Survivor Missions

The renewal of meaning and mission

Robert Jay Lifton spoke during an interview about the need for survivors to re-assemble or reintegrate meaning after trauma:

We need meaning whether we express it or assume it in living out our lives as to why do this or that or how we treat our children or parents and what advocacies we make in the world and what we impose.  That is all based on meanings that we live by. A survivor often has had his or her meaning structure undermined or even overturned [and] spends much of his or her life seeking a meaning structure or trying to re-assemble or reintegrate meaning.

Your sense of meaning can be disassembled, discarded, and replaced by a meaning imposed upon you by an abusive individual or organization. And one of the deep losses experienced in the aftermath of abuse is the loss of meaning and mission, a loss that seems to sometimes be the result of an obscure, slow, and piece-by-piece plundering that can be hard to identify and resist.

You might experience this kind of dismantling of your inner world from an individual who exerts coercive control over your personhood or from an organization that views you as an object, or resource, to be exploited.

I’ve seen this loss of meaning and mission happen to multiple individuals within a community or organization when leadership turned their gaze to success at any cost, often driven by a newly installed destructive leader at the top. It’s as if a door was opened to a swirling storm of ambition and manipulation, and when a bolt of lighting struck through that opening, it held and held and held, bringing with it corrupted visions of grandeur and fame. And as leadership becomes accustomed to that diet of lightning, the needs of followers within the organization become neglected, and slowly the meaning and mission they once found through their connection to the community or organization becomes displaced with the personal ambition of destructive leaders.

Part of recovery from such an experience is recognizing the undermining or overturning of your meaning structure and then taking steps to renew or find fresh meaning, and with that newfound meaning, perhaps become involved in a new mission.

For instance, some pursue degrees in fields that might prepare them to assist others who have had similar experiences or to assist in abuse prevention efforts. Some help with raising awareness by participating in online discussions. Some take paths that will equip them to be able to provide support services. And some have engaged in efforts to improve related laws.

In an insightful interview, Judith Herman remarked:

I think as people move into their lives again, the ones who do best are the ones who’ve developed what Robert Jay Lifton calls a survivor mission. I’ve seen it happen so many times, that people turn this experience around, and make it a gift to others. That really is the only way you can transcend an atrocity. You can’t bury it. You can’t make it go away. You can’t dissociate it. It comes back. But you can transcend it, first by telling the truth about it, and then by using it in the service of humanity, saying, “This isn’t the way we want to live. We want to live differently.”

These survivor missions do not need to be big or public, or in any way pressured. Deep meaning can be found in the small missions of our lives where beauty and goodness are quietly cultivated. Small steps can be taken. Simple truths can be whispered.

If and when you do combat evil for the sake of others, remember to look for the light that the evil is seeking to destroy. This will give you an appreciation for that light, however dim it might be, and remind you of what you are seeking to protect.

Robert Jay Lifton gave such advice in an interview from 15 years ago in which he was asked to respond to one of his own quotes: “One looks into the abyss in order to see beyond it.”

I believe one of the hopes for a safer future can be found in the many survivor missions being built upon revived or new meanings. Not everyone will find or choose such a path, and that’s okay, but those who do develop a survivor mission should be supported and celebrated.

People can not only survive, but help other people survive and, in the words of Robert Jay Lifton, “renew their lives with extraordinary energy and find ways of living that could transform the very pain and suffering into some kind of insight and commitment to life-enhancing behavior.”