That people should take responsibility for their health is a prominent contemporary idea. But what does such responsibility actually entail, and what demands are being put on people? The objective of the dissertation is to describe and critically examine various ideas on personal responsibility for health. In the first step, I identify and describe a wide variation of uses of responsibility and in the second step, I problematize them. The analyzed material consists of Swedish government reports and various types of health advice literature, including medical books and alternative medicine literature. I employ a framework of philosophical, social scientific, and developmental psychology theories on responsibility to critically examine the material. The study shows that taking responsibility involves both body and mind. Common ideas are that it requires maintaining a healthy lifestyle and managing one's self-care. But it is also considered important to take responsibility for beliefs and emotions and to adopt an accepting attitude. Another idea is that spiritual insights expand the scope of responsibility. Some important abilities required to take responsibility are conscious healthy choices, self-knowledge, and critical thinking. The view of responsibility is also influenced by individual factors, cultural beliefs about health and disease, and social structures. In the literature, health responsibility is regarded both as a social duty and as a never-ending task performed by an active individual. Finally, I use Robert Kegan's theory of adult development to show that taking responsibility imposes psychological demands on people's awareness. The demands are often higher than many people can manage. Some of the stress and poor health that people experience may be the product of an inability to manage all of life's demands. The developmental perspective also asserts that people can develop the requisite capacity. One conceivable conclusion of the study is that if we want people to take more responsibility, we should not only invest resources in health information, but also in measures that generate self-knowledge, reflection, and personal development.

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This research journey examines the process of co-creating, along with my co-travellers (research participants), a more holistic approach to trauma debriefing. Whilst incorporating elements of Mitchell's (1983) Critical Incidence Stress Debriefing model (C.I.S.D.), our point of difference has been to adopt a narrative pastoral approach. This was achieved by introducing spirituality and narrative therapy practices. Our research pathway has been further shaped by adopting a qualitative research approach within a postmodern, social construction discourse. My research curiosity was invited by both the mind, body and soul divide expressed in psychology; and the healing possibilities of spirituality I have witnessed in both my own and in the lives of others. While my co-travellers predominantly preferred to express their spirituality in terms of Christianity, our narrative pastoral approach to trauma debriefing is offered to people of all religious persuasions. / Practical Theology / M.Th. (with specialisation in Pastoral therapy)

Facilitating forgiveness: an NLP approach to forgiving is an attempt at uncovering features of the blocks that prevent people to forgive. These blocks to forgiveness can be detected in the real life situations of the six individuals who told me their stories. The inner thoughts, feelings and the subsequent behaviour that prevented them from forgiving others is clearly uncovered in their stories. The facilitation process highlights the features that created the blocks in the past thus preventing forgiveness to occur. The blocks with their accompanying features reveal what needs to be clarified or changed in order to eventually enable the hurt individuals to forgive those who have hurt them. The application of discourse analysis to the stories of hurt highlights the links between the real life stories of the individuals within their contexts with regard to unforgiveness to the research findings of the existing body of knowledge, thereby creating a complexly interwoven comprehensive understanding of the individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in conjunction with their developmental phases within their socio-cultural contexts. Neuro-linguistic-programming (NLP) is the instrument with which forgiving is facilitated in the six individuals who expressed their conscious desire to forgive, because they were unable to do so on their own. Their emotions had the habit of keeping them in a place in which they were forced to relive the hurtful event as if it were happening in the present. Arresting the process of reliving negative emotions requires a new way of being in this world. The assumption that this can be learnt is based on the results from a previous study, in which forgiveness was uncovered by means of the grounded theory approach as a cognitive process (Von Krosigk, 2000). The results from the previous research in conjunction with the results and insights from this research study are presented in the form of a grounded theory model of forgiveness. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

