been incredibly helpful for him and we were just talking about this last night was being able to connect with other police officers or other soldiers or other men who have gone through difficult things, and that's who he's been able to process these emotions with and open up to.
Speaker 1:You know, and and he and I like he's my best friend, I'm his best friend, but it's not the same Him opening up to me about what it was like to go through some of the things he went through in the military I can't understand and some of it I think he doesn't want to share, right Like there's just a part of it that he would rather someone who understands it and who can identify on a deeper level, and it's been incredibly helpful to him. And so when I heard in one of the podcasts I heard that you were on I heard you talking about Boulder Crest and the fact it was peer-to-peer delivered and I thought it's brilliant, especially for any group of people, but especially for the group of people who are taught to hide their emotions to see someone else that they can identify with do that. It has to make it even more powerful on the other side of it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know. What's really interesting about this is a couple things. What I mentioned First in our programs, which are post-mortar growth based, what we encourage people to do is to take what's been difficult for them and what they've learned from it and turn it into acts of service, ways of sharing with other people and being connected with other people who might need an expert companion. So as you go through this, you start to learn how to become an expert companion yourself and take what's been such a difficult journey for you and hurt you so much and turn it into something that's useful and benefits other people. So these acts of service become a way of turning what's suffering into something that is useful in the world and beneficial in the world and that makes a big difference in how people feel about themselves. Now you start to see your own value instead of just thinking of yourself as a wounded person.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I wanted to mention is that you are so right that in communities, military people and first responders it's traditionally been it's been very difficult to talk about things that are traumatic in any way, which indicates weakness or vulnerability.
Speaker 2:And we find that in our programs when the people who are the peers who are facilitating the programs are willing to be open about themselves and talk about their own experiences a bit Not take the limelight and all that, but just just be open about their own experiences. That this is part of what gives people the permission to talk themselves more openly. And we've also, you know, when we've worked with different, different police departments, for example, when when we go into these police departments it's required that the leaders in the police department come and kind of introduce this program and talk about how important it is and are vulnerable themselves. So when you have like a chief of police who's willing to do that you know the the top guy is willing to do that then everybody else starts to feel like, okay, if he can be open and vulnerable and talk about his struggles, I guess I guess it's okay, we'll be all right, yeah, no one will look down on us for that.
Speaker 1:That's powerful. A key so two key points of this post traumatic growth is there's this decision that you're gonna to do to, to, to find acceptance to all of the ruminating thoughts, all of the like your brain is trying to figure out why what happened happened. There's a decision point of I'm gonna come to acceptance. I'm going to find a person who helps me come to acceptance, this expert, companion or a community, some kind of group of people that's gonna help where I can, where I can verbalize things, talk it out, feel heard, feel understood, come to an acceptance of it. And there was another thing you said which was oh, maybe I wrote it down. Well, it's. It's also choosing to then do something different so you change your thoughts. You change your thoughts into something that's gonna be more productive, and purpose in life is a way to do that, is a way to help you change your thinking into something more deliberate and productive.
Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the things that's useful for people is to have some idea of the kind of changes that we see in post-traumatic growth, at least have a little bit of a roadmap about this. So, for example, there are five different kinds of changes that people typically refer to when they discuss their growth experiences. So one type of change is they feel like they're stronger people, that because they've gone through something very difficult, they recognize their personal strength. I'm stronger than I thought I was, or this experience has strengthened me in some way. So there's that. Another is a change in their relationships with other people. But as they explore what has hurt them and what's been frightening or difficult and they open up emotionally to other people, they find themselves feeling closer to others, more connected with others. Or maybe they find themselves feeling more empathic, that because of what they're going through, they can understand other people's struggles too. They can identify with other people. So a deeper emotional relationship with other people.
Speaker 2:A third area that people report is what we call new possibilities. That is, when people are set in a different course in life because of what's happened. They find themselves maybe doing things that they might not have done before, changing their priorities, thinking about what's important as something different than what they considered before. So there's new possibilities that have been opened up for them, new opportunities for how they live their lives. And then another area is appreciation for life. This is essentially gratitude being more grateful for just living your life and especially things that you might have taken for granted before, that you overlooked or didn't pay much attention to, and appreciating those things with greater depth.
Speaker 2:And then the last, the fifth area is spiritual and existential change, where people start to explore the big questions of their lives, like what's the purpose of my life? What kind of impact do I want to have on other people in this world? Or sometimes people talk about feeling like they understand more about what it means to be a human being. It's some kind of depth, or maybe they develop a fuller picture of their spiritual understandings and beliefs, things of that kind. So when you start to present people with descriptions of these areas of growth that we've found in our research right from the beginning with our interviews, often people say, well, yeah, that's what's going on, that's what's happening. And so many times I've heard from people and they say you know, I haven't been able to put a language to this or words to this, but you've done that. It's really helped me go into more depth and explore these changes, so that can be helpful just to kind of know what's possible.
