Roy, Taylor; Nguyen, Richard; Moffitt, Drew; Bonsrah, Dicken; Fannin, Austin; Yirenya Tawiah, Daniel (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: O'Grady, Kari (Brigham Young University, Psychology)
Outline:
- Anticipating a cosmology episode
- Sense-losing in different levels of trauma
- Outcomes of certain sense-losing methods
Abstract: With significant life-changing events occurring throughout the world on a daily basis--on an individual, societal or organizational level--BYU's Organizational Psychology and Societal Resilience Lab studied the aspects concerning how people have prepared for and maneuver their way through losing a sense of their identity, beliefs, and relationships following a traumatic event. Using O'Grady & Orton's model (2016), we explored different ways that individuals anticipate a cosmological episode and how they react in the sense-losing process. Using 40 interviews with employees from the organization HEALAfrica, we attempted to outline possible methods of sense-losing used by these individuals to attempt to cope with the traumatic event on losing their beloved Co-Founder, Lyn Lusi, who was deemed a mother figure to the organization. We discovered that there are two broad categories of sense-losing that play a factor in how these individuals lose sense of this traumatic event--whether it is on the level of the individual or the organization: Rigid Sense-Losing and Resilient Sense-Losing. The outcomes that each of these two pathways take end in significantly opposite directions, one leading to suicidal ideations, alienation, and hopelessness, while the other leads to improvising, sense-remaking, and a sense of renewing.