Marriage and the Marital Relationship

Providing Support in the Wake of Trauma

The trauma field has long emphasized the importance of social support for trauma survivors. Studies have demonstrated its value with children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly. No one is in a better position to provide support than the marital partner, who is often the main support figure. In general, social support helps survivors cope with stressors. Research on the provision of support breaks it down into (a) perceived support, (b) social network and embeddedness, and (c) enacted support.

Perceived support refers to the survivor's perception of the support that is available if needed. Of the three domains of support, perceived support is the most strongly associated with positive adjustment to negative life events. Partners also provide support when they keep the survivor embedded in a social network. This helps prevent a relational trauma in which the survivor loses his or her sense of being part of the social fabric. When embeddedness is maintained, survivors have increased stability and self-worth; when embeddedness is lost, the likelihood of chronicity increases. Finally, partners provide enacted support—actions that are supportive in nature—in the form of tangible aid, comforting, esteem boosting, and guidance.

The effectiveness of support is determined by the extent to which it addresses the specific characteristics of the stressor—thus, it is imperative that the supporting partner fully understand the survivor's view of how and what is considered supportive. When the survivor feels understood, the supporting partner has a greater ability to help the survivor: (a) acquire more adaptive perspectives, (b) reduce appraisals of threat, (c) engage in effective problem solving, and (d) reduce the use of maladaptive coping mechanisms, especially avoidance and substance abuse, and use more adaptive coping.

Most of the instruments for measuring social support are not relationship-specific; that is, they do not distinguish support from the marital partner from other sources of support. We know more about the provision of support in general than we do about the provision of support by the marital partner specifically. The marital partner is in an interdependent relationship with the survivor, so aspects of support in that relationship may operate differently from what we know about support in general. Another confounding factor is that the partner, serving as the primary support figure to a trauma survivor, is in the direct line of exposure to secondary traumatic stressors.

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