This doctoral study explores social workers’ shared understandings of spirituality as lived experience in their personal lives and professional practice. It examines Canadian social workers’ shared conceptualizations of spirituality as lived experience, what it entails, its role and purpose (why), and how it informs professional practice. Data collection involved three steps: a national publicity led to 24 completed self-screening questionnaires (SSQ); 14 in-depth interviews conducted through constructivist grounded theory’s theoretical sampling and; the preliminary findings were validated by the 24 SSQ participants. This study generated two key findings. The central concepts category of the conceptual schema of spirituality as lived experience emerged as Transcendent Life Energy (TLE) as Unconditional Love (UL) in Transformative Relationships (TR) With Self (WS) in Support of Wellbeing (SW)- i.e. TLE-UL-TR-WS-SW. Second, the conceptual schema analyzed through Self as body-mind-emotions-spirit-social (B-M-E-S-S) being—the social work practitioners—illuminated that spirituality as lived experience is about inherent, interconnected, transformative relationships that involve individuation as a life-long process that support healing, development of personal values, growth, and wellbeing in participants’ lives, their clients’ and social life. These findings unveiled interrelated discoveries of significance in social work practice. The wellbeing of Self is inherently interconnected with practitioners’ professional practice, their clients’ and others’ wellbeing. This confirmation is consistent with the concerns about the use of Self in countertransference and religion/culture. However, the personal values that participants developed through the conceptual schema were consistent with human rights and social work values; they included: respect for inherent dignity and worth of persons, self-determination, personal and professional integrity, do no harm, and social justice. Participants’ process of developing personal values exposed a distinction between beliefs and values acquired through socialization and those developed through the conceptual schema. These findings illuminate the function of social work as catalyst for transformative relationships and clarify the role of individuation as directly related to wellbeing, in the midst of cultural and embodied hegemony. Furthermore, the findings illuminate how, why, and what spirituality as lived experience entails and; highlight the multidisciplinary nature of social work practice and theory as inherently interconnected, encompassing human, natural, and social sciences. / October 2016

This research journey examines the process of co-creating, along with my co-travellers (research participants), a more holistic approach to trauma debriefing. Whilst incorporating elements of Mitchell's (1983) Critical Incidence Stress Debriefing model (C.I.S.D.), our point of difference has been to adopt a narrative pastoral approach. This was achieved by introducing spirituality and narrative therapy practices. Our research pathway has been further shaped by adopting a qualitative research approach within a postmodern, social construction discourse. My research curiosity was invited by both the mind, body and soul divide expressed in psychology; and the healing possibilities of spirituality I have witnessed in both my own and in the lives of others. While my co-travellers predominantly preferred to express their spirituality in terms of Christianity, our narrative pastoral approach to trauma debriefing is offered to people of all religious persuasions. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (with specialisation in Pastoral therapy)

Facilitating forgiveness: an NLP approach to forgiving is an attempt at uncovering features of the blocks that prevent people to forgive. These blocks to forgiveness can be detected in the real life situations of the six individuals who told me their stories. The inner thoughts, feelings and the subsequent behaviour that prevented them from forgiving others is clearly uncovered in their stories. The facilitation process highlights the features that created the blocks in the past thus preventing forgiveness to occur. The blocks with their accompanying features reveal what needs to be clarified or changed in order to eventually enable the hurt individuals to forgive those who have hurt them. The application of discourse analysis to the stories of hurt highlights the links between the real life stories of the individuals within their contexts with regard to unforgiveness to the research findings of the existing body of knowledge, thereby creating a complexly interwoven comprehensive understanding of the individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in conjunction with their developmental phases within their socio-cultural contexts. Neuro-linguistic-programming (NLP) is the instrument with which forgiving is facilitated in the six individuals who expressed their conscious desire to forgive, because they were unable to do so on their own. Their emotions had the habit of keeping them in a place in which they were forced to relive the hurtful event as if it were happening in the present. Arresting the process of reliving negative emotions requires a new way of being in this world. The assumption that this can be learnt is based on the results from a previous study, in which forgiveness was uncovered by means of the grounded theory approach as a cognitive process (Von Krosigk, 2000). The results from the previous research in conjunction with the results and insights from this research study are presented in the form of a grounded theory model of forgiveness. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)