A dialogical narrative approach to transitions and change in young women’s lives after domestic abuse in childhood: considerations for counselling and psychotherapy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Domestic abuse in childhood is seriously impactful, but very little literature uses a critical lens to consider implications for counsellors and psychotherapists working with young adults following domestic abuse in childhood. This article draws on research that explored 10 young women’s accounts of transitions to adulthood after domestic abuse in childhood. Interviews with young adult women in England were conducted and a feminist dialogical narrative analysis was used. Findings suggest that socio-cultural structures and ideologies that shape dominant discourses about what growing up after domestic abuse in childhood means, and what “successful” adult femininity looks like, shaped how women made sense of their experiences. This has implications for counsellors and psychotherapists working with this client group. This article concludes that storytelling could be a powerful therapeutic tool, and attention to power, ambiguity and tensions when working with this client group might facilitate and generate important meaning-making and knowledge in therapy.