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The Vietnam War veteran had enlisted when he was young, serving two combat tours and surviving multiple firefights. “To this day,” said psychologist Jack Tsai of the Yale School of Medicine, “his war memories are triggered by certain smells that remind him of Vietnam”: overgrown vegetation, the acrid stench of burning, or even sweat—like that which ran in rivulets down the faces of men fighting for their lives in the sweltering jungles—brought it all back. It was classic post-traumatic stress.

As Tsai was treating him (successfully) for PTSD, however, something unexpected emerged. The vet still described his Vietnam experiences as horrific, but he said the painful memories remind him of who he is. His experience typifies research psychologists’ new understanding of trauma: When people are least resilient—in the sense that they are knocked for a loop, do not bounce back quickly or at all, and suffer emotionally for months, if not years—they can eventually emerge from trauma stronger, more appreciative of life, more sympathetic to the suffering of others, and with different (arguably more enlightened) values and priorities. 

By no stretch of the imagination would the vet be called resilient in the sense that research psychologists use the term: an ability to go on with life, essentially unchanged mentally and emotionally, in the wake of profound adversity. To the contrary, environmental triggers returned the vet’s troubled mind to the horrors of land mines and ambushes and friends blown apart. At the same time, the vet’s military experience (and his triumph over PTSD) makes him feel that he can accomplish anything. “Nothing bothers him too much, because everything pales in comparison to Vietnam,” said Tsai.

For many, post-traumatic growth brings closer relationships—as family and other loved ones are more cherished—and a stronger sense of connection to other sufferers. 

This effect, post-traumatic growth, was so named in 1996 by psychologists Lawrence Calhoun and Richard Tedeschi of the University of North Carolina. It can take many forms, but all involve positive psychological changes: a greater sense of personal strength (“if I survived that, I can survive anything”), deeper spiritual awareness, greater appreciation of life, and recognition of previously unseen pathways and possibilities for one’s life. For many, post-traumatic growth brings closer relationships—as family and other loved ones are more cherished—and a stronger sense of connection to other sufferers. 

Stronger Than Before

The concept that from great suffering can come great wisdom is both ancient and familiar. An oncologist friend of mine talks about patients who say cancer was one of the best things that ever happened to them, cutting through life’s usual trivia and making them value the truly important. President Jimmy Carter’s Chief of Staff, Hamilton Jordan (1944–2008), said his battle with cancer made him see that “the simple joys of life are everywhere and are boundless.”

After a car crash in which my childhood friend Joyce lost her right leg at age 20, her months-long recovery and rehab left her with hours upon empty hours to think. “Stuff that used to be a big deal, like being popular, just isn’t anymore,” I remember her saying. “I care about making a difference [she became a schoolteacher], and I think I’m more empathetic. I feel that when someone is suffering I understand in my bones what she’s experiencing. Before, it was just, oh, poor her.” However, post-traumatic growth does not mean traumas are desirable, let alone that they should be downplayed when they befall others. As bestselling author Rabbi Harold Kushner said about the spiritual growth he experienced after the death of his 14-year-old son, “I would give up all of those gains in a second if I could have him back.”

Few lives are without suffering, crisis, and traumas, from extreme or rare ones, such as becoming a war refugee or being taken hostage, to common ones, such as bereavement, accidents, house fires, combat, or your own or a loved one’s serious or chronic illness. For years, psychology has assumed that the best inoculation against post-traumatic stress—as well as responses to trauma that fall well short of mental disorder—is resilience, the ability to pick up one’s life where it was before the trauma. Now that psychology has made post-traumatic growth a focus of research, what is emerging is a new understanding of the complicated relationship between trauma, resilience, PTSD, and post-traumatic growth.

Post-traumatic Growth vs. Resilience

Although the psychological concept of resilience dates back to the 1970s, scientists are still struggling to understand its origins. Some studies find it’s fostered in childhood by a strong relationship with a parent or other adult, and the belief that your fate is in your own hands (a sense of agency). But the opposite belief, that “God is in control and everything happens for a reason,” may contribute to resilience, too, said UNC’s Calhoun. A 2016 review of people who survived atrocities and war in nine countries from South Sudan and Uganda to Bosnia and Burundi found that resilience varied by culture. Strong emotional connections to others fostered resilience among survivors in some societies but not others, and a sense of agency actually backfired among some: If you believe your fate is in your hands and then see your family cut down by a sniper in Sarajevo, you feel not only grief but also crushing guilt.