Speaker 1:I wanted to ask you a question about the spiritual changes, one as well, and as I was preparing for the questions I was going to ask you this morning, I thought so. I'm a person of faith, I'm a Christian, and part of the Christian belief system is that when you experience suffering, that God meets you there and God can help you through it. And so I wondered if the spiritual change could even come in like earlier in the process, kind of around the anxiety and the rumination, like if that can be a time where people turn to faith or turn to prayer or turn to something to help them make sense of what's going on, kind of alongside that expert companion track, so to say, that helps them to find purpose in their suffering.
Speaker 2:It certainly can be part of that process and when I talk to people about these kinds of issues, I find all sorts of things going on. So it often brings up the question of I'm a good person, why did something so horrible happen to me? What does this mean about God? I thought God, I'm a believer and I'm a person of faith, so why would something so terrible happen to me? And that other people might be saying this terrible thing happened, but it's my faith that helped me through it. Without my faith, I'm not sure how I would have gone through this, because I know that God is always with me, even when I couldn't find any others. So it might be that. Or it might be because I have a faith community. I knew I had people there I could count on who would help me and understand me and support me, so it's my faith community that made the difference. So there's all different ways that the questions become an important part of the post-traumatic experience.
Speaker 1:There's also a belief in Christianity that God will work all things together for good, and when I think about the people who have gone through these experiences, many of which are terrible things losing a child, losing a loved one, things you would never want to happen again but then being able to see on the other side of it that there's at least things that can be worked out for good.
Speaker 1:So I have a friend, for example. They lost their first grandson when he was just a few days old and incredibly traumatic experience for everyone involved. From that loss they ended up starting an organization that does grief retreats for people who have also experienced loss, and, while they would never want to go back and experience that again or have it happen again, they were able to make something from it to help other. It gave them the purpose that you talked about. Right, it gave them this purpose in life. But then I've also heard you talk about how there's people who they may experience something traumatic like being paralyzed or some kind of health effect that they actually would end up saying was the best thing that ever happened to them. Can you tell us a little bit more about just kind of like how someone gets to the point of experiencing something I would look at and say that would be terrible. I don't know how I would work through that and then saying it was amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's interesting that the story told about the people who lost their grandson, because I worked for 25 years for an organization nonprofit that served bereaved families, and it was started by two women who had lost their children and they found that there wasn't any resources to help them and they just happened to find each other and they said we need to start something that would help other bereaved parents and families and they started this organization that I worked for. So that's one of those ways of finding a service component to this and finding a way to be a benefit to other people that I've mentioned. So that's a pathway that people sometimes are able to follow. That's really important.
Speaker 1:So now there was another question, something else you were asking me I just dropped it, yeah, the people who experienced these traumatic events and say it was the best thing that ever happened.
Speaker 2:The best thing that ever happened. Right, so you can't say that the death of your child was the best thing that ever happened. I mean, that doesn't work. But some other things.
Speaker 2:For example, on the first page of the first book that Lawrence Calhoun and I wrote back in 1995 called Trauma and Transformation, we cite one of the people that was one of our research participants in these interviews. This was a young man who had been paralyzed by a motor vehicle accident in his early 20s and he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him. And he said you know how does that work? And he said well, I was a rock and roll musician, spoke in a lot of pot on the road with my band, estranged from my family. You know that was his life. And they got into this accident paralyzed him.
Speaker 2:He had to go through rehabilitation and then he started. He got off drugs, he became reacquainted with his family but, most importantly perhaps, in rehab, the doctors. One of the doctors said to him you know you're going through your physical rehabilitation better than some of the other fellows here. Maybe you can talk to some of them and encourage them, which he did. And he found that so meaningful that he went back to school, ended up getting a degree in rehabilitation counseling, and when I was talking to him he was a director of an agency that served people with disabilities and he said there is no way, you know, I could imagine sitting here in this wheelchair, the director of this agency, you know, six or seven years ago, before I had my accident. But if I hadn't had that accident, I can't imagine this would have been what I'm doing, and what I'm doing is so important to me. It's so that actually was the best thing ever happened. So that's his explanation. You have to know the story.
Speaker 2:You have to know the story.
Speaker 1:Aren't people amazing they are, or what they can go through.
Speaker 2:Hey, kimberly, people are amazing, these stories are amazing, and that's why I'm so grateful that over the years I've been doing this work in this area. It keeps me, you know, keeps me focused on what's important and believing in the human spirit and capability. So this area of post-traumatic growth is, it's been a really good area for me to devote my professional career to.
