The dangerous myth of permanent trauma | George Bonanno: Full Interview

Episode Overview

• The podcast challenges the conventional wisdom around trauma, arguing that resilience—maintaining stable functioning after an adverse event—is the most common human response, not PTSD.
• It introduces the concept of "adaptive flexibility," a learnable skill set involving situation assessment and trial-and-error coping, as the true key to navigating adversity, rather than fixed personality traits.
• The discussion provides a historical context for our modern understanding of trauma, explaining that PTSD is a relatively recent concept amplified by a media environment that profits from fear.
• It draws a clear distinction between trauma (a response to a life-threatening event) and grief (an adaptive response to loss that disrupts our worldview), debunking the popular five-stage model of grief.

Key Concepts

• Potential Trauma: The event itself is not inherently traumatic; trauma is a specific response. The term "potential trauma" is preferred to emphasize that a pathological outcome is not inevitable.
• Trauma Myths: The episode debunks three common myths: that any difficult experience is a trauma, that traumatic events always cause lasting damage, and that people harbor "hidden traumas."
• Resilience Trajectory: The most common outcome following a potentially traumatic event (affecting ~2/3 of people) is a pattern of initial distress followed by a return to relatively stable, healthy functioning.
• Resilience Blindspot: A cognitive bias that makes it difficult for us to believe that we or others can recover quickly from terrible events, leading us to overestimate the likelihood of long-term suffering.
• Fragmented Memory: During extreme stress, the brain prioritizes survival information, creating decontextualized, fragmented memories rather than a coherent narrative of the event.
• Memory Reconsolidation: Memories are not fixed recordings. Each time a memory is recalled, it is rebuilt and can be subtly altered, allowing for the narrative of the event to change over time.
• Adaptive Flexibility: The crucial skill for resilience is not a fixed trait but a flexible process involving three steps: 1) Context Sensitivity (assessing the situation), 2) Repertoire (choosing from various coping strategies), and 3) Feedback (monitoring and adjusting the strategy).
• The Resilience Paradox: Commonly cited "resilience traits" (like optimism or toughness) are surprisingly poor predictors of who will actually be resilient in a future crisis.
• Grief vs. Trauma: Trauma is a response to a life-threatening event that activates our emergency systems. Grief is a response to loss that disrupts our internal map of the world and our identity, prompting a process of recalibration.
• Historical Context of PTSD: The concept of psychological trauma is a modern construct, with the official PTSD diagnosis only appearing in 1980. Historically, people experienced symptoms but lacked the cultural framework to understand them.

Quotes

• At 0:09 - "I tend to use the word potential trauma or potentially traumatic event. And that's because events are not traumatic, they're potentially traumatic." - Bonanno clarifies his terminology, emphasizing that the trauma is a response, not an inherent quality of an event.
• At 1:21 - "One is that anything very difficult and unpleasant, hard can cause trauma or is a trauma. Another is that anything that we consider a trauma has lasting emotional damage. And the third, which is very pernicious, is that there are hidden traumas." - He outlines the three central myths about trauma he aims to debunk.
• At 11:05 - "The majority of people will endure a highly aversive... potentially traumatic event, and still be able to continue functioning in a relatively normal, relatively in a healthy way... We call it the resilience trajectory." - This quote defines the "resilience trajectory," which Bonanno's research shows is the most common response to potential trauma.
• At 13:53 - "I coined this a phrase, the resilience blindspot, to capture a phenomenon that I've seen now for many years... It's very, very hard for us to believe that that won't last, that that's a short-lived phenomenon." - He explains the cognitive bias where people underestimate their own and others' capacity for resilience.
• At 22:16 - "The way our brain works when we're under extreme stress results in very fragmented memories of these events... they are bits and pieces of decontextualized information." - He describes the neurological reason for the nature of traumatic memories.
• At 23:57 - "I think a lot of what we think of as memories of trauma are these bits and pieces of information that we later put together into a story." - Explaining that our experience of trauma is often a narrative constructed from memory fragments after the event.
• At 24:58 - "[For resilient 9/11 survivors] their memory changed over time. Their memory of those events became more benign." - Highlighting research that shows how resilient individuals reframe traumatic memories over time.
• At 27:50 - "I call that the resilience paradox. We can identify all these things, but paradoxically they don't actually predict who will be resilient the next time something happens." - Defining his term for why traditional "resilience traits" fail to predict outcomes.
• At 28:47 - "I call that process of of doing that, adaptive flexibility, I've also called it regulatory flexibility." - Introducing his central concept for actively and effectively coping with adversity.
• At 37:47 - "I call this 'coping ugly.' It's the idea that say something like doing something impulsive... is not really healthy... But if you do something like that once or twice in certain situations, it actually can be just what you need to do." - Explaining that even seemingly unhealthy behaviors can be adaptive and necessary in specific, short-term contexts.
• At 51:45 - "The internet has become... an enormous money-making machine. And the money on the internet is about capturing your attention." - Arguing that the modern ubiquity of trauma in our discourse is fueled by an attention economy that profits from keeping us focused on danger.
• At 53:30 - "We see hardly any references at all to trauma, to the symptoms of trauma, that anything like PTSD... There's really no mention really of people being traumatized, having nightmares, and being harmed by an event." - Highlighting the stark absence of the concept of psychological trauma in most historical literature before the late 19th century.
• At 1:03:05 - "A potentially traumatic event is an intense, life-threatening event... The death of a loved one does something very different. It tells our brain that what we think the world is like... isn't correct anymore." - Drawing a clear distinction between the mechanisms of trauma and grief.
• At 1:04:44 - "Sadness is highly functional. All emotions are functional; they do something... Sadness turns our attention inward." - Explaining that sadness during grief is an adaptive response that forces internal reflection.

Takeaways

• Assume resilience is the most likely outcome for yourself and others after a difficult event, rather than defaulting to an expectation of long-term damage.
• Develop a flexible coping "toolbox" and practice a trial-and-error approach to challenges, rather than searching for one perfect, universally effective strategy.
• Understand that your memory of a difficult event is not a fixed recording; you can actively work to reframe its narrative into a more benign or empowering story over time.
• Recognize that seemingly "unhealthy" coping behaviors can be useful and adaptive in specific, short-term situations; avoid being overly rigid or judgmental about how you get through a crisis.
• Be a critical consumer of media, acknowledging that the digital attention economy profits from fear and may present a distorted view of the world's dangers.
• Distinguish between grief and trauma in your own life. Treat grief not as a pathology to be cured, but as a natural, adaptive process of adjusting your internal world to a significant loss.
• Discard the myth of the "five stages of grief." Allow yourself or others to grieve in a non-linear, oscillating way that moves between focusing on the loss and engaging with ongoing life.
• Shift your language from "traumatic event" to "potentially traumatic event" to reinforce the idea that the outcome is not predetermined and that a healthy, resilient response is possible.