In the absence of resilience, post-traumatic growth—a very different response to trauma—might emerge instead. “Post-traumatic growth means you’ve been broken—but you put yourself back together” in a stronger, more meaningful way, Tsai said. This may come as a surprise to those who think of resilience as the ability to learn, change, and gain strength in the face of adversity. Among research psychologists, however, resilience is about bouncing back with relative ease to where you were before, not necessarily bouncing forward to a stronger place. By this understanding, without the breaking, there cannot be putting back together, so people with strong coping capacities will be less challenged by trauma and therefore less likely to experience post-traumatic growth. 

In the absence of resilience, post-traumatic growth—a very different response to trauma—might emerge instead.

For post-traumatic growth to occur, the breaking need not be so extreme as to constitute PTSD, as was the case for the Vietnam War vet. Tsai and his colleagues found that among the 1,057 US military veterans they studied, the average number of lifetime traumas (such as bereavement, natural disaster, illness, and accidents, as well as military traumas) was 5.7. Only 1 in 10 had PTSD, yet 59% of the vets had experienced post-traumatic growth. And the strongest predictor of whether someone would avoid PTSD after additional trauma was whether they had experienced post-traumatic growth after an earlier one, Tsai and his colleagues reported in the Journal of Affective Disorders. It was the first study to examine whether previous post-traumatic growth can protect against PTSD if trauma strikes again. The findings suggest post-traumatic growth might in fact boost resilience.

Post-traumatic growth—unlike resilience—is not a return to baseline. It is the product of reassembling your “general set of beliefs about the world/universe and your place in it,” said Calhoun: You question the benevolence, predictability, and controllability of the world, your sense of self, the path you expected life to follow. From the shards of previous beliefs, you create wholly new worldviews, and can perhaps emerge a stronger person than you were before.

What is Trauma?

Among psychiatrists, what constitutes “trauma” is controversial. Some define trauma based on the nature of the event: Psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, for instance, says a traumatic experience  must be outside the range of what humans normally encounter. Others define trauma based on how people respond to an experience: Intense fear, helplessness, horror, or distress would be symptoms of trauma.

A circular definition —“trauma is something that leaves you traumatized”—is obviously not ideal. Nor is “outside the range of normal experience” a reliable measure: Tragically, many experiences that once were outside that range no longer are, such as natural disasters, mass shootings, or wartime horrors.

Scholars are therefore trying to do better. An emerging definition holds that trauma challenges a person’s “assumptive world”: her belief in how people behave, how the world works, and how her life would unfold. By this understanding, trauma needn’t threaten life or health, nor cause post-traumatic stress disorder. But it must make you question your bedrock assumptions, such as that the world is fair, that terrible things do not befall good people, that there are limits to humans’ capacity for inhumanity, that things will always work out, or that the old die before the young. By that definition, few of us make it through this life without experiencing trauma.

The post The Science of Bouncing Back from Trauma appeared first on Mindful.

Whether it’s sending a passive-aggressive email to a coworker, or not speaking up when you have a great idea, or even saying something rude when you should have said nothing at all, we’ve all made decisions we regret—and then tortured ourselves by thinking, “What if I’d made a different choice?” That’s where mindfulness comes in.

When we practice tuning in to the chatter of our minds and sweeping sensations of our bodies, and we learn seperate those triggers from the deep well of knowledge that is our innate awareness. By practicing mindfulness we slowly give ourselves permission to choose how we respond in the world. It’s pretty powerful stuff.

In this Big Think video, former Canadian intelligence officer Shane Parrish, creator of the website and learning community Farnam Street, shares three tips for making more mindful decisions:

1) Don’t make a decision when you’re excited or frazzled

Many of us are guilty of making decisions in the heat of the moment—during a fight with our partner, in the middle of a stressful work meeting, or even when you’re over-excited. But Parrish says making decisions when we’re heated increases our chances of making the wrong choice.

“Our emotions spike, and that’s a signal to us that something’s wrong, or something is important to us,” he says. That’s a signal to pause. “We’ll do these things in the moment because we’re emotional, and then we sort of regret it.”

The next time you find yourself faced with a big decision while you’re caught up in the emotions of if all (whether that be intense joy and excitement, or anger and frustration), Parrish recommends placing some space between yourself and whatever it is that has you excited by going for a walk, or giving yourself the night to sleep on it. Doing so helps defuse high emotions, so you can calmly consider how you really feel.

