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, encourages people to internalize the message that adversity should always lead to growth or that trauma is a prerequisite for growth. In  the psychological lexicon, this positive outcome, or "bouncing forward" following 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 li...