From Trauma to Transformation: What is Post-Traumatic Growth?

⭕️ When Pain Becomes a Portal

What if the very experiences that break us open are the ones that grow us the most?

Pain, especially persistent or traumatic pain, is often framed as something purely negative.

It can be hard to imagine that anything as brutal as someone's worst pain experiences, as recorded by Stilwell et al., (2025) for example, could bring about anything positive.

However the proposal that suffering can bring about positive changes in people is an idea that appears over and over again, throughout history and across cultures. In the last few decades, emerging evidence from the field of psychology suggests a powerful narrative: that trauma can be a catalyst for personal growth.

No mud, no lotus

What Is Post-Traumatic Growth?

Coined by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, post-traumatic growth (PTG) describes positive changes that sometimes occur not despite trauma, but because of the struggle with it. These changes go beyond resilience, they involve a fundamental transformation in how a person experiences life, meaning, and self.

The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996), which measures five domains of growth, was developed to allow quantification of the experience of growth.

The items on the scale were developed from a review of the literature on responses to highly stressful events and from interviews conducted with persons who had experienced spousal loss, physical disabilities, and other life crises.

PTG is about acknowledging pain and recognising that, for some, this struggle leads to:

• Greater appreciation of life and changed sense of priorities

• Warmer, more intimate relationships with others

• A greater sense of personal strength

• Recognition of new possibilities or paths for one’s life

• Spiritual development

These changes often mark profound shifts in a person's psychological and neurological landscape.

Psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman describes three pathways to posttraumatic growth that propose how trauma reshapes identity, resilience, and meaning. Let's explore them, and what they can teach us about healing.

Three Models of Growth After Trauma

🔻 1. Strength Through Suffering

“I never knew I had it in me"

This model aligns with a familiar narrative: no pain, no gain. After surviving a trauma, whether physical, emotional, or existential, individuals often discover new personal resources they didn’t know they had.

Rocky Balboa (2006)

🔻 2. Psychological Preparedness

This growth isn’t about feeling stronger, it’s about knowing you’re more equipped. Survivors become more mentally resilient to future challenges. Like an immune system, their assumptions about life are now “vaccinated” against naivety.

“I never thought it could happen to me.”

-- Now they know it can, and they're ready.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

🔻 3. Existential Reevaluation

“Everything is a gift.”

This form of growth is initially counterintuitive. Faced with loss, arbitrary misfortune or malevolence, one might anticipate the response to be a depressing acceptance of personal insignificance and meaninglessness.

In the case of PTG however, the re-evaluation marks a new found appreciation for one's existence in the world, often with particular emphasis on close interpersonal relationships and spirituality.

It is proposed by the authors this change comes about as these aspects of life are no longer taken for granted. They are cherished, all the more so given the continued possibility of loss.

The Joe Rogan Experience

Growth & Pain Coexist

The legacy of pain involves losses and gains.

Post-traumatic growth is not guaranteed, and when it does occur, it doesn’t erase suffering.

Severe persistent pain can be debilitating, dehumanising and depressing.

At the same time, when the person is supported to reframe and rebuild, pain can become a portal to personal growth.

References

Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Three Explanatory Models. Psychological Inquiry. 15. 30-34.

Stilwell, P., Gagnon-Mailhot, M., Hudon, A., McIntyre, V., Meldrum, K., Pagé, M. G., Gallagher, S., & Wideman, T. H. (2025). When pain overwhelms the self: A phenomenological study of a new mode of suffering, based on adults' recollections of their worst pain episodes. The journal of pain, 32, 105413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2025.105413

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Target Article: "Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence". Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of traumatic stress, 9(3), 455–471. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02103658