Not good enough and on a tether: exploring how violent relationships impact women's sense of self

Whose Expertise Counts? Women Survivors' Experiences With Psychologists

Many women who experience intimate partner violence seek the expertise of psychologists to support their healing. However, there is a gap in the research about what women want from their psychologists. We interviewed 20 women survivors who had seen psychologists. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we constructed three themes: see all of me, see me for my expertise, and don't impose an agenda on me. We found that often psychologists acted as experts imposing their own agendas, rather than supporting survivors to make their own decisions. We discuss this in relation to the link between knowledge and power through dominant social science discourses and explore how resistance to this dominant discourse was taken up by many women.

Emerging Adult Women's Views-of-Self in Intimate Partner Relationships That Are Troubled

The purpose of this study is to describe how emerging adult (EA) women describe their views-of-self in troubled relationships. Fourteen EA women (ages 18-25 years) wrote four stories about their troubled relationships during a guided-writing intervention. Qualitative descriptive methods and content analysis were used to identify common views-of-self. Four views-of-self in troubled relationships and contrasting views-of-self emerged: (i) silent self-vocal self, (ii) sacrificing self-prioritized self, (iii) caretaking self-boundary-setting self, and (iv) insecure self-secure self. Mental health nurses and other clinicians can use these views-of-self pairs to guide their discussions with EA young women who are involved in troubled relationships.