 Fine, today what we did was that we talked about the post-traumatic stress and we also discussed about the argument know that whether it should be designated as a disorder or not. And then we finally came to a point where we did touch upon the issue that only a selective percentage of the people who suffer extreme adversity in life they only develop post-traumatic stress and this had know led to another construct what is called as post-traumatic growth. We saw the definition we also saw the spheres in which the changes are prominently visible. Today we are going to talk about two of the theoretical models that tries to describe how a person grows in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. Now this is the functional descriptive model given by Tradesky and Cohen. What they say is that you have a pre-trauma state. So do not know down this structure know I will mail it to you so there is no point noting it down. So you have a pre-trauma state that is know when the actual catastrophic event took place the period before that and then you have something called seismic event. What Tradesky and Cohen did was that they said that the traumatic experience of life can be compared to a severe seismic event a major earthquake where the alignment of whole lot of thing changes. So they said that actually what happens that a seismic event comes and then it challenges you at three different fronts one it challenges you to manage your emotional distress. So the overall the outcome of the traumatic experience would be extreme distress which you will have to manage. And two there might be you know extreme challenges that basically questions your schemas your belief and your goal. Schema is like say you have understood that this is what world is this is what a particular relationship is. So that the whole fabric gets challenged you have to reinterpret them. Your belief changes usually we all have a tendency of know somehow expecting that these things happen but it cannot happen to me. So when it really happens to you then your belief gets shaken and the goal that you have set for yourself your intermediate goals may be your ultimate goal that gets challenged. And third the way you have been narrating your life experiences that also suffers a major challenge. Now the challenges at all these fronts would primarily mean that you have to struggle whole lot in terms of overcoming the distress managing the distress in terms of redefining your life narratives in terms of know reinterpreting your own belief goals and schemas. Now the challenge that we see at all these spheres they finally make you ruminate. Now in psychology we talk about two different processes opposite processes rumination and reflection. You know the distinction between the two no see rumination is where see first know before coming to rumination just know think of the usual life experiences. If you are told to recollect your own experiences of what so ever had happened to you you would have know a whole range of experience. So part of the experience which would be very very positive which would make you very happy when you reflect when you look back on that part of the experience which will make you very sad and so forth. Because the experiences would always be basically a mixed back therefore there are people who at times when they have to recollect their past experiences they choose only negatively charged experiences. You know I had a friend who behaved very badly with me even my father once did so there was a stranger travelling with me he also did so. So what you do these are a discrete phenomena something happened at 6 years of age something happened at 12 years of age something happened at 26 years of age but then you know selectively pick and choose and weave them together. Once type of recollection of your experience is remunerative the opposite process could be reflective in nature. Reflective process would mean that you again look back at your past experiences and you say you know life for everybody would always be a mixed back I also had some adverse experiences but now when I look back I think for many of those things I myself was responsible if I would not have done this then this would not have happened. That person I did not do anything but he did something bad but you know my human beings are like this. So the ultimate thought that you finally gain in the process of recollection is not negatively charged usually it is either positively charged or what you do is that you remove the valency the negative positive charge of that experience you remove and therefore overall in the reflective mode you say that I think I did something wrong I do not know probably I have understood it much better now. So overall if you think reflective thoughts would be positively charged that way. So that is the difference between remunerative and remuneration and reflection and in this case according to the Trades case and Cohen's model once you know certain things in your life are challenged you start remunerating. So all negativities will come back to you and mostly they are automatic and intrusive in nature. So you do not try to recollect your experiences of the past but it starts pouring in that is the intrusive thought. Now when this happens two simultaneous processes will take place one there could be a process of self-disclosure self-disclosure in the form of writing. So you start making a note of your adverse experience you start talking to others what actually happened to me. The third day we took an example of somebody who was serving at Shami and a restaurant when 2611 took place you talk about your experience or you know participate in praying. So these are know the methods of self-disclosure basically what you do is that you have all those remunerative thoughts and you start sharing two forms of sharing are verbal sharing when you talk to others it is a verbal sharing. In the case of prayer also you talk to God it is a verbal sharing in the case of writing you note down your you pen down your experience. Then what happens this remuneration undergoes reduction of emotional distress it also leads to know management of