“It Give Me Dat Courage An’ Fait’ Like Tuh Move on An’ Tuh Continue”: The Phenomenology of Adaptive Response to Trauma in Guyanese Orphans
Abstract
This dissertation study explored the complex anxiety and trauma experiences of Guyanese orphans. The goal of the present qualitative investigation was to better understand adaptive responses in Guyanese culture. Participants comprised 17 male and female individuals (ages 18 to 24) who were orphaned during childhood and raised in an institutional home in Guyana. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire and a semi-structured interview using a constructivist paradigm to explore resilience and posttraumatic growth (PTG). Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using phenomenological methodology to code and categorize responses into a collective narrative of participants’ experience. Results revealed four categories of 14 themes and five sub-themes culminating in one narrative of participants’ collective experience of complex anxiety and trauma. The metaphor of monsoon flooding was used to portray a collective experience consistent with the Flexibility Model of Coping (Bonnano & Burton, 2013) and nuanced by Guyanese culture. More specifically, the experiences of resilience, complex anxiety and trauma, and PTG were illustrated with drawings of flooding. Clinical and policy implications and areas of future research related to complex anxiety and trauma within Guyanese culture are discussed.
Subject Area
Counseling Psychology|Psychology|Cultural anthropology
Recommended Citation
Barker, Daam Tapiwa, "“It Give Me Dat Courage An’ Fait’ Like Tuh Move on An’ Tuh Continue”: The Phenomenology of Adaptive Response to Trauma in Guyanese Orphans" (2020). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI28026129.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI28026129
