Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence

notions involving the general purpose and meaning of the person 's existence. Such threats to the assumptive world are accompanied by significant levels of psychological distress. Extending our seismic metaphor, cognitive processing and restructuring may be comparable to the physical rebuilding that occurs after an earthquake. The physical structures can be designed to be more resistant to shocks in the future, as the community learns from the earthquake what has withstood the shaking and what has not. Cognitive rebuilding that takes into account the changed reality of one's life after trauma produces schemas that incorporate the trauma and possible events in the future, and that are more resistant to being shattered. These results are experienced as