automatic remuneration and disengagement from goals. So because you have been involved in certain type of disclosure so finally you realize that you are able to see somewhat decline in the emotional distress which you initially experience know when the seismic event had taken place. So this by default means that self-disclosure as a module helps an individual minimize the level of emotional distress know. Now this automatic remuneration that was taking place where all those intrusive thoughts were coming you think that you are now able to manage them but still you find that you are still disengaged from your goal you do not find know the earlier goals that you had set for yourself you do not find still it a very charming and therefore you do not move ahead that way. Then gradually you come to a state where you have more deliberate remuneration deliberate remuneration would mean that you make an effort to recollect those experiences now it is no more automatic your schema undergoes changes. So the way you were interpreting life the way you were interpreting the worldly phenomena now you have a fresh definition of it. And then certain new forms of narratives will develop the way you use to explain your life experiences that will certainly undergo a big change. Now at these two steps when you have the reduction of the emotional stress and when you have know more deliberate remuneration social support plays an important role. So you have know models for a schema scoping and post traumatic growth means you look at know those models who also had similar experiences and it helps you know regain yourself realign yourself and think that if he can if she can then why cannot I. There would be know other forms of social support mechanism and social support mechanism further in know facilitates the reduction of the emotional distress makes the remuneration process more deliberate rather making it more and more automatic. It also know finally helps you what you call reshape your own representation of the world the life experiences and therefore it plays an important role there. Now after all these changes have taken place when you realize that know you have change in your schema when your life narrative changes the stage that you attain is the stage of post traumatic growth. This post traumatic growth in turn makes you more wise. And your wisdom in turns know constantly feed gives a feedback to your post traumatic growth simultaneously these challenges that you had experienced long back it keeps on coming as enduring distress and it hits you. So this primarily would mean that even though you have evolved as a much better human being the catastrophic experience that you had you do not forget it. That distress will add times on to you the only good thing is that because now wisdom also keeps on giving feedback to you. Therefore, once your earlier traumatic experience flashes back your wisdom also tells you that yes I know that I still remember that but you know it keeps happening it has happened to 1 million 4,096 people in this world till now. So this is how this model tries to describe how post traumatic growth takes place but I must tell you that this is again a theoretical model. Then comes the other model what is called as the organismic valuing theory. Those of you who have gone through PSY 151 course must be aware of this. There was what you call there is a school of thought in psychology called the humanistic and existential psychology. Psychological and existential psychology basically professes the importance of the person. So you as an individual is always given utmost priority compared to rest all psychological processes that are taken care of while defining your psyche. Psychological valuing theory know runs on the broader framework that has been given by the humanistic and existential thought in psychology. What this theory proposes is that you have a normal baseline level then you experience the trauma and when you experience the trauma 2 possibilities are there either you assimilate the experience or you accommodate the experience. If you accommodate the experience then again it could either be a positive accommodation or it could be a negative accommodation. Now assimilation and accommodation would be like say you have a thread like this then you take a crystal or say you take another thread and put it near the original thread that is running continuously. So if it is just as an extra addition that is what is called as assimilation. Accommodation would be where the running thread accommodates it leaves a space so that the new thread can be put inside and it could be you know woven along with the original thread that is continuously running. So accommodation and assimilation of experience is like this. So you when you have your continued life experience with an additional attachment that is the process of assimilation. If you are able to assimilate your experience according to the organismic valuing theory you are finally able to regain your pre trauma baseline. So the state where you were before the seismic event you would invest some time in trying to assimilate your experience once you have assimilated it you will go back to your pre trauma baseline you are able to run your life the way you were doing that. If you are going to accommodate your experience means if you are going to realign your past experiences so that the new experience can be fitted into it then there are two possibilities either you positively accommodate it or you negatively accommodate it. If you negatively try to accommodate your experience then according to this model it leads to psychopathology psychopathology in this case would be post traumatic stress disorder. And if you are going to positively accommodate it then you attain what is called as post traumatic growth fine again this is a theoretical model. But because this model was proposed as initially as part of doctoral thesis therefore some amount of you know empirical data is involved in terms of proposing the model the only difficulty as of now is that there is not a very prescribed route that positive accommodation means if it is done