Resilience vs Antifragility vs Post-Traumatic Growth, Explained

People use robustness, resilience, antifragility, and post-traumatic growth as if they were the same idea dressed in different words. They are not. Each describes a different relationship to stress.

The short version: robustness resists stress and stays the same. Resilience absorbs stress and returns to baseline. Antifragility uses stress to get stronger, by design and in advance. Post-traumatic growth is positive change that emerges after a major trauma. Two of these recover. Two of these grow. They grow in different ways, at different times.

A simple map of the four

Picture a single line that runs from "loses from stress" on the left to "gains from stress" on the right.