<p> Considering the profound levels of trauma exposure among the growing refugee population worldwide, there is an urgent need to better understand the complex interactions of factors associated with resilience as a key protective factor against adversity. This study used a mixed-methods approach to investigate the relationship between demographic factors, environmental stressors, trauma coping self-efficacy, cultural factors, resilience, and PTSD among Syrian refugees in Germany. Quantitative findings showed that nearly half of all survey participants (n = 127) met the criteria for a probable PTSD diagnosis (n = 59, 46.5%). Environmental stressors were significant predictors of PTSD, explaining 45.7% of the variance after accounting for significant demographic factors (&beta; = &ndash;.683, t = &ndash;9.842, p = 0.000). Participants who had food concerns were 42.8 times more likely to have probable PTSD than participants who reported having enough food (OR = 42.8, 95% CI = 5.6 to 330.1, p &lt; 0.000). Not being content with one&rsquo;s housing situation increased the odds of having probable PTSD 14.7 times compared to individuals who had no housing concerns (OR = 14.7, 95% CI &ndash;5.7 to 36.6, p &lt; 0.000). Qualitative findings indicated five main themes that represent threats to positive adaptation to life in Germany: 1) communication difficulties, 2) socioeconomic living conditions, 3) family related issues, 4) cultural differences, discrimination, and social isolation, and 5) asylum procedure. Implications for treatment and future research are discussed.</p><p>

<p> This liberation-psychology study included several years&rsquo; immersion in the Tibetan refugee community in Dharamsala, India, where I offered Somatic Experiencing-informed (SE) sessions to exprisoner refugees. During the course of conversations with refugees, this study shifted from an investigation of SE as a trauma-healing intervention to a cross-cultural dialogical approach to the healing of the psychological and physical sequelae of forced displacement, imprisonment, and torture of Tibetan expolitical prisoners. Tibetan refugee expolitical prisoners living in Dharamsala, India, were asked to describe their emotional and somatic sequelae, as well as the alleviated factors and conditions of these sequelae, which stemmed from experiences of political incarceration, loss of homeland, torture, and escape. Purposeful sampling was employed, and 17 participants were observed in a 2-day Freirean-inspired dialogic workshop participant observations in which sequelae and processes of amelioration and responses to the Western SE therapy were identified and recorded. Also, 12 participants were interviewed on their experiences and perceptions of the workshop; 9 of whom volunteered for SE sessions. Data were analyzed by thematic content analysis. </p><p> Major findings on emotional distress included loneliness due to separation from friends and families, helplessness to assist other Tibetans, and distress of &ldquo;non-being&rdquo; brought on by occupation, displacement, and unofficial refugee status. Physical sequelae were digestive problems, difficulty breathing, pain and tightness, dizziness, weakness, and fatigue. A Buddhist approach was distinguished as a dependable route to mental health and Tibetan Buddhist methods were highlighted as unique in achieving lasting well-being. Community interdependence and preservation of Tibetan Buddhist culture were preferred over individualized approaches to trauma healing. Implications include a potential shift in international trauma fieldwork to a cross-cultural psychological approach.</p><p>

<p> The research question in this thesis asks: Can the archetype of the crone be deliberately utilized as a means to individuation in a woman&rsquo;s life after leaving Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)? Employing both a hermeneutical and heuristic methodology, the investigation encompasses the archetype of the crone, her history, and her appearance in myth, metaphor, and stories as well as the crone&rsquo;s reemergence in modern culture. Patriarchy within the Church, gender roles defined by Mormon leadership, and gender inequality within the Church structure are reported. The use of fear, guilt, and shame by Mormon leadership to gain control over members of the Church is scrutinized. The author&rsquo;s personal story as a child of Mormonism, her life within the religion, her marriage and motherhood, her eventual exit from the Mormon Church, and her use of the crone to empower herself to develop an identity post-Mormonism are presented.</p><p>

<p> The researcher used phenomenological psychological analysis to explore the experiences of recovery from childhood psychosocial trauma of seven adult participants through the use of Experiential Reframing (ER). ER is a psychotherapeutic modality of clinical significance because it may allow patients to overcome the amygdaloidal <i>hijacking</i> and distorted meanings incident to traumagenic triggers in a relatively short-term intervention. The recollected experiences of participants&rsquo; before, during and after interventions were collected through semi-structured interviews. Study results were then tied to neurobiological research that might correspond with the phenomenological experiences of participants. Before treatment experiences of participants were marked by phobic relationships to anxiety and other emotions. The protocol served to reveal to patients the relationship between past experiences and current dysfunction. Post treatment, participants had new experiences of trigger events, specifically an ability to stay present to current experience, theorized to be the result of successful enough reconfiguring of autonomic system responses to certain somatosensory-based cues. The phenomenology of recovery was that there was a sudden shift that opened up the ability to deploy an observing ego perspective in the aftermath of (previously) trauma triggering events, but that the process was quite effortful for the first few times. While the experience of effortful mediation of experience in the aftermath of a trauma trigger never went away entirely for participants the process did become easier. Phobic positions with respect to emotions and anxiety dissolved, latent anxiety lowered, and lives opened up.</p>

