Ambivalent Feelings Research Articles

When control becomes a matter of life: a phenomenological exploration of intestinal failure patients’ lived experience receiving assistance from home care nurses in home parenteral nutrition management

Background: Parenteral nutrition (PN) provides the body with essential nourishment through intravenous infusion. Home parenteral nutrition (HPN) has a significant impact on the lives of its users; however, very few studies explore the phenomenon of homecare nurse provided assistance for the management and administration of HPN. Method: The phenomenological approach, Reflective Lifeworld Research, was utilised. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with five patients with intestinal failure. The analysis was performed according to the instructions of Reflective Lifeworld Research. Results: Four constituents were identified: (1) balanced nursing experience, (2) correct handling of procedures, (3) reversed expert roles and (4) the homecare nurse as a lifeline. Control was found to be the essence of the phenomenon, multi-faceted and characterised by the participants’ ambivalent feelings. Conclusion: The participants were ambivalent about receiving assistance from the homecare nurses. HPN is a complex treatment in which demands are placed on the homecare nurses’ competencies to deliver a high quality of care. The patients live with a constant fear of complications and hospitalisations. The participants felt compelled to perform control, monitoring the homecare nurses’ work, to ensure that errors did not occur. As more assistance was received from homecare nurses, the participants experienced a loss of control. However, the assistance did also give a sense of security, whereby the homecare nurse was perceived as a lifeline. From a sociological perspective, the need for control can be a result of the constant development of society, where greater demands were placed on citizens’ commitment and responsibility for their own treatment, prompting a larger need for individual control.

Urban belonging as place-based affect

ABSTRACT In this paper, we approach urban belonging as place-based affect to understand how it emerges and evolves in qualitatively different ways through everyday interactions with the city. Moving beyond a narrowly defined and fixed notion of urban belonging as feeling at home in place, we examine diverging feelings about Amsterdam during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Confronted with the abrupt reconfiguration of everyday life, some residents felt a strong sense of contentment in relation to place, while others developed more ambivalent feelings. These ranged from anxious detachment, to disenchantment and even alienation and rejection, raising existential questions about their place in the city that reach beyond the pandemic. We demonstrate how these affective inequalities are grounded in everyday practices and evolve through social and material encounters in domestic and public space. Our findings draw attention to the processual and relational nature of urban belonging, highlighting the affective capacities of the city in everyday life.

Tudo começa no hospital: narrativas maternas sobre a hospitalização do bebê cronicamente adoecido

This study investigated mothers’ narratives about their chronically ill babies' hospitalization at a public maternity hospital in São Paulo, during 2022, based on thematic analysis of four semi-structured interviews. The main qualitative data from interviews were analyzed concerning its psychoanalytic contribution, organized by three central themes. Interviewed mothers seemed to have found possible ways to perform the maternal function and bond with their babies. Their experiences were affected by ambivalent feelings and psychic suffering that demands mental health care. The aim was to come closer to this reality, remarking original motherhood experiences and the importance of developing caregiving practices worried about the needs of parental figures and their babies in the context of hospitalization and illness.

Supplemental Material for Longitudinal Associations in Dementia Family Caregivers of Ambivalent Feelings and Disruptive Behaviors With C-Reactive Protein, Interleukin-6, and D-Dimer

Supplemental Material for Longitudinal Associations in Dementia Family Caregivers of Ambivalent Feelings and Disruptive Behaviors With C-Reactive Protein, Interleukin-6, and D-Dimer

Ambivalent Feelings and Relationship Quality in Dementia Family Caregivers: Associations with Depressive Symptomatology

ABSTRACT Objectives Ambivalent feelings in dementia family caregivers have been found to be related to caregivers´ stress associated with the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD-related stress), and depressive symptoms. Ambivalent feelings may also affect caregivers´ perceived quality of the relationship with the person living with dementia (PLwD), but this variable has been scarcely studied. This study analyzes the role of ambivalent feelings in the association between caregivers’ BPSD-related stress, perceived quality of the relationship with the PLwD, and depressive symptomatology. Methods A theoretical model was developed and tested in a sample of 390 family caregivers. Results The obtained tested model had an excellent fit to the data, explaining 24% of the variance of depressive symptomatology. A significant association was found between caregivers’ BPSD-related stress, ambivalent feelings, and depressive symptomatology. Also, an indirect effect in the association between ambivalent feelings and depressive symptomatology was found through the perceived quality of the relationship. Conclusions Ambivalent feelings in dementia family caregivers are associated with caregivers’ BPSD-related stress, perception of a lower relationship quality, and higher depressive symptomatology. Clinical Implications Targeting caregivers’ ambivalent feelings and the quality of the relationship in interventions for dementia family caregivers may decrease their distress.

Exploring the Support Needs of Chinese Family Carers of People Living with Dementia in New Zealand during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Resilience Resources Framework Perspective.

Caring for people living with dementia during the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic significantly impacted the emotional, physical, and social well-being of carers. However, no study has focused on the well-being of Chinese carers of people living with dementia in New Zealand during the pandemic. This study aimed to explore the support needs of Chinese carers of people living with dementia in New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured interviews were conducted by two bilingual and bicultural researchers. Thematic analysis was used to explore the resilience resources for Chinese carers. Twelve Chinese carers were recruited from four community organizations in New Zealand. Four themes were identified: (1) social isolation, (2) emotional loneliness, (3) ambivalent feelings of being a carer, and (4) a variety of unmet needs. The findings of our study provide new insights into the multiple support needs of Chinese carers of people living with dementia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Implications for practice include the establishment of culturally appropriate care support services and the development of tailored resilience-building interventions to address the unmet needs of Chinese carers of people living with dementia.

