A Narrative Inquiry into Meaning Making for Adult Women Living With Chronic Pain

Chronic pain affects approximately 50 to 100 million U.S. adults. Adult women specifically face unique challenges when presenting with chronic pain, from shifting personal and social roles to lack of validation and dismissal from medical providers, ultimately impacting their physical, emotional, and relational wellbeing. Previous studies have suggested that meaning making, both as a process and outcome of living with chronic pain, may be a viable target for supporting women’s wellbeing in the face of chronic pain. This study explores the research puzzles of how women in early to mid adulthood living with chronic pain construct meaning according to existential themes through their self-narratives across time, relationships, and context. This study utilized Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) narrative inquiry to engage five women in the telling, retelling, living, and reliving of their journey with chronic pain. Field texts, composed of journal entries and in-depth conversational interviews, generated data for the inquiry. Field texts were transitioned to research texts as individual narratives co-constructed with each participant. These research texts informed the narrative and expressive vignettes integrated throughout the presented data analysis. The findings encourage the reader to engage narratively with the women’s stories, inviting the reader to experience the interactions and intersections of existential themes of isolation, responsibility and freedom, agency, authenticity, and meaning making across the women’s storied lives with chronic pain. Based on the findings, personal, practical, and social justifications are discussed alongside implications for the field of counseling and recommendations for future study.

Author

• Richmond, Samara

Language

• en

Keyword

• mental health
• meaning making
• chronic pain
• narrative inquiry
• women

Date created

• 2023

Type of Work

• Dissertation

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Counseling

Degree

• Ph.D.

Advisor

• Das, Bagmi

Committee Member(s)

• Lee, Seung
• Attia, Mina
• Cleveland, Robin
• Vanderbilt, Sandra

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/12579s972