Nothing in the trial addressed anybody’s circumstances. No one was given advice, a plan, or a technique for handling a difficult marriage, a job or a diagnosis, and two weeks is not long enough for a life to rearrange itself. What the scale measured is how heavily daily difficulties pressed on the person carrying them, and that fell by roughly two thirds after a single reading. The clearest items say it plainly: people stopped feeling that difficulties were piling up beyond their control, and stopped feeling that they could not cope with everything. The control group eased a little on its own while simply waiting, which is ordinary expectation and time, and the distance between the two groups is what the reading produced.