Traumatic experiences affect more than the individual; they are often collectively transmitted
through group narratives, cultural symbols and social memory. While these narratives help
communities make sense of harm, they can also entrench rigid identities, polarise intergroup
relations, and perpetuate cycles of fear, blame and exclusion. In this 40-minute video,
Frauke de Weijer, Alison Castel and Refik Hodžić of IFIT’s Inclusive Narratives Practice
Group and Melanie Greenberg of IFIT’s International Advisory Council share practical
strategies for addressing collective trauma and polarising narratives in ways that help break
cycles of violence.

Using her recent publication as a starting point for the discussion, De Weijer notes that
traumatic events interrupt people’s understandings of self, relationships to others, and how
they fit in the world. When this occurs at a collective level, groups enter a process of
meaning making, using narratives to restore a sense of cultural continuity and psychological
safety. While this coping strategy can build resilience, it often leads to in-group hyper-
defensiveness, reduced empathy towards out-groups, and even justifications of militarism
and violence. This affects both groups perceived as victims and groups perceived as
perpetrators.

Going into further detail, De Weijer’s co-author Castel discusses ways frozen narratives
create memory prisons, so that past traumatic events are experienced as continually
happening in the present, even for generations that were not directly harmed. Post-traumatic
narratives are often enforced through narrative policing, which sets explicit and implicit rules
about what can and cannot be said and how individuals are expected to behave as members
of the in-group. In addition to being imposed by political actors and state institutions, these
rules may be internalised by entire populations over time, which means that post-traumatic
narratives regulate meaning, distribute legitimacy, and shape the possibilities for
constructive cross-group engagement at scale.

Hodžić offers examples of narrative policing from his hometown of Prijedor, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, 35 years after ethnic cleansing in the area. He describes municipal authorities’
efforts to promote a dominant narrative of Serb self-defense rather than aggression during
the Yugoslav Wars, which extends to not giving local groups permission to erect a memorial
to the 102 local children killed during the conflict. He notes that these efforts reference and
enforce memory prisons regarding Serb collective trauma under the Ottoman Empire and
during WWII, discussing ways post-traumatic narratives are used to hold on to political
power. Finally, Hodžić argues that a similar dynamic is playing out across the world, pointing
to examples ranging from the situation in Israel-Gaza to negative attitudes towards
reparations for slavery to justifications for violence against migrants.

Reflecting on the role of post-traumatic narratives in peacebuilding, Greenberg argues that
the field has shifted in the past two decades from a focus on political compromise and
institutional arrangements to a more systemic approach that prioritises individual and
collective healing. She discusses the value of public acknowledgement of victimhood during
dialogue processes, as well as learning lessons from neuroscience about relaxing the brain
enough through rituals, for example using music, to open the mind to cross-group
engagement. Drawing on examples from Armenia, South Sudan and Colombia, Greenberg
describes in-person and digital narrative change initiatives that focus not on challenging
dominant, divisive narratives, but rather on enriching the narrative landscape with diverse,
complex stories that better reflect social realities and enable dialogue.

De Weijer and Castel delve further into strategies that enable narrative enrichment. The first
is facilitated processes that promote self-reflection on how narratives mould worldviews and leaders use narratives to mobilise their constituencies, with the aim of building narrative
literacy and resistance to manipulation. The second strategy is using narrative tools to create
the conditions within and across groups for multiple, even conflicting, narratives to coexist
without being forced into coherence. And the third strategy is making more publicly visible
the stories that are typically not told, while doing no harm by remaining attentive to the risks
that speaking out can pose. Because people in post-traumatic contexts are not only
struggling to heal but also often navigating fear, anger, silence, vulnerability and regulated
speech, peacebuilding in such contexts by necessity calls for both a narrative lens and
implementation of narrative change processes.