POST-TRAUMATIC GROWTH
Post traumatic growth refers to the positive psychological change some people experience after a traumatic event, involving deeper appreciation for life, stronger relationships, recognizing personal strength, new possibilities, and spiritual shifts, often alongside or after symptoms of distress like PTSD. It's about finding meaning and developing in profound ways, not just recovering.
When I was first paralyzed I thought to myself that I was going to be miserable in life now. Ten years later, on good days I don’t feel any more miserable than when I was able-bodied. There are bad moments and suffering but between those, I find my moods to be pretty similar to pre-injury.Hedonic adaptation is a theory that posits that people return to their same baseline level of happiness after a traumatic or even a very positive event.A study using self-reported levels of happiness that is often cited as an example of the hedonic treadmill actually included quadriplegics!
In 1978, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Massachusetts asked two very disparate groups about the happiness in their lives: recent winners of the Illinois State Lottery whose prizes ranged from $50,000 to $1 million, and recent victims of catastrophic accidents, who were now paraplegic or quadriplegic. They were asked to rate the amount of pleasure they got from life and quadriplegics didn’t come up short! We liked our lives, in some cases even more than pre-injury.