George Bonanno || The New Science of Resilience

In this episode, I talk to George Bonanno about trauma and resiliency. We start off by discussing what people get wrong about trauma and how this led to the invention of the PTSD diagnosis. George defines what resilience is, how it’s different from growth, and its paradoxical correlation to individual differences. Finally, he elaborates on how the flexibility mindset and sequence help us get through personal traumatic events or global tragedies like 9/11 or the COVID-19 pandemic.  Bio  Dr. George Bonanno is a professor of psychology, chair of the department of counseling in clinical psychology, and director of the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab at Teachers College Columbia University. He’s the author of The Other Side of Sadness and The End of Trauma.  Website: www.tc.columbia.edu/LTElab/  Twitter: @giorgiobee  Topics  00:01:41 Jerome L. Singer’s influence on George  00:05:42 Society’s skewed view of trauma  00:08:15 Explaining the PTSD diagnosis  00:10:38 People are more resilient than you think  00:14:23 Resilience VS growth  00:19:50 The resilience paradox  00:24:44 The flexibility mindset  00:29:58 The flexibility sequence  00:34:50 How to be more flexible  00:38:11 Goal-directed self-talk  00:47:50 The resilience blind spot  00:50:06 What 9/11 teaches us about resilience  00:53:10 We’ll overcome the COVID-19 pandemic   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.