POST-TRAUMATIC GROWTH

A self-help book about using trauma as a catalyst for personal development.

Ungerland, a psychologist and seminar leader, offers a well-researched guide to a psychological theory called post-traumatic growth. She defines it as “an empirical model...for turning crisis into expansion” with seven stages, and she illustrates it with stories of several people who’ve emerged from traumas (whose names have been changed). Brad, for example, was a victim of fraud; Sarah lost her legs after being hit by a car; and Jane stayed in a dysfunctional marriage. The interview subjects show significant commonalities; for example, during the initial “immobilization” phase, patients believed that their issues were truly insurmountable, and only after mourning their losses could they move forward: “The truth will set us free, eventually, but first it will make us suffer,” Ungerland writes. Jane “spent years in denial” about her marriage before accepting its failure, but after a period of grief, she had an epiphany: “I knew that if I continued life as it was, I was going to get physically sick, that it could kill me. That was the morning that I started to be different.” This type of revelation takes place during the model’s third phase, Ungerland writes, “once we have reached a point of utter surrender.” During the remaining steps, subjects envisioned happier lives for themselves and developed useful traits, such as flexibility and autonomy. The book includes several unsurprising recommendations, such as meditation, journaling, and pursuing therapy. However, Ungerland adds depth to the book by incorporating poetry by Rumi, historical anecdotes, and colorful metaphors, as when she describes post-traumatic growth as “a GPS of the soul.” The seven stages can seem overly linear; surely, some patients regress before moving forward again, and this possibility remains unexplored. But the book is especially informative about escaping a mentality of victimhood, which requires hope: “Maybe the first step is to realize that we will somehow be held and nourished, often when we least expect it, by a friend or by a perfect stranger…or by a moonrise on a river…anything can heal us.”

An insightful perspective on clinical and spiritual recovery.