Negotiating traumatic life-events: exploring individual experiences and the response of counselling psychology

The field of traumatic stress recognises that the impact of traumatic events can extend beyond those immediately exposed. However, in the past decade, research has been dominated by Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with less focus on how the greater majority, who do not develop PTSD, accommodate traumatic experiences into their lives. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has approximately 4,800 diplomat officers serving in 170 countries. Officers may be exposed to a disaster while on a short-term posting overseas, i.e. of two to four years duration. Adopting Charmaz's (1990) social constructivist approach to grounded theory, this qualitative study aims to explore how a disaster event is experienced from the perspective of the spouses of these British diplomats. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten participants. The analysis led to a theory, captured in an emergent model, of the temporal pathway of the lived experience of a disaster event for the spouses of British diplomats. It can be described as follows: Locating Multiple Self-Aspects at the Point of Disaster; Encountering Disaster; Immersion; Dissonance; Consequences; Disaster Endures. The core category - Incorporating Disaster into the Self-Concept- occurred in each phase of the model. The results may be helpful for both clinicians and policy makers working with this population. 23