“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
― Andy Warhol
There are some people that experience tremendously impactful and stressful events that seem to grow from them and quickly. This is what the Polish psychologist Dombrowski termed “Post Traumatic Growth”, the positive mirror of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), where the effects of the event echo in a negative manner for years.
Two people can experience the same event side by side (9/11, chemotherapy, war) and turn out completely different because of how they are raised (those with greater resilience tend towards PTG) and the choices they make from the event forward.
Those who sit in misery tend to compound it. Look at Lt. Dan in “Forrest Gump”: his negative interpretation and outlook compounded until the storm that he chose to use as a cathartic event to begin his healing process. Outwardly Lt. Dan was the same but internally he changed not through time but through his choice.
It definitely is not an easy choice.
It will take ego shattering work.
It takes wrestling with faith and fate.
It takes brutal honesty.
But in choosing to change perspective and then thoughts and actions, the trauma can be converted to a catalyst for growth, converting victim into ultimate victor as Nazi Holocaust survivor and author of “Man’s Search for Meaning” Viktor Frankl embodied. Changing your interpretation of the seminal event requires effort, but ultimately can change the world.