“What I often do is I mentally decide, ‘Here’s my decision, now I’m going to sleep on it,’” Parrish says. “And then I’ll wake up in the morning and be like, how do I feel about that decision? Because I’ll trick myself into having made it. And if I have regrets, that’s a sign that I might want to think about that problem a lot more.”

2) Be aware of confirmation bias

Sometimes, we tell ourselves we are making a rational decision by taking the time to consider all options—but really, we only look at the information that confirms what we already believe.

Sometimes, we tell ourselves we are making a rational decision by taking the time to consider all options—but really, we only look at the information that confirms what we already believe.

“Our ego doesn’t often let this [other] information in, it doesn’t process it,” Parrish says.

To ensure we’re getting the full picture, Parrish recommends keeping a journal for a few days and making a note each time we discover something that opposes our own belief. Seeing all of the information in writing can help us make a more informed and well-rounded decision.

“Every time that something disconfirms with something that we think or we believe, that’s an opportunity to learn,” Parrish says. “Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re not. But to dismiss it out of hand without evaluating it is not doing ourselves justice towards outcomes.”

Pulitzer prize nominee, and bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Healing Emotions, Daniel Goleman recommends you check in on these five emotional intelligence competencies that help a leaders take the broad view and uncover their biases.

3) Be confident, not cocky  

You know that feeling of invincibility you get right before you do something you know you’re good at, only to find yourself in a cold sweat and not quite as prepared as you thought you were? That’s overconfidence. And while it may be harmless enough on a Friday night out with friends, it can cause serious damage when it influences decisions about your relationships or career.

“We take outsized risks. We believe that we have information that other people don’t have, which causes us to be overconfident, to do things that we otherwise wouldn’t do,” Parrish explains.

Pausing to recall a time you failed is one way to humble yourself. Another is to simply run your idea by another person, and ask them for their honest opinion.

“And once you start honing in on that, that’s an opportunity for learning,” Parrish says.

Of course, you don’t want to feel insecure and uncertain about everything you decide. But pausing to make sure you have all of the information before you jump head-first into a big decision, allowing time for your essential knowledge to bubble up, can help you be even more confident you’ve made the right choice.

The post Three Ways Your Emotions Can Warp Your Decisions appeared first on Mindful.

When the drums of war start beating, can cooler heads prevail and negotiations in good faith start? Vijay Mehta has written a useful overview of efforts to create a Department of Peace within governments so that there would be an institutionalized official voice proposing other avenues than war. (1) That Cooler Heads May Prevail – How Not to Go to War   Such proposals are not new. In 1943, Alexander Wiley, a liberal Republican senator had proposed to President Franklin Roosevelt that he establish a cabinet-level post of Secretary of Peace as there was already a Secretary of War. The Secretary of War has now been renamed Secretary of Defense, but the function has not radically changed. A Secretary of Peace in Wiley’s vision would be charged with preempting conflicts before they exploded into violence and proposing peaceful resolutions. In the U.S.A. after the end of the Second World War, in a “never again” atmosphere, other members of Congress suggested the creation of such a Department of Peace. However, such a vision was never transformed into a reality. As the Cold War took up ever more energy and funds, a compromise was reached in 1984 at the time that Ronald Reagan was President. The U.S. Institute of Peace was created and has produced some useful publications and does some conflict resolution training for diplomats and mediators. However, the leadership of the Institute of Peace has not played a visible role in foreign policy formation. One must look elsewhere for cooler voices to cover the beat of the war drums. There is currently a test in real time as the situation in Venezuela grows more complex. There are real possibilities of armed violence, ranging from armed violence within the country to the creation of armed militias operating from Colombia and Brazil…

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By Deepak Chopra, MD

Modern machines are assembled from separate moving parts, a fact that seems so obvious that we usually don’t notice its vast influence over us. But the image of a machine extends to the human body, which is an assemblage of trillions of separate cells, and ultimately to the universe, which is considered an assemblage of atoms and molecules beyond numbering.

So ingrained is the machine metaphor that it has taken centuries to realize that it has a fatal flaw. The human body and the universe operate as a single wholeness that cannot be explained mechanically or even logically. The general public has a vague acquaintance that quantum physics changed how science views space, time, matter, and energy. What escapes general notice, however, is the revolution that followed the quantum revolution.

