We tell ourselves stories about who we are, where we would like to be, and how we are going to get there. These stories regulate our emotions, by determining the significance of all the things we encounter, and all the events we experience. We regard things that get us on our way as positive, things that impede our progress as negative, and things that do neither as irrelevant.
Small irritants interfere with our plans.
We do not like irritants, and will avoid dealing with them. We benefit, become stronger, in doing so. Unresolved irritants accumulate, rather than disappear. Catastrophes, by contrast, interfere with the integrity of our whole stories, and massively dysregulate our emotions. As a consequence of this adaptation, this capacity for resolution, catastrophe can rejuvenate.