Today we have Richard Dadesky on the podcast. Dr. Dadesky is a professor of psychology at

University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is a licensed psychologist specializing

in bereavement and trauma, and has led support groups for bereaved parents for over 20 years.

With his colleague Lawrence Calhoun, he has published books on post-traumatic growth,

an area of research that they have developed that examines personal transformations in the

aftermath of traumatic life events. Their books include trauma and transformation,

post-traumatic growth, facilitating post-traumatic growth, helping bereaved parents

to clinician's guide, and the handbook of post-traumatic growth.

Richard, it's so great to chat with you today on the podcast.

Thank you. So I'm wondering how in the world did you get involved in

this topic? This was not, when you were probably working on your dissertation,

this was not a topic that was first and foremost in the trauma literature, right?

Well, I've been around for a long time, so I've been around before PTSD was even a diagnosis,

so very evident. Right, right. What was your dissertation on?

My dissertation was on, basically, trust in psychotherapy, so it was a therapy

analog study of how trust develops among between therapists and clients, based on

some of their personal characteristics and their similarities to one another, so that's what I was

looking at then. So I was really interested coming out of graduate school in the concept of trust.

Gotcha. Where did things transition into this line of research that you currently work on?

What's the origin story of it? Yeah, I guess it came out of some

questions I had in my own mind about my career and what I really wanted to do.

By the time I got tenure at the university, I was really wondering

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