Wardroom Training – PTSD or Post Traumatic Growth?

Every week the officers in our command get together and spend 20-30 minutes on personal and professional development training. It is a time of discussion where we view a short video or read a short article and then discuss how we can use that information to make ourselves better, our command better, and our Navy better; in that order. The training also gives me the opportunity to learn from the collective and share my thoughts and prospective from 20 years of hard won experience.

This weeks training covered two articles “Pain + Reflection = Progress” by FS.blog and “How veterans struggles can lead to post-traumatic growth” by Bret a. Moor and Ken Falk. Both articles took a look at the pain and suffering that we have all been dealt and looked at it through the lense of making us better individuals. They argue post trauma and pain is the prime time for inward reflection and can result in a better appreciation for life, greater strength, and enhanced awareness.

I know from personal experience my greatest failures have been the opportunities I needed for my greatest growth.

Below are our discussion questions:

• What struggles have you experienced that caused growth?
  • We shared quite a few struggles ranging from professional failures to childhood struggles with most agreeing that rather than overcoming those struggles, they rather caused growth and made us stronger.
• We discussed 3 incredible people and asked the impossible to answer question, “Did those people overcome their disabilities, or did the disabilities make them stronger?”
  • Brad Snyder – Blind EOD tech and now olympic swimmer
  • Klye Manyard – MMA fighter, wrestler and Mountain Climber born without arms or legs.
  • Stephen Hawkings
• Are we thinking about disabilities all wrong??

The article below was taken from Miltary Times and can be accessed  here