Limitations of the study: critical reflections on the sample

Based on the criterion, the time between bereavement and participation could have been as much as 30 years for one participant and 2 years for another.

82 Prior to analysis, this was viewed as a potential limitation since participants may have interpreted their experience differently based on the time elapsed between bereavement and the interview. The concern was that a participant who was bereaved 20 years ago would have had significantly more time to understand or make some meaning out of their loss than one who was bereaved 2 years ago. However, although this made sense on an intuitive level, analysis found that time between bereavement and interview was not indicative of meaning made or integration of loss. Another consideration with regards to time elapsed since bereavement, however, is the inherent difficulty in recollection and interpretation of experience. For participants who had a greater time elapsed between bereavement and interview, a greater extent of recollection and interpretation was required. It would therefore be useful to conduct research with a closer homogeneity thread with regards to time since bereavement.

Interviews closer to the time of traumatic bereavement would perhaps offer a more immediate account of the experience and interviews taken some time later could offer insight into personal meaning making over time.

Small sample sizes were used in order to elicit rich and detailed accounts of experience. The implication of such in-depth analysis was a corresponding lack of breadth. Sampling was also purposive and homogenous so the findings are idiographic. This means the present study can only makes claims about the group that was studied and can make no claims of generalizability (Langdridge, 2007, p.58). This was a dilemma because I was interested in the broader experience of traumatic bereavement. I wanted to be able to say something about the psychological journey of those who endured it and to say something about how the findings of the study could inform clinical practice. But while I do

83 not make claims beyond the sample in the present study, I also believe that it is possible that if a specific experience is present in one location, it is likely it exists in other locations (Smith, 2004; Haug, 1987; Harre, 1979). Given the dearth in similar qualitative studies, further studies are encouraged to more firmly establish common existential themes. At a later stage, quantitative studies utilizing heterogeneous samples would be useful to verify the validity and generalizability of the findings.

That clients had therapy may also be viewed as a limitation since this will likely have influenced their experience and understanding of traumatic bereavement.

However, including this as part of the selection criteria ensured that participants felt they needed assistance in moving through their grief. This meant that the findings could provide relevant insights into clinical practice. It was also included on ethical grounds to prevent unexamined issues from arising during the interviews and causing distress or harm to participants. I needed to negotiate between methodological purity and ethical soundness, and in this case opted for the latter. To manage for this, I designed the interview schedule to ensure that the data was not about how therapy helped participants to move through their loss but elicited information which spoke directly to the experience of traumatic bereavement. For instance, questions sought insight into the embodied experience of grief. Others, such as ‘what (if anything) did you find consoling/helpful in moving through traumatic bereavement’ allowed participants to talk about therapy if it felt important to do so. Questions that sought to understand how loss was integrated, whether meaning was made, and how participants viewed themselves as changed following loss, however, were likely to have been influenced by therapy. As a result, caution should be

84 exercised in extending or generalizing the findings beyond the present sample.

It would be useful to conduct a similar study in a sample that did not receive therapy to find out whether the findings can be verified across broader groups.

These limitations of the study mean that generalizability on the whole, in line with IPA, is not possible. However, a degree of ‘naturalistic generalisation’

(insight from detailed descriptions of individual cases) and ‘theoretical transferability’ (a degree of transferability of findings from this sample to greater populations) is possible.

18 Reflexivity

The influence of Heidegger’s existential phenomenology which is centred on the Being-in-the-world nature of human existence, and Gadamer’s horizons (which both help and hinder the research process), provide strong support for the importance of interpretation, and therefore reflexivity, in IPA. In undertaking IPA, a tension existed between allowing for my own perspectives, interpretations, and influences, and needing to remain grounded in the data.

From a counselling psychology perspective, practitioners affect the therapy process. More generally, experience is seen to be co-created and thus context influences experience. This means that while the scientist-practitioner model is an integral part of the counselling psychologist identity (Kennedy & Llewelyn, 2001), the profession argues for an identity that is also aware of context and is interested in subjective truths as well as empirical research findings.

Consequently, it also adopts the identity of ‘reflective practitioner’ (Schon, 1983), acknowledging the importance of self-knowledge. This fits with the

85 present context, where the researcher is believed to influence the research process.

Reflexivity refers to both ‘functional reflexivity’ and ‘personal reflexivity’

(Wilkinson, 1988). The former refers to critical reflection of the research process, which I hope is apparent throughout this chapter. The latter involves reflecting on one’s own role as researcher and may be viewed in terms of turning my gaze back onto myself (Shaw, 2010; McLeod, 2001, p.195). It requires an awareness of the influences of my relationship to the research topic and its participants, and recognises that these influences will inform my personal, cultural, professional, theoretical and philosophical constructs, which will in turn, guide my interactions with the data and analysis (Etherington, 2004).

