Hello and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a bi-weekly podcast from the American Psychological Association that explores the connections between psychological science and everyday life.

I'm your host, Caitlin Luna. Have you ever met a person who experienced a tragedy, losing their home in a hurricane,

and during the death of a child, having a severe illness?

And yet they seemed happy, content even, truly content, and not in a way that suggested

that they were bearing their feelings or minimizing their pain.

Experiencing positive transformation after trauma is known as post-traumatic growth.

Though the concept is not new, it's been found in literature, philosophy, and religion in

almost all cultures throughout the ages, the academic theory was developed by psychologists

Dr. Richard Tedeschi and Dr. Lawrence Calhoun in the mid-1990s. People who experience post-traumatic

growth may develop a new appreciation of life, newfound personal strength, see an improvement

in their relationships, see new possibilities in life, and undergo spiritual changes. Why do some

people experience such profound positive changes after enduring something

terrible, and others don't? Here to help explain post-traumatic growth is Dr. Tedeski, Professor

Emeritus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He's a faculty member at the university's

post-traumatic growth research group, and he's the distinguished chair at the Boulder Crest Institute

for Post-Tumatic Growth,

a nonprofit organization focused on military members, veterans, and their families. Welcome, Dr.

Tedeski. Glad to be here. Good to be talking to you. Same here. The website for the Post-traumatic

Growth Research Group explains explicitly that just because a person experiences post-traumatic

growth, it doesn't mean they won't suffer or experience pain or other negative emotions.

Can you elaborate on the importance of allowing yourself to feel those negative emotions that accompany

experiencing a tragedy? Post-traumatic growth starts with, of course, something that's very aversive for people

...