> The “adversity hypothesis,” which says that people need adversity, setbacks, and perhaps even trauma to reach the highest levels of strength, fulfillment, and personal development.
> POST-TRAUMATIC GROWTH - Benefits:
The first benefit is that rising to a challenge reveals your hidden abilities, and seeing these abilities changes your self-concept.
The second class of benefit concerns relationships. Adversity is a filter...(eg, "real friends" from fair-weather ones)
Trauma changes priorities and philosophies toward the present (“Live each day to the fullest”) and toward other people.
>The adversity hypothesis has a weak and a strong version. In the weak version, adversity can lead to growth, strength, joy, and self-improvement, by the three mechanisms of posttraumatic growth described above.
The strong version of the hypothesis is more unsettling: It states that people must endure adversity to grow, and that the highest levels of growth and development are only open to those who have faced and overcome great adversity.
>McAdams levels of personality presentation:
>The [first level of] personality traits (basic "psychological ones") such as the “big five” [OCEAN]: openness (to new experiences), conscientiousness (being responsible), extroversion (social, outgoing), agreeableness (warmth/niceness), and neuroticism (negative emotionally-inclined). These traits are facts about the elephant, about a person’s automatic reactions to various situations.
>A second level of personality, “characteristic adaptations,” includes personal goals, defense and coping mechanisms, values, beliefs, and life-stage concerns (such as those of parenthood or retirement) that people develop to succeed in their particular roles and niches. These adaptations are influenced by basic traits: A person high on neuroticism will have many more defense mechanisms; an extrovert will rely more heavily on social relationships. But in this middle level, the person’s basic traits are made to mesh with facts about the person’s environment and stage of life. When those facts change—as after losing a spouse—the person’s characteristic adaptations change. The elephant might be slow to change, but the elephant and rider, working together, find new ways of getting through the day.
>The third level of personality is that of the “life story.” Human beings in every culture are fascinated by stories; we create them wherever we can. (See those seven stars up there? They are seven sisters who once . . . ) It’s no different with our own lives. We can’t stop ourselves from creating what McAdams describes as an “evolving story that integrates a reconstructed past, perceived present, and anticipated future into a coherent and vitalizing life myth.” Although the lowest level of personality is mostly about the elephant, the life story is written primarily by the rider. You create your story in consciousness as you interpret your own behavior, and as you listen to other people’s thoughts about you.
>When a crisis strikes, people cope in three primary ways: active coping (taking direct action to fix the problem), reappraisal (doing the work within—getting one’s own thoughts right and looking for silver linings), and avoidance coping (working to blunt one’s emotional reactions by denying or avoiding the events, or by drinking, drugs, and other distractions).
>People who have a basic-level trait of optimism (McAdams’s level 1) tend to develop a coping style (McAdams’s level 2) that alternates between active coping and reappraisal. Because optimists expect their efforts to pay off, they go right to work fixing the problem. But if they fail, they expect that things usually work out for the best, and so they can’t help but look for possible benefits. When they find them, they write a new chapter in their life story (McAdams’s level 3), a story of continual overcoming and growth.
In contrast, people who have a relatively negative affective style (complete with more activity in the front right cortex than the front left) live in a world filled with many more threats and have less confidence that they can deal with them. They develop a coping style that relies more heavily on avoidance and other defense mechanisms. They work harder to manage their pain than to fix their problems, so their problems often get worse. Drawing the lesson that the world is unjust and uncontrollable, and that things often work out for the worst, they weave this lesson into their life story where it contaminates the narrative. If you are a pessimist, you are probably feeling gloomy right now. But despair not! The key to growth is not optimism per se; it is the sense making that optimists find easy. If you can find a way to make sense of adversity and draw constructive lessons from it, you can benefit, too.
