Only some attempts at meaning making are successful: The role of change‐relatedness and positive implications for the self

Abstract

Objective Although meaning making and specifically autobiographical reasoning are expected to relate to well‐being, findings tend to be mixed. Attempts at meaning making do not always lead to meaning made. We aimed to disentangle these complex relationships and also explore the role of level of education. Method Ninety participants (mean age 36.73 years, SD = 7.27; 74.4% women, 25.6% men) who had experienced the loss of a parent through death, going missing, or Alzheimer's disease narrated this loss, a sad, a turning point, and a self‐defining memory, and completed questionnaires assessing depression, trauma symptoms, and protracted grief. Three aspects of autobiographical reasoning (quantity, valence, and change‐relatedness of self‐event connections) were related to meaning made (sophistication of meaning making) and symptom level. Results Years of education correlated both with positive implications of autobiographical reasoning and with meaning made. The quantity, positivity, and change‐relatedness of attempts at meaning making (self‐event connections) predicted accomplished meaning made, and positivity alone predicted less prolonged grief. Conclusions Adapting the life story after a loss such that change of the self is acknowledged and positive change can be constructed helps finding meaning and lowering protracted grief. These changes in narrative identity are supported by more years of education.

Differences Between Subclinical Ruminators and Reflectors in Narrating Autobiographical Memories: Innovative Moments and Autobiographical Reasoning

“…Like several earlier studies, we confirmed that a negative valence of AAs reflects less well-being. In contrast to clinical findings by Huang et al (2020) , the change-relatedness of AAs was not related to well-being and symptoms. We suggest to further pursue the question of helpful and unhelpful uses of AAs by, for example, coding whether they are repeated, specific and convincing, and help coming to a conclusion.…”

“…Attempts at meaning making may be defined formally, but their success needs to be judged in terms of whether they are plausibly successful. Huang et al (2020) , for instance, found that in narratives about the loss of a parent both meaning made and AR with positive implications for the self correlated negatively with protracted grief; however, the mere frequency of self-event connections (a form of AR) and their relating to a change of personality predicted successful meaning making, but not protracted grief.…”

Autobiographical Meaning Making Protects the Sense of Self-Continuity Past Forced Migration

“…Another factor is certainly the extreme stress and the extreme change in life that refugees experience. Even though prior research evidences that autobiographical meaning making relates to a higher sense of self-continuity and well-being when coping with negative life events ( Banks and Salmon, 2013 ; Habermas and Köber, 2015a ; Merrill et al, 2016 ; Huang et al, in press ; Vanderveren et al, 2020 ), in none of these studies individuals experienced a change in their physical and sociocultural environment as fundamental as most refugees have. While all biographical disruptions and specific traumatic events are challenging for the sense of self and psychological well-being, it is rare that the relative stability of one’s physical environment, social relations, and routine activities are threatened simultaneously.…”

“…Altogether, these results show that refugees were actively trying to cope in their life narratives with their current psychological stress, their past, and the experienced change in life, but the autobiographical meaning making did not yield a coherent narrative account that provides a continuous sense of selfhood but instead worsens the psychological distress. One possible reason is that participants’ meaning making attempts did not succeed in meaning made, which would sufficiently reconcile their past with the current life ( Park, 2010 ; Huang et al, in press ) but that their autobiographical meaning making resembles rather rumination maintaining the current psychological distress ( Lilgendahl et al, 2013 ; Sales et al, 2013 ).…”

Narrating ambiguous loss: Deficiencies in narrative processing and negative appraisal of consequences

“…The entire interview lasted about 65 min. Other codes of the same narratives were reported in other publications (Huang & Habermas, 2019;Huang et al, 2020). All interviews were conducted by the first author, a Chinese female adult unknown to the participants, either at their homes or in an office at the university.…”