this, this, this, this way then it is positive and in case instead of taking a left turn if you take a right turn from here it leads you to another direction where it is negative accommodation that you know whole sequence of even the way it was prescribed in the earlier model. This model that still you do not find in the case of organismic valuing theory couple of years back I think 3, 4 years back one of my PhD student had done a work on post traumatic stress and growth in the Buddhist community which is staying here in Dharamshala and basically it was the monks and the nuns. I do not exactly remember the number the sample size I do not remember but it was a good number good number I guess perhaps 200 plus number of monks and nuns. And primarily they are what you call as the primary induces of stress were identified and then you know different, different things were taken into account but finally we had taken ruminative thoughts means rumination reflection we had taken cognitive emotional processing how do you process your own emotions how do you to what extent you are able to regulate your own emotion and then finally you know trying to find out that what actually leads to what. So if you put it in a regression model it will tell you know that these are primarily the denominators of this problem or these things lead to this. I must tell you that based on that empirical data we did find you know the importance of ruminative process, reflective process, cognitive emotion regulation. Of course in Tradesky's model there is no description of cognitive emotion regulation he talks about the distress factor emotional distress and the intrusive nature of it the automated nature of it and then reduction in the nature of emotional distress and finally making the rumination more and more deliberate from the automatic end. So partly what we empirically found out from the this community here in India was endorsing this model at the same time. Assimilation of course we did not check but what was very interesting to observe was most traumatic stress and growth it might appear you know that either you develop a pathology or you develop a growth pattern out of your traumatic experience means either or but in reality either or situation does not exist. So there could be a possibility that you are still under distress extreme emotional distress but still you are evolving and for certain duration the stress and the growth can run parallel after a particular limit then you really realize that the growth starts surmounting the stress and this is how you are able to manage it. So that was all about stress and growth there is another thing that we could have talked about but we would deliberately not know go into the details of it what is called as acute stress disorder. The type of stress we were now talking about here was primarily simple or a complex type of stressor which leads to certain changes in the psychological behavioral and the physical spheres but we did not go into the that domain of stress which is clinically considered to be disorder deliberately I thought initially we will do it but then I thought that there is no point talking about stress as a disorder. So we have deliberately know I have removed it from here so we would not talk about the acute stress disorder fine now we would talk of know two positively oriented constructs in psychology resilience and coping this is a definition given by Langer he says that resilience actually is the ability to restore balance following a difficult experience and integrate it into the backup of once total life experiences. So primarily this is your ability to bounce back once you start sliding down so you have a difficult experience but resilience gives you that strength to restore your balance but interesting thing also is that it finally gets integrated into your total life experience primarily would mean that there are different words also I must tell you know that nowadays in scientific terminology we do subscribe to only one term called resilience but you would find many synonymous words being used in the literature earlier know like hardiness was one construct which actually defined resilience. So all together if you make a literature survey six seven different types of words were being used to describe this phenomena but gradually now people have come to an agreement that all these words synonymous words actually represents resilience nothing else now what happens it is basically know it reflects the perseverance of an individual to certain effective cognitive and behavioral situations. So you are able to optimally utilize your internal and your external resources so that you can positively cope with the situation given the socio-economic constraint that you have. So whatever environmental constraints you have you would try to optimally utilize your internal and the external resources but then you would certainly know the important thing in resilience is that you have the ability of perseveration. So if you know that this is how it will be done you do it once to twice thrice ten times twenty times and finally it happens I do not know if you have read this story there is a popular story usually prescribed sometime in the primary classes days in Hindi text long back I had read it know that there was a mother with a small baby the mother always used to go to the well to fetch some water and she used to have that earthen pot around which she would coil a rope and that using a pulley the rope will go into the well and this is how she would fetch water and beautifully this story continues the end of the story has two important things one that the rope happens to know every day crisscross stone surface so it was a wooden pulley but then there was a stone and rope always used to move on the stone and although stones are capable know if you rub rope against stone finally the rope will get cut but in this story at the end you realize that the rope has a mark mark because the rope always used to move on that stone. So, the stone had that deep mark one and two that the mother used to keep the earthen pot again on a platform made of stone although it was earthen