<p> This study focused on the perceptions of K-12 school counselors on learned helplessness in children and families in rural areas. There has been research on learned helplessness, children in rural areas, and studies on school counselors; however, there is a lack of research on the counselor's perceptions of learned helplessness in children and families in rural areas. Therefore, this study was different than previous studies on learned helplessness, and it fills a gap in the literature. This study used the interpretive-constructivist approach. The experiences and perceptions of participants provided answers to the central research question, by providing their subjective observations of learned helplessness in the children and families in their rural areas. Data was collected for this study through face-to-face interviews with volunteer participants privately to ensure protection and confidentiality of participants. Bracketing was used to reduce the impact of research bias in this study, along with note-taking techniques and audio tapes, transcribed by the researcher using NVIVO software. Transcripts were reviewed, patterns were identified, and themes were categorized using codes as the researcher looked for connections among the themes. Themes that emerged included parental involvement, generational cycles and patterns, grandparents raising grandkids, poverty, helping agencies, cultural and community norms and lifestyles, beliefs and value systems, and drugs and substance abuse. The theme most discussed by the eight participants was in relation to parental involvement in the child's life, both positive and negative. Parental involvement was discussed by participants 70 times during the eight hours of face-to-face interviews. According to participants of this study, both the positive and the negative involvement by the parent is the number one influence of learned helplessness in the child's life.</p><p>

<p> Trauma is a social justice issue by which many of its sufferers historically have remained mystified in a web of misdiagnosis, the most notorious being <i> hysteria.</i> Today, individuals suffering from attachment disorders, anxiety, and depression and the victims of violence, addiction, emotional abuse, and physical abuse often have overlapping symptoms roughly mirroring trauma response symptomatology. These individuals comprise the bulk of those seeking relief from the healing professions, yet the <i>DSM-V </i> has but one diagnosis for trauma: posttraumatic stress syndrome. Recent advances in neuroscience have converged with observations from the field of psychology to confirm the need for a more complex trauma diagnosis. It is time to bring trauma out of the lab and into the streets. Using artistic-creative methodologies, this production thesis channels the expanding body of trauma research into comic strips designed to stimulate social dialogue about the existence of trauma response symptoms in our communities.</p>

<p> Due to being at risk for a number of unfavorable environmental factors (Barcons, Abrines, Brun, Sartini, Fumad&oacute;, &amp; Marre, 2014), adopted children have an increased likelihood of developing social, emotional, cognitive, and attachment issues (Rushton, 2010). Whether adopted domestically or internationally, adopted children are at risk for experiencing socio-emotional difficulties (Dalen &amp; Theie, 2014; Vandivere, Malm, &amp; Radel, 2009; Vandivere &amp; McKlindon, 2010) that can stunt the child&rsquo;s ability to effectively regulate their emotions and connect with others. Adoptive parents may find it difficult to emotionally connect with adopted children who are experiencing socio-emotional difficulties (Dalen &amp; Theie, 2014). </p><p> Adoptive parents can aid their adopted children in learning how to connect emotionally and regulate difficult emotions through <i>emotion coaching </i> (Gottman, Katz, &amp; Hooven, 1996). Emotion coaching is a construct based in a parent&rsquo;s meta-emotion philosophy (PMEP), which is defined as parents&rsquo; thoughts and feelings about their own emotions as well as their child&rsquo;s emotions. Emotion coaching is one of the four PMEPs and is considered the ideal PMEP. Emotion coaching parents accept and validate all of their children&rsquo;s emotions, and views their children&rsquo;s emotional expression as an opportunity to connect with them and teach them how to manage challenging emotions. Researchers (e.g., Ellis, Alisic, Reiss, Dishion, &amp; Fisher, 2013) has shown that children of emotion coaching parents have higher levels of emotion regulation than children of parents with less ideal PMEPs. But how do parents develop their thoughts and feelings about their own emotions and their children&rsquo;s emotions? Attachment Theory (Bowlby, 1969) may lend some answers to this question. </p><p> Attachment Theory emphasizes the importance of emotional attunement between the mother and infant when developing secure attachment: the ability to form intimate relationships with others (Bowlby, 1969; Gus, Rose, &amp; Gilbert, 2015). According to Attachment Theory, an individual cannot respond to others with empathic attunement unless they have secure attachment (Bowlby, 1969). The very act of emotion coaching seems to require high levels of emotional attunement between mother and child. Bowlby (1969) emphasized the importance of the mother as a primary attachment figure, and so this study will be looking at the adoptive mother&rsquo;s attachment and PMEP. </p><p> Although researchers (e.g., Cowen, 1996; Chen, Lin, &amp; Li, 2012) have made connections between Attachment Theory and PMEP in biological families, they have not yet explored these constructs in adoptive families. Thus, the purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how adult attachment may or may not influence adoptive mothers&rsquo; PMEP and how adoptive adult attachment and PMEP may or may not influence adopted children&rsquo;s ability to emotionally regulate and attach to their adoptive parent. Because the ideal PMEP is emotion coaching, the researcher measured this type of PMEP only. Adoptive mothers completed questionnaires assessing their attachment, level of emotion coaching, and their view of their child&rsquo;s ability to emotionally regulate. </p><p> Utilizing Pearson&rsquo;s pairwise correlations, the researcher analyzed the relationships between the adoptive mothers&rsquo; level of emotion coaching and her attachment; the relationship between the adoptive mothers&rsquo; level of emotion coaching and her child&rsquo;s emotion regulation skills; and the relationship between the adopted mothers&rsquo; attachment and her child&rsquo;s emotion regulation skills. The researcher discovered that there was a statistically significant negative relationship between emotion coaching and adult attachment; a statistically significant positive relationship between emotion coaching and emotion regulation; and statistically significant positive relationship between attachment and lability. Finally, the researcher utilized a regression analysis to discover that the adoptive mothers&rsquo; level of emotion coaching acted as a mediator between the adoptive mothers&rsquo; attachment and the adopted child&rsquo;s level of emotion regulation. These findings indicated that emotion coaching is an effective method of aiding adopted children&rsquo;s ability to emotionally regulate. Furthermore, the findings indicated that even if an adoptive mother is struggling with attachment, if she is able to learn emotion coaching, she may still have a positive effect on her adopted child&rsquo;s emotion regulation development.</p><p>