I chose this topic because the problem of posttraumatic recovery is a relevant issue.

All
traumas have their consequences and they concern not only the person himself, but
often others. Post-traumatic reactions are widespread in all spheres of human life. This
article reflects the results of various studies of traumatization on the role of perceived
coping self-efficacy in recovery from traumatic experiences within the framework of
social cognitive theory.

The first scientist who formulated the term self-efficacy was Albert Bandura. The
concept of self-efficacy refers to the people’s ability to build behavior appropriate to a
specific situation. From the Bandura perspective, self-efficacy, or the conscious ability to
cope with specific situations, affects several aspects of psychosocial functioning. The
way a person evaluates his own effectiveness determines for him the expansion or
limitation of the choice of activities, the efforts that he will have to make to overcome
obstacles and frustrations, the perseverance with the help of which he will solve a case.
To summarize, self-assessment of performance affects behaviors, motivation, behavior
formation, and the emergence of emotions. According to Bandura, people who are
aware of their self-efficacy make more effort to perform complex tasks than people who
have serious doubts about their abilities. And at the same time, high self-efficacy,
associated with expectations of success, usually leads to a good result and thus
contributes to self-esteem. In contrast, the low self-efficacy associated with the
expectation of failure usually leads to failure and thus reduces self-esteem. From this
point of view, people who consider themselves unable to cope with difficult or
dangerous situations are likely to pay excessive attention to their personal shortcomings
and constantly exhaust themselves with self-criticism about their own incompetence.
Bandura says that those who consider themselves " unable to succeed are more likely
to mentally imagine a failed scenario and focus on the fact that everything will be bad.
Confidence in the inability to succeed weakens motivation and prevents you from
building behavior». On the other hand, people who believe in their ability to solve a
problem are likely to be persistent in achieving their goals, despite obstacles, and will
not be inclined to indulge in self-criticism. As Bandura also says , " those who have a
consciousness of high self-efficacy, mentally imagine a successful scenario that
provides positive guidelines for building behavior, and consciously rehearse successful
solutions to potential problems." Bandura hypothesized that the cognitive nature of self-
efficacy affects motor behavior, for example whether a stressful situation will stimulate
attempts to master it, how intense these attempts will be, and how long they will last. At
the same time self-efficacy can also affect the characteristics of the environment - the
consequences of behavior. If, for example, someone does not believe in his/hers
attractiveness to the opposite sex and their self-effectiveness in dating is low, then they
will come to the party in a bad mood, spoil the mood of others, and their attempt to meet
someone will almost certainly fail. The negative consequences of trying to get
acquainted will be perceived in detail, which will further reduce self-efficacy. If the self-
efficacy is high, then the person will go to the party in a good mood, waiting for a fun
time, the attempt to meet will receive a positive development, which in turn will
strengthen self-efficacy in the field of dating and facilitate subsequent dating. In his
concept of expectations, Bandura distinguishes between the efficiency expectation and
the expectation outcome expectation. He defines the expectation of results as a
person's assessment that a certain behavior will lead to certain results. The expectation
of effectiveness is an assessment of the extent to which it is able to behave as it needs
to in order to get some result. The difference is that an individual may believe that some
reaction can or will certainly lead to the desired result (the expectation of results), but
not believe that he himself is able to commit this behavior. The effect of self-efficacy on
behavior depends on its degree, generality, and strength. This influence is diverse: self-
efficacy affects the search for or avoidance of certain types of situations; the choice of
behavioral alternatives; the type, frequency and duration of attempts to master a difficult
situation; the attribution of success and failure. Although, of course, it is impossible to
underestimate the reverse effect on the self-effectiveness of the results of actions,
models that are available to observation. Bandura suggested that the acquisition of self-
efficacy can occur in any of the four ways or any combination of them: the ability to build
behavior, indirect experience, verbal persuasion, and states of physical emotional
arousal.

The ability to build behavior. Bandura argues that the most important source of
effectiveness is past experience of success and failure in trying to achieve the desired
results. Successful personal experiences generate high expectations, and previous
failures generate low expectations.

Indirect experience. Although not as effective as actual behavior, indirect experience

can also be a source of high self-efficacy. That is, observing other people who
successfully build behavior can give a person hope for self-efficacy and confidence that
such activities can be completely handled.

Verbal persuasion. Effectiveness can also be achieved or changed through a person's

belief that they have the abilities necessary to achieve the goal.

Emotional uplift. Finally, since people compare their performance level with their
emotional stress level in the face of stressful or threatening situations, any method that
reduces arousal will increase their performance forecast.

So, I can note that the concept of Bandura, which he called self-efficacy, is a kind of
scientific interpretation of common sense, which is based on the power of positive
thinking. Optimistic self-confidence brings tangible results. People with high self-efficacy
are more persistent, less anxious, less prone to depression, and more successful in
learning.

Most people recover from traumatic experiences, it means a significant resilience of the
person. Others remain chronically weakened. Most likely, the disorder is a combination
of environmental stress factors and psychosocial factors.

One version includes a mixture of the diathesis-stress model and the epidemiological
risk buffer model. The second version is based on the agent-based proactive causality
of social cognitive theory.

There are military traumatization, traumatization by natural disasters, terrorist attack,

interpersonal traumatizations, spousal bereavement.
People who believe that they can overcome their trauma are taking part in fixing their
lives, rather than having their lives dictated by adverse circumstances. The consistency
of the results for different types of traumas suggests a common stimulating and
protective function of the belief in personal effectiveness for managing the impact of
catastrophic events. Traumatized people avoid reality checks and thus isolate
themselves from corrective experiences. Guided mastery with inclusive coping tools
restores corrective reality testing.

More importantly, it provides confirmatory performance tests that allow a person to have
some control over what they fear. Gradual mastery of trauma-related situations and
actions in vivo restores a sense of coping effectiveness with concomitant reductions in
stress, anxious thinking, and avoidance.

A significant body of research (Bandura, 1997) confirms that perceived self-efficacy is a

common mechanism by which the treatments, simulations, and persuasions described
above improve psychosocial functioning. The therapeutic application of this body of
knowledge to the treatment of PTSD is a fruitful area for future research.