Finlay (2005), influenced by Gadamer (1975), refers to such ‘hermeneutic reflection’ as continually reflecting on our experience as researchers alongside the phenomenon being studied, asserting that it allows us to move beyond the partiality and investments of our previous understandings. She (Finlay, 2008) calls for a continual engagement with the phenomenological attitude in managing the intrusions of pre-understandings, describing a ‘dance’ between reduction and reflexivity.

Given this importance of reflexivity, I have attempted to be mindful of and bracket my own pre-suppositions throughout the research process. I attempt to make these explicit below.

I am a 30 year old female counselling psychologist trainee undertaking my first qualitative research project. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, which means that my research background has been heavily focussed on

86 quantitative methodology. While I had always felt that psychology was the best area of study for me, due to my interest in human behaviour and experience, I found that discussion around topics I found interesting stopped short of the type of depth I was looking for. The need for being scientific seemed to prevent exploration of human being in the way that I found important and interesting. I wanted to understand experience in all of its richness. Consequently, discovering qualitative research was very exciting for me. My introduction to research having been quantitative, however, means that making myself visible in the research process did not come naturally.

I am of mixed heritage with my father being Sri Lankan and my mother being Jamaican. I grew up predominantly in Sri Lanka, although I spent short spells of time going to school in Jamaica and 9 years living in the UK as an adult. My upbringing did not stick rigidly to any particular culture and my life in general has been culturally mixed. Sri Lanka is diverse in many ways including ethnicity, race and religion. In addition, I have been privileged to have attended private international schools which exposed me to further diversity of culture and range of experience. This has meant that I do not identify entirely with one culture, but would say that I strongly identify with some aspects of some cultures, and thus have been aware of a resistance to being labelled as either/or, without appreciation for the multitude of factors that go towards my individuality and sense of self. I believe that these aspects of my background are at the root of my interest in subject experience and my scepticism around attempting to generalise. Since I consider this mixed background to be a ‘privilege’, I bring to this research my assumption that difference is to be expected and such diversity is to be celebrated.

87 Growing up in Sri Lanka has also meant that I have been exposed to poverty and suffering from an early age. With my father being a doctor and my mother a social worker, social responsibility and a concern for human health, wellbeing, and living were always given great importance and without a doubt played a part in my choice of vocation.

Growing up during an era of civil war and guerrilla warfare meant that the knowledge that loved ones can suddenly and unexpectedly die became a reality from a very young age. As a result, the idea that ‘…love is par excellence the fact that the death of the other affects me more than my own’ (Levinas, as cited in Stolorow, 2014) resonates very strongly with me. It is this sensitivity to the pain of traumatically bereaved individuals which fed my investment in this topic.

I have been traumatically bereaved of close friends, which gives me ‘insider status’ (Gallais, 2008) to the phenomenon. I have some understanding of how individuals might feel following traumatic bereavement. When a friend at the age of 14 lost both of his parents, his only sister, and his only grandparent in a car crash, I became uncomfortably aware of the fragility and unpredictability of life. I became very aware and concerned for those I was closest to. Some years later when a friend was killed by her sister’s boyfriend at the age of 18, I was reminded again of these feelings. The world felt unsafe, unpredictable, and cruel. I remember after the second instance, my friends and I drew closer than ever. We spent all of our time with one another, often trying to digest and make sense of what happened, and finding comfort in our shared experience. I could not understand how such loss was endured, and I did not know how I could be of any assistance in these situations.

88 While conducting this research, I also lost a close friend to suicide. I found myself utterly shocked and very deeply saddened. I tried to make sense of his decision to end his life, and questioned how I might have prevented it. Once again, comfort came from friends who shared most closely in this experience.

Honouring him through remembrances and charity projects which were close to his heart has been an important part of making the transition from loving him in presence to loving him in absence.

However, ‘…not only is [bereavement] painful to experience but it is also painful to witness, if only because we are so impotent to help’ Bowlby (1980, p.7). While I am aware of my own struggle with losing close friends, it is witnessing the pain of those who have been traumatically bereaved of their family members which was the strongest influence on my investment in this topic. While I have ‘insider status’ to the traumatic bereavement of close friends, I also bring to this research a sense that I am very far from understanding the participants’

experience since they all lost either a partner or family member. I am therefore aware that I undertook this research as part of a broader meaning-making process and a desire to address my own feelings of ‘impotency to help’. This also implies a hierarchy within traumatic bereavements where some may be more painful and difficult to move through than others.

Over the years, this area of personal significance and concern has developed into one of academic interest and a growing appreciation of death as a topic of great existential importance. In this regard, I hope that by understanding the experience of traumatic bereavement, I may be able to contribute to assisting those who endure it.

89 It was not until I was in university at the undergraduate level that I found existentialism. Its concrete interest in human existence and the existential themes of freedom, choice, responsibility and courage immediately resonated with my inclinations and worldview. The implications of my philosophical allegiance are that I bring to the research assumptions around the importance of subjective meaning making and human finitude (becoming aware of one’s mortality following traumatic bereavement), as well as a tendency to avoid pathologising, categorizing or labelling of individuals.

