Under Construction: The Impact of Socialized Gender on Posttraumatic Growth

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dc.contributor.authorBarker, Alex
dc.date.accessioned2025-05-16T22:03:35Z
dc.date.available2025-05-16T22:03:35Z
dc.date.issued2024-06
dc.description.abstractTrauma caused by seismic events can change the trajectory of someone's life for better or worse. If left unresolved, it can cause physical, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive impairment. However, if processed optimally, it can lead to positive transformation. Utilizing Tedeschi and Calhoun's (1995) theory of Posttraumatic Growth (PTG), this capstone explores how aspects of socialized gender constructs impact an individual’s likelihood of experiencing measurable growth in personal strength, new possibilities, relating to others, appreciation of life, and spiritual change after an experience of trauma. Sociocultural beliefs regarding traditional masculinity appear to reduce growth outcomes for men. In contrast, social scripts regarding femininity seemingly allow women to engage in the PTG process. As such, this capstone is intended to increase access to PTG for all genders and to help counselling psychologists identify barriers to growth. Gaps and limitations in the published literature are identified, including suboptimal study designs, inconsistency of measures, overemphasizing positive growth outcomes, and difficulty conceptualizing and quantifying broad multifaceted concepts such as trauma. This capstone provides recommendations on future directions for research into PTG in the field of counselling psychology. Findings from the literature are then used to generate hypotheses and potential recommendations for consideration regarding gender-sensitive and trauma-informed therapy and how therapists might consider applying an integrative PTG framework to current practices.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11803/3425
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisher.institutionCity University of Seattle (CityU)
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
dc.rightsopenAccess
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
dc.subjectposttraumatic growth
dc.subjectsocialized gender
dc.subjectsocial constructionism
dc.subjectgender roles
dc.subjecttrauma
dc.subjecttrauma-informed therapy
dc.titleUnder Construction: The Impact of Socialized Gender on Posttraumatic Growth
dc.typeCapstone
thesis.degree.disciplineCounselling
thesis.degree.grantorCity University of Seattle (CityU)
thesis.degree.levelMasters
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Counselling
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