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Abstract

Individualistic and disembodied trauma narratives that emerge effortlessly from dominant discourses like biochemistry and diagnostic nomenclature fail to address the effects of trauma in people's lives. Trauma could also be understood as a challenge to personal narratives of living in the face of exceptional experiences that stand far outside what is known and familiar. This invites personal accounts of values, purposes, skills, and acts of resistance which offer more possibilities for addressing the negative effects of trauma than descriptions from the cultural canon.