| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 教育心理與諮商學系碩士班 === 94 === The purpose of this study is to explore the change conditions and change mechanisms of stress coping strategies for mothers with handicapped children in counseling. Since the theme of this study is to describe the change patterns of stress coping of the client/mothers, instead of therapist’s treatment, the research method is task analysis. Ten change conditions were summarized hypothetically after literature review, then compared with the data of interviews. Three mothers, who had handicapped children, presented 24 counseling sessions on weekly schedule. The verbatim were encoded to verify the hypothesis of the change conditions. The findings are discussed in two dimensions.
First, as to the change conditions, the hypothesis is supported by the data. One client matched all the ten conditions, the other two matched 9 of the ten, rejecting the “bewaring of the influences from early experiences” and “reframing the stress” individually. The second issue is how these conditions contributed to the change. In the beginning stage, “the current stressors” and “emotional catharsis” are important, while “evaluation of different coping strategies” replaces them in the middle stage. However, “self worthiness”, “adjusting thoughts and invoking actions”, and “reframing the stress” are the most influential factors in the last stage. Thirdly, new insights of self and the pressure are the cores of the change in the final stage. Fourthly, self worthiness and the trials of new behaviors are the inner motivations to change.
Second, as to the change mechanisms, the common flow of change for three participants is proposed as bellows. Starting from the narrative story of life pressures, the clients then explored her coping pattern, transformed her own “blind spot” and limits into insights, facilitated the new action, better emotional adjustments, problem-solving, cognitive adjustments and responsive actionist. At this point, a brand new challenge has come, so does the pressure. Therefore a new cycle of pressure and coping has formed, and bring about another narrative of life pressure.
The conclusion of this study presents an attentive pattern of change. Due to the marital problems, the mothers of handicapped children have been suffering from long-term pressure. Emotional catharsis could open the door to counsel. Several factors contributed to the elimination of negative coping pattern: awareness of inner expectation increased the motivation to change, empowerment to clients, reviewing the very first coping strategy and evaluation of the current one. Furthermore, while small success stories work as snowballs, the myth of motherhood could become obstacle to the clients.
Based on the findings of this research, several suggestions are made regarding the potential counselors. Several factors contributes to the change; to name it, the safe and trust relationship in counsel, understanding the mothers’ characteristics, flexibility in responding to different needs of the same client, invokes of inner resources, beware of pre-mature suggestion, as well as the view point of system. Some potential topics for further research are suggested: 1) to develop a longitudinal research of stress coping. 2) to explore the pressure coping of fathers with handicapped children. 3) to compare the change conditions and flow of different approaches.
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