Using Process‐Experiential/Emotion‐Focused Therapy Techniques for Identity Integration and Resolution of Grief Among Third Culture Kids

Abstract

This article explores process‐experiential/emotion‐focused therapy (PE‐EFT) as a technique for counseling third culture kids (TCKs) who experience identity conflict and unresolved grief. The authors suggest the PE‐EFT tasks of empathic exploration, meaning protest, empty‐chair technique, and 2‐chair dialogue to facilitate TCKs' identity integration and resolution of grief.

Stress-related Growth in Adolescents Returning to School after COVID-19 School Closure

“…Emotional processing is described as the technique of actively processing and expressing one's emotions during times of stress (in contrast to avoidance; . Emotional processing is a positive factor in helping children cope with and grow through adverse events such as grief (McFerran et al, 2010), identity conflict (Davis et al, 2015), and natural disasters (Prinstein et al, 1996). To date, the role of emotional processing during a pandemic has not been explicitly studied; however, there is indirect research to suggest the value of this coping approach.…”

Using Gestalt Techniques to Promote Meaning Making in Trauma Survivors

“…For traumatic memories to be transformed into a meaning‐making narrative, one's emotional sensations and cognitive interpretations of the event need to be activated and experientially accessed (Foa et al, 2010). Guiding the client to safe exposure to feared stimuli can be achieved by exaggerating bodily sensations through elaborated facial expressions and gestures in a controlled therapeutic environment (Cozolino, 2017; Davis et al, 2015). To bring deeper self‐awareness of these experiences and body language to the client, the gestalt counselor prompts the client to repeatedly perform the observed nonverbal gesture in an exaggerated manner.…”

“…A newfound sense of control and self‐agency is inspired when one integrates the parts (Davis et al, 2015; Fisher, 2017). Clients often report that traumatic experiences from the past feel more manageable and less engrained in their day‐to‐day life.…”

The assumption of privilege? Expectations on emotions when growing up in the Norwegian Foreign Service

“…A number of studies confirm how TCKs’ strengths lie in possessing a global and multicultural perspective, as well as having an intellectual flexibility when adapting their frame of reference to new environments (Pollock and Van Reken, 2009). However, ‘TCKs often go through intense emotional experiences, engendered by frequent, often abrupt, relationship transitions; safety and security issues in their environments; and the task of developing an integrated and coherent sense of personal identity amidst so much transition’ (Davis et al, 2015: 170). To understand the challenges reflected upon in this study, a cross-disciplinary approach was chosen to bring the concept of a child’s emotion-regulation development (Siegel, 2012) together with the anthropological understanding of emotions as embedded in different emotion-cultures (Hochschild, 1983).…”