Understanding Trauma and Healing in Palestine: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of Lived Experiences

Palestine is a context rich with ongoing political violence and structural oppression, exposing individuals to continuous and accumulative traumatic experiences, especially during their childhood. This study explores how laypersons in Palestine define and navigate their childhood trauma, healing, and survival in their individual, social, and political realities. A reflexive thematic analysis of 25 in-depth interviews conducted in the West Bank between August and September 2024 reveals trauma as a continuous and layered experience, accumulating over time and shaping both individual and collective realities. The way trauma manifests extends beyond typical PTSD and diagnosable symptoms, surfacing in relationships, symbolic expressions, and collective narratives. In navigating survival and healing, participants spoke of the resources that fostered their patience, including collective identity, social bonds, inner coping mechanisms, and acts of resistance. Healing emerged as a non-linear journey, moving through moments of defense, recognition, embracing the pain, narrating it, and assigning meaning to it on a long line of a survival mode activated focused on social roles and resistance. Yet, the broader structural and contextual challenges impose many barriers, shackling the survivors on their path of healing. These findings offer a grounded understanding of childhood trauma and healing in Palestine, cantering lived experiences, challenging dominant psychological paradigms, and advocating for context-sensitive approaches.