Speaker 1:I can believe that because it's looking for the hope for every person and believing that, no matter what they've gone through, there's hope for their future to be better than it was before.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely people. People surprise me all the time. I, you know I mean people that look like how are they ever gonna climb out of this? What can they do? And they do If you give them the chance and you give them the proper circumstances. You know that's what we try to do a bolder press with our work. That's why I try to do in my private work as a clinician Try to help people see where there is hope for them.
Speaker 1:What would you say to the listener who has a friend or a family member who is stuck in this pit of Anxiety, rumination? They've experienced something that's challenged their core belief and they have not yet kind of come back up the ladder to To do all these positive things with post traumatic growth. What can, what can someone do to help someone in the depths right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, unfortunately we can't produce post-traumatic growth for people, but we can facilitate the process. So I would say to them Listen, be steadfast and try to point out to that other person the places where there is strength and possibility and value, even though they're struggling. Look for those five areas of post-traumatic growth, that there may be something in one or more of those areas that you notice, and See if they can't find a way to be of service, find a way to benefit others and to use their experiences To be of help to other people. So those are some ways and and you know, my colleague at Boulder Crest, brett Moore, who is who's an army psychologist, now works with the DoD.
Speaker 2:He and I wrote a book called the post-traumatic growth workbook which we, which we intended to help people use for themselves to go through this process and kind of guide them through Understanding of how post-traumatic growth Happens. So maybe something like that can be useful. But the relationship, you know, sticking by people and having a relationship with them, that's that's that's critical. I mean, without relationship, you know we're alone and adrift and it's hard to make anything good happen. So that's what makes a difference.
Speaker 1:What would you say to the person listening? Who's the one stuck? So the one who's saying I cannot get out of this negative thought cycle? A Lot of my listener while I wouldn't say a lot of them a lot of them who are suffering from some kind of trauma. A lot of them are suffering from, like a divorce has been filed or things like that More relational issues that they've experienced in their life. What do you say to that person of how they can experience growth after pain?
Speaker 2:well, well, first I just want to quickly say that a divorce can be very traumatic. I Remember talking to one guy I foolishly he was dying of cancer. I foolishly said to him I said this must be the most difficult thing you've ever been through and he said no, actually not my divorce, that was the most difficult thing. Cancer. I figured well, I always knew I was gonna die and this is just, I'm gonna die with cancer. If I never thought I get divorced, I never thought I'd lose my family. That was shocked to me. Not like this is you know Death. You always know you're gonna die. Divorce. I never thought that would happen.
Speaker 2:That was traumatic, so so do your listeners are going through that. You know that's no small thing and and they have to see beyond the current situation into the future. They have to know that the process of getting divorce is probably the worst of it. And then, in the aftermath of going through all of that, there is a possibility of seeing a new pathway, new things they can do, new possibilities for their lives. Really start to explore you know what, what it is that makes them a special kind of person, what they have to offer to the world. So remember, you know it's a long haul, get through this part to the next.
Speaker 1:One of the things you mentioned as the five outcomes is gratitude or appreciation for life. Can the gratitude practice also be something that people use proactively To help them become more Grateful?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely, you know. Pay attention, pay attention to what you, what you Can too often take for granted. Notice how, how good your life is in a lot of ways, even if it's not good in all the ways.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That's so good. Dr Tedeschi, I could literally ask you probably three more hours of questions because I find the work that you're doing absolutely fascinating, but, alas, my listeners probably don't have another three hours right now, although I know that they love that. They're gonna love this as well. This is gonna be a huge hit with with the audience. As we end, I would love for you to share a little bit more about Boulder Crest and the work you're doing there. I believe I would have a good, a good chunk of my listeners who have either served or are married to someone who has In one of those capacities and their ears probably perked up when you started talking about it. Can you tell us a little bit more about what happens there, how it works, who it's for and why they come?
Speaker 2:Well, boulder Crest, and you can go to our website. It's bouldercrestorg, and our campus is located in Bluemont, virginia, outside of DC. We have a number of places across the country where we deliver our programs. They're week-long programs, they're free, no one, you don't pay anything for, nobody has to pay anything. They're all funded by our generous donors and they're delivered by by veterans and first responders, and they're based on these concepts of post-traumatic growth that I've mentioned to you, and it's not therapy, it's training and how to live well, and some of that Experienced during that week involves discussion, some of those, some interesting physical activities outside.
