Trauma and systems of meaning making.

Abstract

I speak to the ways in which trauma affects the human capacity to make meaning in life and how meaning-making systems can function as part of the healing process from trauma. The complexity of the relationship between faith, spirituality, and trauma is explored, and the importance of attending to issues of meaning and existential challenges inherent in trauma is discussed. Trauma is the ultimate challenge to meaning making. People's identities and social locations that speak to meaning making are among the most fully human aspects of their identities, and they are also among those most central to, most affected by, and most powerful in response to trauma in people's lives. Trauma deals blows to people's meaning-making processes because it tears them away from the comfort of their meaning-making systems, plunges them into chaos and unpredictability in ways that cannot be denied or ignored, interferes with the practices that embody their systems of belief, and demonstrates the ineffectiveness of their prayers, spells, and charms. For some of the people who come into psychotherapists' offices, the traumatic experiences with which they struggle will have happened at the social location of religion and spirituality. Two types of psychic wounds related to religion are common. One is the wound inflicted within and by one's faith. The other is the trauma perpetrated against a person by others based on bias or hate toward that individual's faith. Each type of religion-related trauma carries its own special challenges to cultural competence. For many people, the presence of a meaning-making system serves as a protective factor when trauma strikes. Paradoxically, both a strong religious faith and a rejection of religious belief can be equally protective, depending on how they are applied. Culturally aware and competent trauma therapies must be rooted in the recovery of meaning. This requires, in part, understanding the role of meaning-making systems, including religions, in the risk for trauma exposure; the ways in which trauma assaults those systems; and the value to both clients and psychotherapists of addressing questions of meaning and spirituality in the healing process. Psychotherapists working with trauma survivors must also develop their own meaning-making systems to be able to encompass the amount of pain and terror to which they are routinely witness.