Revenge is sour, but is forgiveness sweet? Psychological health and cortisol reactivity among women with experiences of abuse

Giving Voice to Women with Substance Use Disorder: Findings from Expressive Writing About Trauma

Background

Trauma exposure is a risk factor for substance use disorders (SUD) among women. This study explores written content from an expressive writing (EW) intervention conducted within a residential SUD program to examine themes across trauma experiences and characterize their deep insight into such experiences.

Materials and Methods

This qualitative study is a secondary data analysis of written content of the first writing session from women (n = 44) randomized to an EW condition while in residential SUD treatment.

Results

Nearly all participants (72.7% African American; mean age 37.3 years) reported a significant trauma event (93.2%) with an average of 3.7 types of trauma events (54.4% had a current posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis). Four primary themes emerged: (1) trauma across the lifespan; (2) loss of safety; (3) altered self-concept; and (4) desire to move on. Most participants identified interpersonal trauma, especially at an early age, as well as parental neglect and physical and/or sexual violence. These themes indicate a pattern of interpersonal betrayal and paint a picture of trauma and the subsequent "rippling effect" such that the physical, mental, and emotional consequences were often as impactful as the event itself. However, there was also a desire to move on and gain a sense of normalcy.

Conclusions

Findings highlight the importance of the written word and addressing underlying trauma in addiction treatment to facilitate healing and the woman's desire to move on.

Is lifetime abuse forgivable in old age?

Old age is characterized by reflection and a retrospective examination of the multiple meanings of various life experiences, including lifelong abuse. Forgiveness is found to have a salutary effect, especially for older adults. To understand the place and role of forgiveness in the reflective process during aging, we performed a secondary analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews (N = 78) with older women survivors of abuse. Inductive thematic analysis was based on concepts developed deductively from the literature review. The findings include three main themes: (1) The dimensions of forgiving: The victim as subject; (2) Being forgiven: Between lost forgiveness and hope; and (3) Self-forgiveness and the aging self. Despite the known salutary effect of forgiveness, we must consider that this is not a universally desirable process. We included the dimension of forgiveness in the study of abuse throughout the older person's life course and identified further complexities in addition to the "forgiveness"/"unforgiveness."

An assessment of appraisals of dating relationship conflicts and perceptions of appropriate coping strategies with psychologically abusive interactions

Introduction

Stemming from a stress appraisal and coping perspective, the present investigation developed a methodology for assessing how individuals appraise abusive dating relationship conflicts (Study 1) and the implications of such appraisals for informing coping responses to abusive interactions (Study 2).

Methods

Participants ranging in age from 17 to 29 years (Study 1: 102 males, 339 females; Study 2: 88 males, 362 females) completed a survey in which they were presented with a series of 10 scenarios that conveyed relationship conflict cues that were ostensibly aligned with various forms of psychological abuse.

Results

Factor analyses indicated that blatant actions conducted in privacy were differentiated from more ambiguous public forms of psychological abuse, in that the latter were appraised by both males and females as more abusive. Females were further likely to appraise blatant conflicts as more threatening but at the same time more resolvable. Participants who had encountered abuse in their own intimate relationships were especially likely to appraise conflicts as abusive, threatening and uncontrollable. Such appraisals were associated with greater endorsement of avoidant coping strategies in response to an abusive encounter, irrespective of personal relationship experiences.

Discussion

It is suggested that how individuals appraise relationship conflicts may be key to their ability to cope effectively with such encounters or to provide appropriate support to those experiencing psychologically abusive relationships.

Concentrations of Salivary Cortisol in Victims of Intimate Partner Violence According to the CIRCORT Database

This work analyzes the different levels of salivary cortisol in women from the southwest of Spain that were victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) with respect to a control group, assessing for the first time the different concentrations obtained in relation to a worldwide reference standard provided by the CIRCORT meta-global cortisol database. The clinical sample (N = 24) and the control group (N = 25) had an average of 39.12 years (SD = 12.31) and 39.52 years (SD = 11.74), respectively. Cortisol awakening response (CAR) was determined by defining the area under the curve (AUCi). There were no differences between the CAR data of the two populations F (1, 141) = 1.690, p = 0.196, but there was a highly significant difference in the three sampling days, where the clinical sample exceeded the cortisol levels of the CIRCORT database in the evening as compared to the control group (p = 0.004, p = 0.001 and p = 0.000). Salivary cortisol concentration samples taken in the evening were significantly higher than those standardized in the CIRCORT database, from the women victims of IPV as compared to the control group, showing its usefulness as an effective supportive tool for problems such as those triggered by IPV.

Failure to reappraise: Malevolent creativity is linked to revenge ideation and impaired reappraisal inventiveness in the face of stressful, anger-eliciting events

Background and objectives: The complexities of daily life often necessitate creative ideas to successfully cope with negative social situations. This study investigated the relationship of two types of creativity that may be elicited by similar contexts but are associated with different goals and impact of ideas: reappraisal inventiveness (the capability to generate manifold reappraisals for negative situations) and malevolent creativity, capturing the inventiveness in intentionally harming others.Design and methods: In 73 women, these variables were assessed by performance tests depicting real-life, anger-eliciting situations. Additionally, participants reported their trait anger and depressive symptoms.Results: Inventiveness (ideational fluency) was positively correlated between the two tasks, probably indicating shared divergent thinking demands. A more intricate pattern emerged for quality aspects of generated ideas. Participants inventing particularly harmful ideas for damaging others generated fewer valid reappraisals and displayed less problem-oriented thinking during reappraisal. Greater inventiveness in damaging others was linked to more revenge-related ideation during reappraisal attempts, which also correlated with self-reported depressive symptoms.Conclusions: A higher capacity for malevolent ideation may potentially hamper successful coping with stressful, anger-eliciting events and, as a result, may advance an adverse spiral of reinforcement. Considering these links may help tailor psychotherapeutic interventions to individuals' specific predispositions.

A Serial Mediation Model of the Relationship between Cybervictimization and Cyberaggression: The Role of Stress and Unforgiveness Motivations

Cyberaggression is often triggered by cybervictimization. However, little attention has been given to the underlying mechanisms in this relationship. Specifically, this study examined the mediating roles of stress as well as unforgiveness (i.e., revenge and avoidance motivations) in the cybervictimization-cyberbullying aggression link. The main goal is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of cybervictimization on cyberbullying aggression while modeling a process in which cybervictimization causes stress, which in turn causes unforgiveness motivations concluding with cyberbullying aggression as the consequent. A total of 979 adolescents (M_age = 13.72, SD = 1.31) completed the relevant scales at two time points spaced four months apart. The results confirm that stress and revenge motivation at Time 1 act as serial mediators between cybervictimization at Time 1 and cyberbullying behaviors at Time 2. Additionally, the results reveal that avoidance at Time 1 was not a significant mediator in the links between cybervictimization at Time 1 and cyberbullying aggression at Time 2. Our findings provide support for the stress-and-coping model of forgiveness in adolescence and offer original insight into the developmental process of bully-victims in cyberbullying context. These results suggest the importance of efforts addressing motivations and emotion-focused coping strategies in adolescents who have been bullied to prevent and reduce those adolescents’ future stress and aggressive behaviors. The contributions and implications of the results are discussed.