One of the central elements of resilience, Bonanno has found, is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow? “Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic, ” Bonanno told me, in December. “To call something a ‘traumatic event’ belies that fact.” He has coined a different term: PTE, or potentially traumatic event, which he argues is more accurate. The theory is straightforward. Every frightening event, no matter how negative it might seem from the sidelines, has the potential to be traumatic or not to the person experiencing it. Take something as terrible as the surprising death of a close friend: you might be sad, but if you can find a way to construe that event as filled with meaning–perhaps it leads to greater awareness of a certain disease, say, or to closer ties with the community–then it may not be seen as a trauma. The experience isn’t inherent in the event; it resides in the event’s psychological construal. It’s for this reason, Bonanno told me, that “stressful” or “traumatic” events in and of themselves don’t have much predictive power when it comes to life outcomes. “The prospective epidemiological data shows that exposure to potentially traumatic events does not predict later functioning, ” he said. “It’s only predictive if there’s a negative response.” In other words, living through adversity, be it endemic to your environment or an acute negative event, doesn’t guarantee that you’ll suffer going forward. What matters is whether that adversity becomes traumatizing. . Maria Konnikova
Just because love don't look the way you think it should, don't mean you don't have it.
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Leslye Walton
The more I see, the less I know for sure.
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John Lennon
Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough
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Oprah Winfrey
Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.
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Criss Jami
Life is 10 percent what you make itand 90 percent how you take it.
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Irving Berlin
More Quotes By Maria Konnikova
One of the central elements of resilience, Bonanno has found, is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow? “Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic, ” Bonanno told me, in December. “To call...