I attempted to achieve the phenomenological attitude from the start of the research process. To do this, I spent a considerable amount of time attempting to expand my personal awareness through reflexivity. I attempted to identify my basic understandings of traumatic bereavement by journaling my thoughts, assumptions, questions, biases, and feelings around the topic at the start of the research project and revisited this exercise regularly to track any changes or modifications. I also engaged in real time discussions with peers and others, as well as my personal therapy which helped to bring out my biases and assumptions. I did a self-interview using my interview schedule, putting myself in the position of my participants, in order to find out what my assumptions were, and I included these in my journal along with the other ideas, questions, reflections, observations, decisions, and conversations I had noted from the start of the research process. By adopting the phenomenological attitude in this way via journalling, real-time discussions, a peer email group, and a self-interview of the self-interview schedule, I was able to bracket my assumptions when engaging with the data. This was particularly important during interviews, analysis, and the write-up. Bracketing involved suspending – as opposed to

90 obliterating – my personal influences. It means that I held my assumptions in mind in such a way that I was aware of them but they did not obstruct my view of the phenomenon. By knowing what I brought to the process, I was able to say something about what was actually there.

Some of the assumptions I was aware of, for instance, included the idea that there was comfort to be sought in shared experience. I was also aware of my belief that the pathologising of grief should be avoided, a product both of my background and my training in psychotherapy and counselling psychology.

During analysis I noted personal thoughts and associations alongside data on the interview transcripts. Throughout the research process, I was also part of an email group which was created among close colleagues. It was setup as a forum for dialogue around members’ research and counselling psychology in general, and included Skype discussions where more in-depth exploration was needed. All of this allowed continual reflection and engagement with the hermeneutic circle and helped me to stay connected to the phenomenological element of IPA. These were particularly important in terms of the process of data collection and analysis and helped me to let go of working with anything that I was trying/hoping/expecting to find and to monitor any tendency to direct and restrict participant data. For instance, I became aware of not wanting to include themes which showed participants in a less than positive light such as cases where there appeared to be a lesser degree of adaptation to loss, evidence of continued turning away from grief, or lesser degrees of post traumatic growth.

This tendency was arising from a desire to protect my participants. I was concerned about the way that participants would feel if they read the study and

91 how it might impact on their personal journeys. It is this which was often behind my hesitation in interrogating the data and introducing the interpretive element of IPA. It drew to my attention my difficulty in making a shift from the role of psychotherapist to the role of researcher and the ways in which the roles differed. I identified this as restricting the data and potentially jeopardizing the validity of my findings and stayed vigilant to this tendency by continual engagement with my therapy, supervisors, journal, the mailing group, and thus continual engagement with the hermeneutic circle. My supervisors looked at my interview analyses which helped me to monitor my balance between allowing for some interpretation while remaining grounded in the data. I was also mindful to take a relational and empathic stance at all times, which I was advised would facilitate me in making difficult assertions in a sensitive manner. I adopted a position of ‘empathic openness’ allowing myself to be guided by a genuine curiosity, empathy, and compassion. This had been useful to my psychotherapy practice and assisted me greatly in this regard through the research process too. I needed, however, to be mindful not to slip into my more familiar role as psychotherapist in terms of my interventions during interviews but to keep my focus on asking questions that would elicit the information I sought.

I was also aware of how emotionally moved I was by the material shared by participants so it was important to use my journal for reflection, maintain dialogue with my colleagues and use my personal therapy to ensure that my emotional responses did not alter the findings of the study.

I have tried to be as clear, transparent, and informative as possible, weaving my reflections throughout this write-up. I hope that making explicit my background, my personal experiences of traumatic bereavement, and my

92 sense of being ‘impotent to help’ illustrate the way that my pre-understandings influenced my epistemology, ontology, and the way that I created, designed, and conducted the research. I hope that I have demonstrated the way that I reflected on the analytical process. In the discussion section I have tried to be transparent about how I have been implicated in the research process and how the research has changed me and my understanding of the topic. In doing this I have hoped to add rigour to this research project.

19 Interviews

I used semi-structured interviews for my research since they enable participants to offer rich, detailed, first person accounts of their experience and are considered the exemplar for IPA (Smith et al., 2009). Sometimes referred to as interview guides (Patton, 2002), they are flexible in that they allow the precise wording and order of questions to be contextual and responsive to the participant’s developing account (Braun & Clarke, 2013). This felt crucially important to me as I was keen for the interviews to be participant led to the greatest extent possible, since individual experience was the crux of my research question and my chosen method. This data collection method allowed engagement with the hermeneutic circle and allowed unanticipated topics to come up, providing me with opportunities to be confronted with the new and to revise my fore-understandings around the topic. Unstructured interviews would have allowed for this to an even greater extent, but I opted for semi-structured interviews because they allowed the process to be as participant led as possible, while still ensuring that the research question was answered. Being