Trauma Narratives: It's What You Say, Not How You Say It

Structural and content- related features of trauma narratives of traumatic events may help explain the development of PTSD. In a sample of 35 female assault survivors, we examined the association between the structure and content of trauma narratives and PTSD and other trauma-related reactions (i.e., depression, anxiety, anger, dissociation, and guilt). When controlling for recounting style and recounting distress, narrative structure was not strongly associated with PTSD or other trauma-related reactions. In contrast, the content of the trauma narratives (more positive and negative emotion words, higher cognitive process, and less self-focus being) was associated with lower symptomatology. Taken together, trauma narrative content rather than grammatical structure of the narrative may be more reflective of underlying emotional processing of the traumatic memory or lack thereof.