Karen Guggenheim was devastated by the death of her husband, Ricardo. She was alive, but dead to the world around her. Slowly she put her life back together and found growing happiness. To share her insights with others in need, Karen started the World Happiness Summit. Karen's campaign to spread global happiness is just one example of "post traumatic growth". Clinical psychologist Dr Edith Shiro (author of The Unexpected Gift of Trauma) has worked with many people who have recovered from trauma and grown as a result. She explains how we can give ourselves the best possible chance to experience post traumatic growth. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Pushkin.
These days, whenever I face a serious setback, I try to channel the ancient Stoics.
I try to follow the advice of great philosophers like Epictetus, a man who was born into slavery but eventually became one of Rome's greatest thinkers.
Epictetus argued that we have more control than we think about how we react to negative events.
He said we should try to think about life's bad times as opportunities to learn and grow.
And so whenever I face a new problem, I try to treat it as a challenge to be overcome.
But I'm a pretty lucky person.
Most of my own personal challenges have, at least to date, knock on wood, been fairly trivial.
Thankfully, I haven't yet had to go through anything like the challenges that my next guest, Karen Guggenheim, had to face 11 years ago.
Last week, actually.
Last week, last week, my husband caught the flu, which developed into a pneumonia, and within 10 days, he was gone.
Wow.
Karen's loss was shattering.
People often say that you gain strength through adversity, but I think they usually mean tinier sorts of adversity, things like not getting some job you wanted or flunking your driver's test.
But are there ways we can grow from the truly terrible events in life?
Things like the grief of losing your life partner suddenly?
Can the worst traumas imaginable also come with unexpected gifts and growth?
That's the question we'll be exploring in today's episode.
And Karen is the perfect person to help us.
You see, Karen's story is a lovely example of what psychologists call post traumatic growth.