Exploring the Interconnected Trauma of Personal, Social, and Structural Stressors: Making “Sense” of Senseless Violence

ABSTRACT

Although violence is a timeless characteristic of human behavior and history, its prevalence and many forms are proliferated repeatedly through the media. In particular, “senseless” violence against both random and targeted victims puzzles and petrifies onlookers and survivors. Integrating developmental psychology with critical theory, this manuscript begins with a conceptual definition of senseless violence that is coupled with a mapping of the personal, social, and structural etiologies of such violence. This inquiry explores the origins, contexts, and varied manifestations of violence, helps redirect sense-making around such violence, and informs how to cope with and possibly reduce or mitigate it. Utilizing a person-centered perspective from multiple points of view, the analysis focuses primarily on the everyday or chronic experiences of stressors and their relation to internalized and externalized types of violence (i.e., mass shootings, interpersonal violence, self-injury). The manuscript concludes with ways to reduce violence and promote justice on personal, social, and structural levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Externalized oppression
• internalized oppression
• justice
• micro-aggression
• stressors
• violence

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mona M. Abo-Zena

Mona M. Abo-Zena is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University. On individual, social, and structural levels, she studies the role of religion and other intersecting dimensions of diversity in human development. Her scholarship includes an equity focus on positive youth development that balances an asset-based perspective of diverse children, families, and communities while acknowledging their contextual challenges.