StressRelated Growth

1
Stress-Related Growth

• Adapted from Ty Tashiro

2
What Good is Meaning?

• Structure
• Provides values
• Predictability
• Buffers against anxiety
• Provides medium for self-esteem

3
Stress Trauma

• Things are not always predictable and ordered?
• What did you think or feel following the
  September 11th attacks?

4
Stress Reactions

• Increased anxiety
• Depression
• Self-medicating
• Ruminative thought
• Intrusive thoughts
• Hyper-responsive
• Posttraumatic stress disorder

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What Happens to Cultural Worldviews?
(Janoff-Bulman, 1977)

• Shattered assumptions
• Doubt sources of meaning
• Existential crisis
• Buffering effects collapse

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Cognitive Adaptation(Taylor, 1983)

• Search for significance What caused this to
  happen? Why me?
• People may grow
• Attempts to regain control
• Efforts to self-enhance
• Create illusions

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Breast Cancer Study

• Extensive interviews with 78 women
• What can you do about breast cancer?
• Meaning I have much more enjoyment of each
  day, each moment. I am not so worried about what
  is or isnt or what I wish I had. All those
  things you get entangled with dont seem to be
  part of my life right now.

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Continued

• Mastery A spouse described his wife, She got
  books, pamphlets, she studied, she talked to
  cancer patients, she found out everything that
  was happening to her, and she fought it.
• Self-enhancement Some of these women just
  seemed to be devastated. And with really less
  problems than I encountered, you know, small
  tumors.

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Common Areas of Growth

• Self is BetterWhat did I learn about myself?
• Relationships ImprovedAppreciate people more
• Appreciation for life
• Changes in Philosophy, Spirituality, Religion

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More Than Just Illusions?

• Can this adjustment be real?
• Stable
• Observable
• Predictive
• Utility
• Accuracy

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Frazier, Conlon, Glaser, 2001

• 178 sexual assault survivors
• One year study, 2, 8, 26, 52 weeks
• Positive changes emerge as soon as 2 weeks.
• Substantial variability in course
• Only those who find changes early and maintain
  them over the year have decreases in PTSD
  symptoms.

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Bower et al., 1999CD4 counts at 3 year follow-up
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Bower et al continued
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Intervention

• Trauma may actually be a key time for
  intervention.
• Fall of entrenched worldviews (some may be
  maladaptive).
• Try new behaviors, ways of thinking.
• Crystallization of discontent