Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences

Up to 90% of adults in the US will experience one or more traumatic events in their lifetimes, including interpersonal violence, traffic collisions, and sexual assault. While most who suffer a trauma naturally recover over time, for others difficulties continue, and may lead to full-blown depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use, anxiety disorders, and other problems that interfere with healthy daily functioning. Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences is a self-guided mental health resource for people who have had potentially traumatic experiences and who wish to work through them independently, outside of a formal therapeutic setting. Based on psychological treatments with strong scientific support, this book introduces listeners to several useful tools that will help them to emotionally process difficult experiences, with the goal of moving on from the event and building future resilience. The program takes the listener step-by-step through four skill sets to facilitate emotional processing of difficult experiences: Memory Exposure and Processing, Behavioral Activation, Social Connection, and Self-Care. Listeners use this self-evaluation to determine what is working or not working for them, enabling them to focus more on certain skills, or to complete the full program based on their needs.