Meaning-Making in the Aftermath of Trauma

This two-hour workshop offers psychologists a structured exploration of Park's meaning making model as a framework for understanding how individuals process and integrate traumatic experiences. Participants will examine the core components of the model — global and situational meaning, discrepancy appraisal, and meaning making coping — and consider how disruptions to a client's assumptive world manifest clinically. Rich case illustrations will ground the theory in real-world practice and interactive exercises will be incorporated to help participants to apply the model experientially. Attendees will leave with practical tools to support clients in their journey toward meaning reconstruction and transformation.

Presenter Bio:

 Crystal L. Park, Ph.D., is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Her research focuses on multiple aspects of coping with stressful events, including the roles of religious beliefs and religious coping, the phenomenon of stress-related growth, and the making of meaning in the context of traumatic events and life-threatening illnesses, particularly cancer and congestive heart failure. She is Co-Author of Spirituality, Meaning, and Trauma and Co-Editor of The Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (first and second editions, third edition forthcoming) and is editor of the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. At UConn, she maintains an active research lab of graduate and undergraduate students--The Spirituality, Meaning, and Health Lab--and teaches health psychology at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.