Reconstructing Meaning After Trauma: How Existential Therapy Facilitates Post-Traumatic Growth
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Authors
Degethoff, Kristy
Issue Date
2025-06-30
Type
Capstone
Language
en
Keywords
trauma , existential therapy , meaning , meaning-making , suicide-loss , suicide , death , narrative , existential , post-traumatic growth , PTG , grief
Alternative Title
Abstract
Suicide loss often leaves survivors grappling not only with profound grief but also with a shattering of their core assumptions about the world, themselves, and others. This capstone explores how existential therapy, a modality grounded in the exploration of life’s ultimate concerns: death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness, can support meaning-making and facilitate posttraumatic growth in suicide loss survivors. Drawing from trauma and grief theory, narrative psychology, and existential psychology this practice-based conceptual paper proposes a flexible, meaning-centered framework that integrates Yalom’s existential givens with the five domains of posttraumatic growth.
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Citation
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License
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
openAccess
openAccess