“I don’t want to be this chaos that I live in”: Stories of resilience from adult survivors of child maltreatment

Abstract

Child maltreatment is a devastating public health issue with enduring effects across the lifespan. Research has focused on resilience to understand how individuals cope and adapt following adversity. However, psychological research predominately characterises resilience as an individual trait, focusing on protective factors to inform individual, therapy based interventions. Drawing on community psychology’s liberatory orientation, this thesis takes a qualitative, relational approach to resilience research, exploring how adult survivors of childhood maltreatment understand and experience resilience. It investigates what survivors find meaningful in facilitating their resilience, the role of community and social supports, and how their accounts compare with the dominant model of resilience as adaptive ‘bouncing back’. Narrative methods were used to explore how participants storied their resilience, contextualised by my insider researcher position. Semi-structured interviews, incorporating a mind mapping activity, were conducted with three participants. Narrative analysis was used to examine the function of participants’ stories of resilience. Participants’ accounts reflected a broader landscape of healing than typically emphasised in resilience literature, with therapeutic resources and interventions forming a small role. Participants also storied their resilience through ‘giving back’, using their experiences to prevent others’ suffering. Finally, resilience was formed and maintained through ongoing, exhausting labour. Overall, this thesis argues that recognising resilience as labour has important implications for conceptualising resilience and supporting survivors.