A Positive Spin on Tragedy

What could possibly be good about the experience of 9/11?

According to a study by researchers at the University of Buffalo, "People who live through an extreme traumatic experience such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks or an airplane crash often have the capacity to bounce back or even grow to a higher level of functioning and personal strength."

Of course, this isn't the case for everyone. But researcher Lisa Butler finds that it is the case for most.

Her research also focused in on the qualities that make people most likely to rebound well from a terrible experience. Most important, she found, was an overall positive world view -- a belief that life has meaning, that good things can still happen, that there's something to look forward to.

Beyond a positive outlook, people who rebound from tragedy tend to share a willingness to share feelings, a social support network, and an ability to look away from media representations of the tragic event in their lives. According to an article in EurekAlert, "Those who watched repeated images of the same monstrous calamity over time, such as the World Trade Center attacks, tended to have higher feelings of distress than those who watched fewer."

This positive spin can't change or fix what happened on 9/11. But perhaps it can offer a bit of consolation to those who have lived through the experience to discover a stronger, more spiritual self.

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