RW2 From adapting to growing

In this bite-sized Related Work podcast, I reflect on how these stressful times can be a catalyst for growth and change, moving on from bouncing back (resilience) to bouncing forward. I connect to literature on resilience and post traumatic growth and theories around ‘tend and befriend’ to point to the choices we can make in how we interpret and respond to the current challenges. Related work:Tedeschi, R., & Calhoun, L. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15, 1-18. https://sites.uncc.edu/ptgi/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2013/01/PTG-Conceptual-Foundtns.pdfTaylor, S. (2006). Tend and Befriend. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 273 - 277.https://taylorlab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/10/2006_Tend-and-Befriend_Biobehavioral-Bases-of-Affiliation-Under-Stress.pdfSteve Taylor. The Coronavirus and Post-Traumatic Growth, Scientific American, April 19 2020https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-coronavirus-and-post-traumatic-growth/Transcript CAL Related Work 2 (with some editing)Jan 17 2021 [16:57 mins]One of the unexpected pleasures for me this year was not having any travel and having weekends at home where was being able to catch up on some reading. And one of the books that's been on my list forever is a book called Man's Search for Meaning. It was published in 1946 by Victor Frankel, who's an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher author, and what he talks about here, Holocaust survivor. He reports in this book about his experiences in the concentration camp, and they're really quite harrowing and horrific, and also amazingly uplifting at the same time. And just to read a quote from the book, he talks about “Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing,- the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's way. And there were always choices to make.” He says, talking about his own experiences in the concentration camp, and it also says somewhere else later on “when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”.I mention this because as I record this, we're in the middle of January and many, many countries are in the middle of escalating numbers of cases and deaths with the COVID-19 pandemic, and dealing with ongoing restrictions in terms of lockdowns. And this is certainly the case in Austria, Vienna, where my home is located even though I’m not there are the moment, and where Frankel's home was located. So I was really surprised last week when I checked in with the students in my master's class over zoom, about how they were going. And I did the same thing with the people in my group at the beginning of our group meeting last week. And I just asked for everyone to give a, give a thumbs up or thumbs down or whatever.What was so surprising to me was that the majority of people gave a thumbs up and this is in the middle of all this hardship and difficulty they gave a thumbs up! A couple gave us a sort of ‘so, so, so’ thumb, but I didn't see anyone with a thumb down. I remember asking similar questions...

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