Self-Management of Depression

When faced with trauma, mental health influencers often "therapy speak" people into becoming more resilient and growing from such a challenge. This narrative, however, makes people internalize such messages into believing that adversity should always lead to growth or that trauma is a requisite for growth. In psychological lexicon, this positive outcome or "bouncing forward," following an adversity is called posttraumatic growth or an overlapping concept, benefit-finding and growth (Lechner et al., 2009. While benefit-finding and growth captures more of the lifestyle, behavior, and perceptual changes, posttraumatic growth tends to refer to the transformative changes occurring at a cognitive level, i.e., how one becomes wiser (Lechner et al., 2009). People who experience posttraumatic growth describe it in one or more of the following ways (Hefferon et al., 2009): Reappraisal of one’s life and restructuring of previous priorities Revaluation and changing of life go...