Researchers have a new theory about how tragedies affect us

The Washington Post:

After losing a spouse or a job, the conventional wisdom is that most people will find a way to cope. And for the last 15 to 20 years, research has echoed this idea. Psychologists have looked at events as diverse as heart attacks,cancer diagnoses, terrorist attacks, the death of a spouse, military deployment and mass shootings, and concluded that most people remain psychologically stable and high-functioning through such traumatic events.

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Now, a study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science is offering new findings to challenge the idea that people are generally resilient following traumatic events. Instead, the research finds that far more people follow a trajectory of “recovery,” in which their happiness and life satisfaction dips around the time of the event, but then gradually and slowly recovers.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post