Many abuse and trauma experts report that finding meaning from your experience is an essential part of the healing process, as it helps you understand how and where to heal. We talk about making meaning out of an abusive and traumatic situation, not to victim-blame or dismiss the experience, but to empower the survivor to heal despite their experience. Finding meaning does not take away from the actions or inactions of others who contributed to your trauma and it is okay to also have negative feelings about what happened to you.
Fully healing from childhood trauma requires more than simply acknowledging and understanding the experience. This doesn’t mean we have to find a positive or beneficial meaning in the trauma, nor does it mean we need to believe it was good for us. Rather, it’s about coming to terms with how the trauma has shaped us, recognizing its impact, and understanding what we can do to move forward.
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By finding meaning, no matter how small, we take a more active role in our healing journey
As a therapist who works with survivors, I find that many of my clients have different perspectives on this. Some survivors feel their experience taught them something they needed to learn in this lifetime: strength, resilience, or self-preservation.
However, there are many survivors who feel that coming to this conclusion—that their trauma has meaning—is unfair, and I respect that, too. Making meaning from trauma can be difficult because the pain and emotional wounds may feel overwhelming, making it hard to find clarity or purpose. The process often requires confronting intense feelings of confusion, anger, or grief, which can block the ability to see how the experience might contribute to growth or healing.
However, I often find that without reaching this major step in the recovery process, we often repeat our dysfunctional patterns again and again. It took me a couple years before I began to be grateful for the lessons I learned through my experience, but I also still have moments where little feelings of resentment or loss creep up. Seeing happy families celebrating an important event together, I often think, “Why couldn’t I have that?” I have even come to understand how to use this information as a therapist to help others as they go through their own experience of abuse—giving my experience meaning.
How to begin finding meaning
As human beings, we are genetically programmed to navigate and recover from trauma.1,2 Something scary happened to our ancestors and they learned to avoid that scary thing. It did not stop them from continuing to hunt and gather, but they found ways around those dangers. In the same way, we can work to find safer ways and avoid the dangers we know about from experiences within our families.
Our ancestors evolved to handle much more short-term traumas: having to run from a predator or coping with the death of a family member. Today, we have many more, much more complex traumas such as relational and family abuse, systemic oppression, war, etc. Our bodies and minds weren’t designed to recover from these forms of traumas, making it much harder to do so, and even harder to find meaning from these traumas.3 Beginning to find meaning in trauma involves, first, acknowledging and accepting the pain it caused without judgment. It can help to reflect on how the experience has shaped who you are today—both the challenges it has brought and the strengths you have gained in response.4 Over time, small steps toward understanding how the trauma fits into your larger life story can help you make sense of your overall purpose and meaning4.
Finding meaning is a sign of growth, not perfection
Finding meaning in trauma is a sign of growth because it demonstrates the ability to move beyond the pain and begin integrating the experience into a greater understanding of your life. It doesn’t mean achieving perfection or erasing the hurt, but rather recognizing that healing is a journey where the trauma, though painful, was part of this journey.
Finding meaning in your experience is essential to healing, but it can only be done when you are ready. I never say to my clients: “okay, now it’s time to find meaning.” Instead, it is something that I find naturally happens to them as they heal. I have observed that meaning naturally emerges as they progress in their healing journey. It’s a process that unfolds organically, when the time is right. It might happen many years into adulthood, well after the abuse took place. For many of my clients, this growth might even be invisible at first until they look back and see their progress more clearly in hindsight. “I didn’t realize how far I had come until I saw how differently I reacted to my family this past holiday season,” Libby said this week after recognizing her own growth in hindsight.
There is no “right” way to heal
If someone does not enter the phase of finding meaning, it just means the process might look different for them. There are many people who are able to nurture their healing without finding meaning, but it is because they have found their lack of meaning to be their meaning: Their meaning and understanding comes from not needing to understand.
Some people will never develop a full understanding of their history or make meaning from their experience, and this is okay. While it is an important goal, some might not find it achievable without the right support. Only you know what your progress looks like. If you find that you are making progress through other means, such as self-reflection and journaling, spirituality, group or peer support, or others, this is okay. But if you find that these things are not working or if your symptoms are getting worse, it is worth trying to find a mental health support person.
Excerpted, in part, from my book Breaking the Cycle: The 6 Stages of Healing from Childhood Family Trauma.
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