Meaning-making

In psychology, meaning-making is the process of how people construe, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self.

[1] The term is widely used in constructivist approaches to counseling psychology and psychotherapy,[2] especially during bereavement in which people attribute some sort of meaning to an experienced death or loss.

[4] In a broader sense, meaning-making is the main research object of semiotics, biosemiotics, and other fields.

The "garden" to be cultivated, the darkness to be lighted, the foundation to be built upon, the clay to be molded—there is always the implication that all learning will occur in the same way.

[4] Developmental psychologist Robert Kegan used the term "meaning-making" as a key concept in several widely cited texts on counseling and human development published in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

[16] The term meaning-making has been used in constructivist educational psychology to refer to the personal epistemology that people create to help them to make sense of the influences, relationships, and sources of knowledge in their world.

[11] In Kegan's book In Over Our Heads, he applied his theory of meaning-making to the life domains of parenting (families), partnering (couples), working (companies), healing (psychotherapies), and learning (schools).

[17] According to the transformative learning theory that sociologist and educator Jack Mezirow developed in the 1980s and 1990s, adults interpret the meaning of their experiences through a lens of deeply held assumptions.

Experiences that force individuals to engage in this critical self-reflection, or what Mezirow called "disorienting dilemmas".

[24] On the converse, failing to attribute meaning to death leads to more long-term distress for some people.

[26] One study developed a "Meaning of Loss Codebook" which clusters common meaning-making strategies into 30 categories.

[27] Amongst these meaning-making strategies, the most frequently used categories include: personal growth, family bonds, spirituality, valuing life, negative affect, impermanence, lifestyle changes, compassion, and release from suffering.

[29] With this meaning-making strategy, individuals create meaning of loss through their interactions with family members, and make more efforts to spend more time with them.

People who create meaning in this way may try to cherish the life they have, try to find their purpose, or change their lifestyles.