I’d been at an art workshop in London, in the very early days after my arrival, in 1990. I was trying on new identities on the other side of the world from my birth family.
Anyway, at the end of the course, a few of us decided to exchange phone numbers to stay in touch in that after-glow of positive group juju. I approached one woman I’d had enjoyable exchanges with, and offered up the piece of paper for her to write her number on. She backed off, her eyes alight with the glint of a cornered animal.
“I don’t give out my number.”
“Of course,” I said with as breezy an air as I could manage, covering up my momentary embarrassment and puzzlement and withdrawing. You might have predicted that the bonhomie of this group died its natural death once the course had finished; we never stayed in touch. But her reaction planted a seed of inquiry in me.
As the luck of my life would have it, another twelve years would pass before I’d be able to interpret her reaction. In May 2002, I was flailing about in a soup of disordered responses after surviving a home invasion. This old memory resurfaced and I understood at once. She had endured some kind of trauma that had robbed her of the luxury of trust.
In May 2002 I still didn’t have words for either her reaction twelve years earlier, or my emotional state at the time. A glitch in the system meant I hadn’t had any follow-up counselling booked in after making my police statement and undergoing a full forensic examination. And feeling that I couldn’t quite battle on alone, I’d made an appointment with my favourite female GP who’d known me over years. I poured out my story of the home invasion, and her eyes widened before she righted herself.
You’ll have post-traumatic stress,” she said.
I caught her words like a ball snatched from the air. Now I had something to work at with my logical mind. A raft to ride the torrents. Her clue was a gift that put the power back into my hands and I began researching and reading on the topic. I read and read. I learned that post-traumatic stress or PTS can continue to affect our behaviour and well-being for months, years or even a lifetime. By which time it has morphed to post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.
The acronym PTS soon rolled off my tongue, because its mastery promised to tie down and tame its complex challenges. By whatever name, PTS seemed a compulsory fairground ride I was locked into after the home invasion. I pictured myself clicking the safety bar in place; my privilege of a nurtured childhood, my loving family and resilience, and my reflection and research skills, and prepared to endure.
So I conceded I had PTS for now—but I was pernickety and precise, and if anyone ever suggested I had PTSD, I corrected them.
However, despite the term post-traumatic growth having been coined in 1996 and in the established literature by 2002, nobody ever mentioned the possibility of post-traumatic growth or PTG to me. Post-traumatic stress disorder, however, was mentioned all the time.
To be clear, post-traumatic growth isn’t merely resilience, “bouncing back” to who you were before the trauma. It’s expanding who you are. Or as it notes on the post-traumatic day growth website, “It is a recognition of the profound insights that can emerge from our darkest moments.” Like me, suddenly reviewing that incident from long ago. With my enlarged understanding of the world I could finally recognise why someone might not feel safe to share their contact details with me. I think that makes me a more well-rounded, and hopefully kinder person.
When I decided to start my first post-traumatic growth blog. I didn’t even realise that 13th June is World Post-Traumatic Growth day. I thought perhaps you had never heard of post-traumatic growth. That perhaps you needed to hear of this concept. If so, here it is. Happy Post-Traumatic Growth Day.
