The present study explores the influence of the context in traumatic events narratives. Autobiographical accounts of two groups of students who had suffered form painful events during their adolescence were compared: the first group had experienced dramatic events in an individual context (personal and never counted bad experiences occurred in school) while the second group had experienced dramatic events in a collective context (an earthquake occurred in their town). SATS (Student, Alienation, and Trauma Scale; Hyman, Snook, Lurkis, Phan, & Britton, 2001) and NOISS (Narrative Organization and Information Self Schema; Smorti, Matteini & Del Buffa, 2005) were used as instruments of the inquiry. The results showed that those students who had experienced a traumatic event in a collective context produced formally different narratives from those who had experienced a traumatic event in an individual context.