Trauma and Shattered Assumptions

When I began my research as a social psychologist decades ago, the field was focused largely on attribution theory, which explored how people understand the causes of outcomes and behaviors. I became interested in how people explained extreme negative events in their lives, so I conducted research with different victim populations—including victims of rape, assault, debilitating accidents, life-threatening disease, and off-time loss of a loved one. The research included quantitative scales and open-ended interviews. One response I kept hearing again and again, across all the groups, was “I never thought it could happen to me.” Somehow people had felt largely invulnerable, although they hadn’t realized it, and this led me to further explore this sense of invulnerability and its aftermath in the face of traumatic events.

A network of theories and beliefs constitute our assumptive world, and our most fundamental assumptions are the bedrock of this system. They are our broadest generalizations and are also the assumptions we are least aware of and least likely to challenge. These core assumptions are abstract beliefs about the self, the external world, and the relationship between the two.

At the core of our inner world, most of us believe that the world is benevolent, the world is meaningful, and the self is worthy. More specifically, we believe that the world and other people are generally good, that outcomes are not random but instead make sense, and we are worthy of good outcomes by virtue of our character and actions. You may think you don’t hold these core beliefs—but then again neither did the many, many survivors in my research.

Together these fundamental assumptions provide us with a sense of safety and security that allows us to approach each day. Traumatic events shatter these fundamental assumptions, and victims experience the terror of their own vulnerability.

These assumptions originate in our earliest experiences and are further shaped through childhood and adolescence. They begin as preverbal representations that reflect the infant’s earliest relationship with a caregiver or caregivers. Here we begin to establish our expectations about ourselves and our world. In the presence of a responsive caregiver (or “good enough” caregiving), the child’s needs are met. The child’s world appears benevolent, and a caregiver who responds provides the earliest evidence of person-outcome contingency (that is, non-randomness). In responding the caregiver also provides the infant with the basis for self-worth. Infants learn to trust their world. As children grow they respond to new data and experiences and incorporate them into their assumptive world. Typically, few changes are made in adulthood. Our early experiences are very powerful because they establish the core representations that are built upon over time.

Following traumatic experiences, victims experience a double dose of anxiety and fear. They confront a realization that their self-preservation is jeopardized in a world that is unsafe and malevolent. In addition, the victim’s inner world is in a state of upheaval and disintegration. The fundamental assumptions that provided stability and psychological coherence in a complex world are now shattered. Prior positive assumptions about the world and the self are replaced with far more negative, threatening beliefs.

The coping process post-trauma involves rebuilding the assumptive world in a way that reestablishes relatively positive assumptions while incorporating the data of the traumatic experience—the world is good, but not always, the world makes sense, but not always, and we are worthy and can protect ourselves against misfortune, but not always. In many ways, victims become survivors who may be somewhat sadder, but are nevertheless wiser, often having a newfound appreciation of life and what is really important.

Therapists can help victims rebuild their assumptive world. Positive effects derive from at least two distinct types of learning and processing that occur during therapy. First, the therapist serves as a caring other, evidence of a benevolent other who provides help and acceptance while acknowledging the victim’s experience. Second, the therapist can provide victims with ways of minimizing the trauma’s affective overload while exploring trauma-related thoughts and feelings in a safe environment. The therapist can function as a “container” for the survivor’s painful affect while simultaneously making it clear that the victim is valued and understood.

In my research, one reaction I found to be very common across traumatic events was self-blame. Self-blame was common when it was very clear that the victim was not at all to blame. In focusing on self-blame in some of my research, I found that this common response was not at all an indication of any true blameworthiness, but instead reflected the victim’s need to reestablish a belief in control and meaning. The world is less frightening if we believe there is something we can do to prevent negative outcomes—and this is what the victims were doing after the fact. Therapists can help survivors better understand their self-blaming responses.

When I began my trauma research decades ago, the clinical literature strongly suggested that trauma was about pathological victims. It was important to me to make it clear that trauma is really about pathological events, not pathological victims. We may say that we know bad things happen, but in our own bubbles—our personal worlds—we actually believe that bad things won’t happen to us. It’s our sense of relative invulnerability that makes traumatic events so overwhelming. Yet with the support of others, and the remarkable adaptability of the human cognitive-emotional system, most victims do well over time.

In my research, I found no clear relationship between religiosity and coping in the aftermath of traumatic events. Some survivors turned completely against religion, questioning how they could believe in a God who could be so cruel. Yet others turned to religion as a way of imposing meaning on their experience, a reaction akin to recognizing some redemptive role in suffering. These different reactions did not seem to depend on the (reported) religiosity of the victim pre-trauma or the particular religion involved.

I created the World Assumptions Scale (WAS) to assess the survivor’s assumptive world post-trauma. (This is a time when they are now aware of their fundamental assumptions.) The scale has 32 items, and initially there were eight distinct subscales with four items in each: two benevolence of the world subscales (benevolence of the impersonal world and benevolence of people), three meaningfulness subscales (justice, controllability, and randomness; the latter is reverse-scored); and three self-worth subscales (self-worth, self-controllability, and luck). Although I and others used these eight subscales in research, over time I found that the far better way to use the WAS is to use the three larger subscales—benevolence, meaningfulness, and self-worth. Each is derived from combining the subscales noted above for each (that is, adding the subscale scores for each of the three major assumptions).

Shattered Assumptions theory posits a breakdown of positive assumptions about the self and the world; those assumptions that provide us with a sense of relative invulnerability. This applied to the overwhelming majority of victims I studied and learned from over the years, who were themselves unaware of their now-broken assumptions affording them safety and security. Yet certainly not everyone holds these positive assumptions. Interestingly, people with negative fundamental assumptions are not apt to experience the terror of victimization I saw so often; extreme negative events would not be so unexpected. Yet these same people would likely be relatively depressed and anxious as a feature of daily living.

Childhood trauma could certainly produce negative fundamental assumptions. The assumptive worlds of the child and adult are different, in that the assumptive world of the adult is more solidified than the child’s.  The child’s assumptive world is more pliable; it will be disrupted by an extreme negative event, but its plasticity more readily allows for accommodation based on the support and reactions of others. Supportive others, including in particular parents or caregivers, help children understand their experience and can readily buffer the psychological impact of negative events. The absence of such support will surely result in an inner world defined by threat and distrust. Carried to adulthood, the latter inner world is unlikely to be shattered because it already recognizes the likelihood of misfortune, yet these fundamental assumptions do not allow for the recovery and psychological strengths that most trauma victims experience over time.