pot but because it was kept so many times that the stone itself had developed a particular shape there basically this story was trying to say that it is not that how strong you are or how weak you are but actually how perseverant you are. So, even rope if it keeps moving on the stone repeatedly it will leave a mark on the stone if the earthen pot is put repeatedly on the stone it will leave a mark permanently there. So, perseverance when we talk about with respect to resilience is equivalent to the phenomena that was described in this story it could be an effective perseverance. Imagine situation where people are passionate about a cause they fight for a cause and they themselves suffer in this whole process and you would realize that these are the people whose passion does not die because of their adverse experiences. So, the experiences might be extremely adverse but they would not lose their passion for whatever they are doing and there could be both the positive and the negative interpretation based on from which side you are looking at the phenomena. But then people who are actually indulge in that process and are convinced that they are doing it for a greater cause you would realize that their effective component becomes more and more stable in that process. So, is there cognitive process their whole thought they have well thought in the things before they have entered into this periphery and now they are well determined that if not during my lifetime during the lifetime of my second generation third generation, but one day this change will come. Look at all those who were involved in the afford a movement for example, many of them died they did not know what will happen next, but they were convinced in terms of their thought processes that it has begun it will take time. But if not during my lifetime may be my next generation and if by not even by their time then by the time the third generation comes into being one day the target will be achieved that is perseverance in their thought process. Because you yourself are confident really that yes I can certainly do this and once you have these external resources pouring in your inner strength part of consolidates. This people who fight for much bigger causes they are they have been found out to be much more resilient compared to people who are not engaged in such things. I am not sure that everybody should fight for bigger cause. This is what has been empirically found and now we come to the last topic that has to do with this motive where you would be talking about coping. Hoping as you know must have realized by this time is basically that process which describes the phenomena of overcoming the all the problems that one has experienced. And trying to either live with it developing capability of managing it and further moving ahead in life. You remember we had talked about a pressure law of different different emotions. So, we take the definition of coping given by and they say that coping refers to constantly changing cognitive behavioral and emotional efforts to manage particular external and or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person. So, if you realize that the situation that you are experiencing it is too taxing for you or it finally is you know cuts on the resources that are available to you. And therefore, you realize that your resources are getting depleted in such situations. Copying basically you know helps you manage the constantly changing situations at the cognitive behavioral and at the emotional level. And it helps you know manage your external or internal demands. So, it would say like if you take the example of a seesaw your demand would suddenly know we will be overpowering in the beginning and then coping comes into picture and it helps you strike at balance. So, it refers to the cognitive way of managing the intake of emotionally arousing information. The moment you realize that your resources are being depleted it is a great sense of discomfort to you. And the discomfort that you experience will know finally lead to certain degree of emotional arousal. And therefore, coping provides you a cognitive mechanism of managing those emotions. In terms of explaining how many times of coping do we have? It is very difficult to say if you make the list it will be a much longer list if you look at the overall development in this area. Primarily if you take different types of coping and put them in terms of approaches that has been taken you can do it twofold. One is called as problem focused and emotion focused coping approach. This is you know the initial proposal that was given by Lazarus and Fortman. And little later when people started talking about cognitive coping and nowadays people also talk of something called proactive coping. So, what is problem focused coping? Problem focused coping includes effort which talks about direct control and change of the sources of psychological burdens such as learning new skills, removing barriers, generating alternative solutions. So, basically the coping is looking ahead with the situation in terms of a whole set of problem you break it into pieces and for each of the subset of the problem you formulate a new solution. And because you are now able to manage it because it says know that you cope in terms of say learning new skills. Now, if you learn a new skill this basically means that you had a problem and you realize that you are not capable of handling it with the given type of resources that are available to you unless you learn a new skill and therefore, you learn the new skill. Now, because you have learned a new thing therefore, you are able to handle the situation. It could be know as small as a situation let us say going to the pre primary schools. A child who visits the school for the first time and finds it extremely difficult even to stay for 2 hours in the school. From that point when you finally come to a level where 2 hours of nonstop lecture and you can still listen to it 3 hours of lab session and you can still participate there. So, that is like developing new skill the nature of the problem keeps on changing the demand rate is put