THE EXPERIENCE OF POSTTRAUMATIC GROWTH FOR ATHEISTS

Background - This study aimed to understand how atheists manage to make meaning and find growth after experiencing trauma. Posttraumatic Growth is a well documented point of research across qualitative and quantitative domains, and this project aimed to add meaningful findings to that research body. Atheists, however, are an understudied population, especially as it relates to their subjective experience of trauma and posttraumatic growth.\nMethods - This study aimed to investigate the experience of posttraumatic growth for atheist individuals. Semi-structured interviews adhering to the tenets of interpretive phenomenological analysis were conducted then transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Themes and subthemes emerged and were analyzed.\nResults – Several themes that map onto posttraumatic growth theory, in addition to themes outside of the five existing categories of posttraumatic growth were identified. The twelve themes identified are as follows: religious deconversion, PTG: existential change, meaning of life, intellectual haven, separation of church and state as a value, traumatic stress, survival, denial, PTG: personal strength, PTG: new possibilities, community, negative attitudes and perceptions of atheists, PTG: changes in relating to others, and advice for other atheist trauma survivors.\nConclusions – The atheist survivors have constructed immense meaning and purpose despite their lack of belief in a God or Gods. All survivors have struggled to find community at some point or another, but all pointed to having found community eventually. Evidence-based mental health guidelines aimed at identifying growth associated with the struggle of learning to survive after trauma has been discussed.