Meaning-Making in Psychotherapy after Traumatic Loss: Therapists’ Perspectives

Abstract

We interviewed 11 experienced therapists specializing in loss/trauma about their work with one client with whom they successfully facilitated meaning-making after a traumatic loss. Interviews, analyzed using Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR), revealed that the traumatic loss had negatively impacted clients’ relationships, mental health, and beliefs/religion/spirituality; therapists utilized a range of interventions to facilitate meaning-making, including interventions to help clients experience/regulate emotion and interventions to gain insight; clients made meaning in diverse ways that could be broadly categorized under meaning-as-comprehensibility and meaning-as-significance; and clients experienced positive adjustment (in mental health, relationships, etc.) through the meaning-making work. Implications for research and practice are discussed.