forth in front of you that also gets magnified gradually. But along with the magnification of the problem you also keep on adding new skills to yourself and therefore, you are able to cope it. That is problem focused coping. Emotion focused coping basically refers to managing the emotional responses to the stressor such as wishful thinking seeking emotional support or social comparisons. Now, wishful thinking is an interesting construct in psychology we would not go into the details of it, but you would find a very interesting type of descriptions even some amount of empirical research is also taking place with respect to wishful thinking. It is more like say if this would have happened then that would not have happened. There is another word in psychology used for this what is called as counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thinking is something has happened you reflect back and you say that this would not have happened if that would not have happened. If I would have done things like this then it would have been like that. So, that is counterfactual thought and again even in counterfactual thoughts you have no positive and negative counterfactual thoughts. In one case you would say that things would have been better if it would not have been done that way. And in the other case you say oh thankfully only this happened it could have been even worse. Say for example you are travelling in a boat and the boat capsizes. There was extreme sense of panic that you experienced but finally you were able to sail and come to the banks. That is the time when you realize that oh I could have even died. Thank God. Means you think of the worst and therefore you are happy you are in it oh it could have been even worse I came only up to this point. Thank God. That is the positive way in counterfactual thought. And the negative of course you can think now that if the boatman would not have done this then this would not have happened. If I would not have taken this boat then that would not have happened things like this. Seeking support from others where others provide emotional support to you and utilizing social comparisons this has also been considered to facilitate your emotion-focused coping. Focke-Vernon-Lazarus proposes that the entire coping can be bifurcated in terms of these two approaches that you have problem- focused coping you have emotion-focused coping. Now we have a whole lot of coping strategies that has been allocated. In fact now when we would have our self-evaluation sessions there I will also ask you to participate in a questionnaire type of a thing where you would have seven different types of coping strategies. The prominent coping strategy that now people talk about is cognitive coping which involves a conscious mental process of handling negative life events. Reappraisal, refocus on planning and some of the components of the coping strategy. So what you do is that you have looked at things from one way you revisit it. So you go for a reappraisal or you plan something, refocus on your plan, execute it half way you again evaluate your plan. So there is an argument that if you adopt strategies like this this also facilitates your coping but this is more of a cognitive process that is involved in the coping mechanism and therefore it is called as cognitive coping. And last and very interesting coping strategy what is called as proactive coping. It is basically a combination of autonomous goal setting with self-regulatory goal attainment and it emphasizes on recognition of cues to reduce modifiers. So basically what it says is because it is proactive therefore you have to anticipate some forthcoming event and there is of course a preparedness for it. So you show certain degree of anticipatory preparedness for the forthcoming event and that is proactive coping. So basically what it means is that there are certain type of life events that has probably certain degree of predictability. Say 3 days of Tekkerti for example and I know that I would not get the chance to read during this time because I would be using XYZ type of analytics for these 3 days and then there is a quiz announced on the next Monday. So you will have to know somewhere make an anticipation that in case the quiz is held on Monday then how do I distribute my time? How do I plan the whole thing so that I do not compromise neither in terms of participating in Tekkerti nor in terms of getting a good scope. That is cognitive coping. You have a plan at hand, you revisit your plan, halfway you refocus on your plan that is cognitive coping. But imagine situations where it is the situation that you are contemplating is not going to come in the immediate future but it might come in the long way. For example somebody tells you that when you speak you use too many words but all your words make very little mood and you know that by the time you will come to a certain level in your BTEC program you will have to face different companies during the spew activities and because I know of this that one day this will come therefore I start preparing myself well in advance. I develop software skills in me, I refine the software skills in me. Now this type of coping is primarily proactive coping where there is an anticipatory preparedness that this might happen one day this situation might come and hence I plan for it before that. So it was all about coping during this module what we have discussed is right from stress to burnout to post-traumatic stress, post-traumatic growth, resilience and coping. So a lot many things we have discussed. Usually traditionally if you look at how these things are taught to the university students this would be broken into pieces. So coping would be an independent topic, resilience would be an independent topic, stress would be independent, post-traumatic stress would be dependent. But because we have one semester and we have a certain everything together therefore all this was put together. So it was all about this module. Next when we meet we would be starting a new module where our focus would be on completion. And once we completed then we would be moving to psychological results.