Since roughly World War II, the following activities of the universe have sent science scrambling to find a rational explanation:

• Cause and effect breaks down at the quantum level, and along with it so does time. There is a phenomenon known as reverse causation whereby a future event affects a previous one.
• Two elementary particles can be identically matched so that when one changes its properties, its twin responds simultaneously, no matter how far away it might be. Through a principle known as quantum entanglement, two particles separated by billions of light years can act without physical communication, thus defying the speed of light and ultimately demolishing the concept of space.
• The infant universe was so finely calibrated that a change in any one of a dozen constants by as little as one part in a billion would have prevented our universe from emerging as it exists today. The infant universe would either have collapsed upon itself or flown apart so fast that atoms and molecules would never have formed.
• Every solid object in the universe has a separate existence at the quantum level as merely a ripple or wave in the quantum field, thus demolishing the notion that there is a small building block in nature that is the irreducible “thing” from which the cosmos is constructed.

One could go on, but the upshot of these discoveries is that mathematically speaking, as well as in real-time experiences, the notion of the universe as a machine with tiny moving parts governed by space, time, and everyday logic is totally false. Noted physicists, including the late Stephen Hawking, declare that there is no longer a guarantee that the advanced theories of modern physics actually match reality. (You can get a sense of the prevailing confusion in a recent New York Times article, “Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?”)

If the universe isn’t a giant machine, there’s every reason to drop the whole analogy of the machine, but what to put in its place? The answer advanced by more and more scientists is “wholeness.” Since space, time, matter, energy, and everyday logic aren’t truly fundamental, it makes sense that whatever controls space, time, matter, and energy must be the universes overriding reality. Wholeness exerts a force, call it “the power of one,” that goes beyond physical forces. Or to put it another way, no combination of physical forces can be sued to explain how the whole maintains and organizes itself.

The power of one can be seen on a small scale as well as a cosmic scale. The fertilized ovum from which the human body develops is a self-organizing system, not a watery bag of chemicals enclosed in a membrane. With infinite precision this first cell begins to send out chemical and electrical signals almost from the instant it divides into two cells, and within weeks stem cells know how to become heart, liver, and brain cells using the same DNA. The concept of the self-organizing system now permeates biology, physics, chemistry, neuroscience, and more.

What science clings to, for complicated reasons that have little to do with the actual evidence, is an insistence that self-organization has to be physical. This insistence runs into glaring contradictions. For instance, if elementary particles can operate three ways—via cause-and-effect, reverse cause-and-effect, and no cause-and-effect—how do they make the choice between them?

Since it has been obvious to a number of cosmologists that the physical universe functions much more like a mind than like a machine, a trend has emerged to include consciousness as fundamental in creation. If consciousness has always been with us, it is the best candidate for explaining where the power of one comes from. The same would then hold true for how atoms, molecules, cells, tissues and organs self-organize into the human body. It has never been shown that the atoms and molecules somehow learned to think through a magical physical transformation. The best explanation is that the brain doesn’t think in the first place. Mind thinks, and on the physical plane it devises a brain to accommodate its thoughts.

Yet in the end a new conception of reality must pass the “So what?” test. Quantum mechanics is considered the most successful scientific theory of all time, but its effect on everyday life—or at least everyday thought—has been marginal. The power of one has a much better chance of passing the “So what?” test, however. By deposing the metaphor of the body as a machine, the power of one allows us to see several vital things.

• Since the power of one controls both creation and destruction, it transcends death. There is a good likelihood that death is no longer even a viable concept. Instead, eternal consciousness should be considered our foundation.
• The individual self with its ego-driven demands is supported by the false notion that every person is a separate entity, isolated and alone. In fact, we are all an activity of the universe, requiring the power of one to exist in a physical body.
• We are attached to our individual thoughts, but this too is an illusion. There is every reason to believe that cosmic mind is the only mind. Therefore, what we think is only an outcropping in the activity of this cosmic mind.

It is obvious at first glance that human beings are intelligent, creative, and capable of the fastest evolution of any species on earth. This alone testifies to the validity of the power of one. But we can look even deeper. People have reported experiences of meaningful coincidences or synchronicity for a very long time. The key word is “meaningful,” because meaningless coincidences can be explained as random events.

However, a system cannot be meaningless and meaningful at the same time. Synchronicity is a valuable clue. It points toward wholeness as having a meaning to everything it does.

This possibility, that everything truly does happen for a reason, would be a game changer as far as how we live our lives. We’ll explore this possibility and what it would mean for the average person in the next post.

(To be cont.)

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com