Trinity Western University. SGS

The ability for a therapist to be authentic is seen as a significant and necessary part of counselling training. Although authenticity has been acknowledged as a critical part of becoming a therapist, the experiences of beginning therapists encountering authenticity as an expectation throughout their training remains relatively unexplored. Utilizing the listening guide methodology from a constructivist lens, this case study asks: what are the voices of authenticity in beginning therapists? Ten therapists who recently graduated from Trinity Western University’s master’s level counselling program were interviewed. Several voices emerged after analysis, which were organized into five broad groupings: voices of (a) ambiguity, (b) vulnerability, (c) invalidation, (d) connection, and (e) anchoring. This case study has implications for how authenticity is defined and implemented in graduate training programs as professors and supervisors work to encourage growth, professionalism, and congruence in their students and supervisees.

This research examines how shamanistic practices promote emotional healing for the Taiwanese community. A shaman is a messenger that delivers messages between the spiritual and human worlds (Lee et al., 2010). Mental health stigmatization is prevalent in Asia (Lauber & Rössler, 2007), which hinders emotional support-seeking in Taiwan. Folk religions, such as shamanism, bring calmness to the Taiwanese community (cf. Wu & Liu, 2014). The question-asking procedure is culturally accepted and regularly practiced in Taiwan. Phenomenological semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture participants’ experiences with traditional healing through shamanistic practices. Using a linguistic ecology protocol, we discovered that shamans strengthen hope, encourage autonomy in decision-making, and provide insights into participants’ future outlooks. This study investigates shamanistic practices in support of collaboration and complementarity between counsellors and shamans (Moodley et al., 2008). It seeks to illuminate a broader understanding of spiritual coping in Taiwan and internationally in relation to Canadian practices.

Sexual embodiment encompasses living, experiencing, and perceiving the world, self, and relationships through the sexual body; societal messages either foster connection or disconnection to the sexual body and self. Disconnected sexual embodiment in people raised as girls is associated with negative sexual health outcomes such as sexual dysfunction, low sexual agency, and high sex guilt and shame. Purity culture’s messages are associated with these negative sexual health outcomes, yet its role in sexual embodiment is unexplored. This study asks, How do people raised as girls experience sexual embodiment after purity culture? Body mapping was utilized for embodied arts-based narrative engagement. Visual narrative analysis and thematic analysis of body maps revealed six main themes across five participants’ body maps: overwhelming emotions; confusion; protection of the sexual body; barriers to embodiment; desiring and attempting embodiment; and healing. These themes contribute to understanding people raised as girls’ experiences of sexual embodiment over time.

In Turtle Island, the psychology community is urged to transform colonial practices per the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) Calls to Action. This research, guided by two- eyed seeing, explored two questions: (1) How do White settler counselling psychologists (WCPs) experience their professional and personal decolonizing journeys? (2) What is a White settler therapist’s role in decolonizing therapeutic practice? Four WCPs participated in collage-making focus groups and individual interviews. Narrative analysis revealed five “narrative trails”: (1) Awakening to shifting worldviews (2) Growing awareness to decolonization imperative (3) Grappling with White guilt and shame (4) Enacting decolonization in client work (5) We hope and we press on. These trails highlight critical reflection, tension, and unsettling moments, offering insights for other settler psychologists to follow in clinical praxis. Findings underscore the importance of decolonizing self and practice. Findings offer insights for psychology education, training, and research, emphasizing ongoing critical reflection and cultural humility.

Perinatal nurses support mothers in the majority of births in Canada, holding an important role in improving respectful maternity care and reducing adverse outcomes. Trust is a recurring theme in the literature of nurse-mother relationships and a crucial component of relationship-centred and trauma-informed care. However, little is known about how trust develops when mothers have traumatic childbirths. The purpose of this qualitative interpretive descriptive study was to understand mothers’ experiences of trust with perinatal nurses amidst traumatic childbirths. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight mothers. Data analysis revealed one overarching theme; Trust in the Nurse-mother Relationship: A Shelter in the Storm, and three main themes: The Foundations and Fluid Trajectories of Trust, Developing and Maintaining Trust Through Relationship-Centred and Trauma-Responsive Care, and Barriers to Developing and Maintaining Trust. These findings can guide perinatal nurses in partnering with mothers to build a trusted shelter in the storm of traumatic childbirth.

There is significant evidence that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have more traumatic life experiences than those without a disability. Research has also highlighted that people with higher levels of traumatic events throughout their lives are more likely to receive a mental health diagnosis. However, adults with IDD who experience mental health diagnoses are rarely given the same therapeutic opportunities as someone without a disability to process experiences that may impact their mental health. This project inquired about the lived experience of those with an IDD in living with mental health symptomology. The project also addresses the systemic barriers individuals with IDD face when seeking out mental health support, the importance of a strong support network, and the distinct lack of knowledge about mental health among individuals with IDD. The results highlighted the need for increased trauma-informed and plain language resources for individuals with IDD.

Feminist perspectives on pornography that characterize it as either harmful or liberating for women tend to overemphasize men’s sexual power over women or women’s sexual empowerment, respectively. I argue that taking women’s particular social context and location into account enables a better assessment of women’s capacity for sexual agency in relation to pornography. I further argue that considering women’s capacity for epistemic resistance and empowerment creates hermeneutical resources for resisting harmful conceptions of female sexuality. Women’s ability to practice epistemic resistance to the harmful aspects of pornography can facilitate the potential of sexual empowerment through pornography consumption. However, this type of empowerment and agency requires responsible reflection on the limitations of endorsing or perpetuating patriarchal forms of sexuality.

In this thesis, I outline a functional typology for categorizing internet memes using the cognitive linguistic theory of Conceptual Integration (CIT) and related concepts from Construction Grammar and Relevance theory. Although cognitive linguists have analyzed the communicative power of memes, their endeavours have yet to result in a typology that can organize all types of memes for extensible future analysis. Some meme categorization schemes have been proposed, but memes evolve too rapidly for these to be helpful long-term. I argue that CIT provides the necessary tools to construct a robust typology that can support descriptive meme analysis, emphasizing the importance of emergent dynamic meaning creation and phatic socio-pragmatic function to meme communication. I organize memes based on two functional concerns: 1) whether form and function explicitly correspond and 2) whether the meme’s meaning structure applies top-down from conventionalized instructions or bottom-up from a non-conventionalized pattern recognition process.