Speaker 2:They're Meaningful and help people understand in an experiential way what it means to go through this process of post-traumatic growth. And and it's done in small groups six to eight people and and it's therefore a time where you end up feeling closely connected with a small group of people who have similar concerns and aspirations as you do. So it's easy to apply. Just go on that that website, bouldercrestorg and there you can find out a whole lot of information about post-traumatic growth, about those programs. There's a ton of stuff there for you and you can. You can find out about application if you're interested in going to one of our programs. And again, there are a whole whole lot of places around the country. You don't necessarily come to Virginia, but we've got places all around the country that We've got a lot of information about post-traumatic growth. We've got places all around the country that that we work with to live with these programs.
Speaker 1:We will include the links to bouldercrest on the show notes and also to the post-traumatic growth workbook that you were talking about, which people may want to To use to help them go through the season. This, if they're, if they're experiencing or feel like they have experienced, trauma, then it could be a great resource for them too, process things and move forward in this season of life that they're in. Oh, dr Tedeschi, your work is so meaningful and I'm always honored to speak to people who are just not just doing good things what you are but are also contributing to the field of knowledge so that more people can do good things. So thank you for all of the time and years of effort and dedication that you have had to this subject matter and what you have done and what you're still doing with it. Thank you for it.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk to your audience and thank you for the conversation. I've enjoyed it very much, Kamali.
Speaker 1:Y'all. I told you that you were going to love this episode with Dr Tedeschi, and I learned so many things. I took great notes. So here are my key takeaways that I had from today's episode, but I would always love to hear yours as well. First of all, when it comes to how we can become the best versions of us, that we can be realizing that we all experience these hard things and it's not a mark on our character or on our resume, so to say. When we go through traumatic experiences, when we can normalize it, that is what and how growth and healing can begin to happen. My first key takeaway from today's episode was that there is a decision point, a turning point, so to say, in a person after they experience a traumatic event, and when you experience the confusion and the anxiety I know I've experienced this and I'm sure many of you have as well there really does become a point where you make a decision as to what you're going to do next, if you're going to continue to stay in that spot or if you're going to try and find a way to move forward with purpose. Bringing awareness to that, I believe, is the first step, and if you are in a place where you've been ruminating, then maybe the question to you today is what's the next right step for you to take? What is the next right thing for you to do that can actually move you forward and not just keep you stuck where you are? My second key takeaway from today's episode is to look for the people in my life where I can be that companion, where I can be the person who listens carefully, who learns about their feelings and their experiences, not by making assumptions of how I think they feel or what I think that they should do, but really understanding their lived experience of the situation and then seeing the best in them and helping them see that in themselves. That is the basis of humanistic psychology, which is the foundation of where talk therapy came from, and Dr Tedeschi didn't mention this on today's episode, but Carl Rogers was the pioneer in humanistic psychology and in the talk therapy. That is pretty much what we know today in counseling, and Carl Rogers' men or, I'm sorry, dr Richard Tedeschi's mentor was Dr Carl Rogers' student. So there's that's for anyone on the psychology world. That's just super cool that Dr Tedeschi was just two people away from, or even just one person away from, the great Carl Rogers in the space of psychology. But really that's what talk psychology, or talk therapy, in its birth was all about. It was about being that empathetic present person for the client that's in your office and being their guide, not even having all of the answers, but just being there to sit with them and to have empathy towards them and to see the best in them. Think of someone in your life. That is what they need and that might be what you need right now in your life. So maybe a question is who is a friend or an expert companion that you can turn to to help you get out of the pit that you feel that you're in right now? And then my final key takeaway is this Another scripture that is part of the Christian faith is and I believe this is in 1st or 2nd Corinthians is that we comfort others in the way that we have been comforted.
Speaker 1:It's this call for Christians, for believers but really for it applies to anyone, no matter what faith they are that when you've gone through something, then turn to other people who are experiencing that and comfort them in the way that you were comforted, or maybe in the way that you wish that you had been comforted.
Speaker 1:The exact quote from scripture is from 2nd Corinthians 1, verse 3 through 4, which says Praise be to God and Father of our Lord, jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us and all of our troubles, so that we can comfort those in trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
Speaker 1:For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. That's actually verses 3 through 5. That's the verse I kept thinking of as Dr Tedeschi was talking about purpose in life and finding a way to help others and be the expert companion, so to say. It's realizing that for many of us, I know for me, god has been my source of comfort and so, since he has comforted me through my troubles, I want to comfort others who are in trouble with the comfort that I received from him, and maybe it's also the comfort I received from other people, but it's what propels us to love even in the midst of hardship and even in the midst of suffering. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please share it with someone who you believe could benefit from it or leave a review of the podcast. It helps us to reach even more people. Until next week, stay strong.