What does not kill you can make you stronger: Creativity as an adaptive outcome after trauma.

Abstract

Trauma is a ubiquitous aspect of human life that can challenge psychological health but also trigger adaptive changes. Tension theory suggests that exposure to stress events may stimulate novel and flexible thinking. Historical evidence indicates that many eminent creators experienced significant childhood trauma, implying that creativity can emerge as an adaptive response. Building on this framework, we examined how cumulative trauma exposure relates to creativity and whether complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) symptoms moderate this relationship. Data were collected from 1,215 university students, including cumulative trauma exposure, CPTSD symptoms, and creativity assessments. Overall, the trauma-creativity relationship followed an inverted U-shaped pattern. Latent profile analysis of CPTSD symptoms revealed four adaptation profiles: disturbances in self-organization group (14.2%), CPTSD group (10.8%), posttraumatic stress disorder group (21.6%), and low-impact group (53.4%). Posttraumatic stress disorder and disturbances in self-organization groups showed the classic inverted U pattern, whereas the CPTSD group showed a positive linear association, particularly for divergent thinking. The low-impact group displayed a logarithmic trend, suggesting a ceiling effect. These findings indicate that the trauma-creativity relationship depends on posttraumatic adaptation profiles and varies across creative domains, providing a framework to reconcile inconsistent findings in creativity research and offering a novel perspective for understanding posttraumatic psychological processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).