Reducing behavior problems in children born after an unintended pregnancy: the generation R study.

To examine differences in behavior problems between children from intended versus unintended pregnancies, and to estimate how much the difference in problem behavior would be reduced if postnatal depression was eliminated and social support was increased within 6 months after birth. Data from the Generation R Study were used, a population-based birth cohort in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (N = 9621). Differences in child internalizing and externalizing behavior at ages 1.5, 3, 6, 9 and 13 years between pregnancy intention groups were estimated using linear regression. Associations of postnatal depression and social support with internalizing and externalizing problems were also estimated using linear regression. Child behavior outcomes where compared before and after modelling a situation in which none of the mothers experienced a postnatal depression and all mother experienced high social support. Most pregnancies (72.9%) were planned, 14.8% were unplanned and wanted, 10.8% were unplanned with initially ambivalent feelings and 1.5% with prolonged ambivalent feelings. Children from unplanned pregnancies had more internalizing and externalizing problems at all ages as compared to children from a planned pregnancy, especially when ambivalent feelings were present. Hypothetically eliminating on postnatal depression reduced the differences in internalizing and externalizing problems by 0.02 to 0.16 standard deviation. Hypothetically increasing social support did not significantly reduce the difference in internalizing and externalizing problems. Children from an unplanned pregnancy have more behavior problems, in particular when mothers had prolonged ambivalent feelings. Eliminating postnatal depression may help to reduce the inequality in child behavior related to pregnancy intention.

Whose concerns? Young adults discussing (their) concerns with pornography

ABSTRACT Concerns regarding pornography have always existed, and perhaps this is nowhere more pronounced than in the contexts of young people’s viewing. Pornography is often framed in binary ways (sexual revelation versus moral turpitude), often by people who do not specialise in pornography, and young people’s experiences are often neglected. Against this backdrop, this article engages with interview and focus group data that sought to explore young adults’ experiences and understandings of pornography. Focusing on the issue of ‘concern’, the emergent themes included the following: concern that pornography is too readily accessible for young people; concern that pornography is addictive; and finally, concern that pornography is unrealistic. Importantly, these findings were largely inflected through a ‘third person’ effect and, in turn, the internalisation of broader prevailing social discourses. The findings also illustrate that attitudes towards pornography are not as clear-cut or binary as some research suggests, with feelings of ambivalence structuring many expressions of concerns and experiences. In this context, the article reflects upon the dis/connections between social attitudes and viewer experiences, and identifies some ways in which better porn literacies can enable more efficacious forms of porn engagement and social discussion.

Words, Wounds and Pre-oedipal Oneness: Maryse Condé’s Le Cœur à rire et à pleurer

This essay reads Maryse Condé’s 1999 récit d’enfance, Le Cœur à rire et à pleurer, as a “generational text”; a text that is both about the unresolved and ambivalent feelings aroused by writing about the dead mother, and also about this loss as the site and source of (literary) generation. Le Cœur defiantly rewrites the classic narrative of Antillean matrifocality, and yet, although the mother’s death is relegated to a single line, maternal loss suffuses the entire narrative. Moreover, the text is a reflection on language, writing and literature more generally, and can be read as an exploration of the painful transition from preoedipal to symbolic. Words in this text are destructive entities that wound and distort all relationships, but especially the relationship with the mother, igniting a sustained yearning to return to the security of the prelinguistic pre-oedipal.

An Intimate Relationship – Exploring Users’ Feelings and Frustrations Towards Digital Technology Using the Love and Breakup Letter Method

Mapping emotions related to online technology in terms of digital well-being and technology stressors show the ambivalence that connects users to online platforms and technology. However, there is little empirical research about users’ motivations and frustrations. Using the Love and breakup letter method provides the opportunity to explore personal feelings and experiences in order to gain access to the ambivalent feelings. Thirty-nine letters were written in three focus groups. Focused on the feelings towards technology, participants’ motivations and frustrations, despite the overall positive attitude, the presence of many social media stressors and the near complete lack of coping strategies are revealed.

Dreaming of seamless interfaces: media and friction from the feuilleton to personal computing

Dreaming of seamless interfaces: media and friction from the feuilleton to personal computing

The politics of emotion and domestic violence in northern Vietnam

AbstractChanging social, political, and cultural processes in Vietnam are reshaping people's emotional and social responses to domestic violence on multiple levels. Socioeconomic reforms instituted in the 1980s, the related state revival of Confucian gender ideologies, and the influences in recent decades of international and local nongovernmental organizations’ approaches to domestic violence are significant shifts that have influenced these emergent responses. Using the framework of feminist critical medical anthropology, I explore how different emotional experiences of violence provide insight into patterns of help‐seeking and interventions addressing marital violence. I suggest that Vietnamese state discourses and laws shape people's feelings in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. State actors, for one, are particularly influenced to express and experience emotional responses in support of the nation. On the other hand, abused women, community members, and professionals experience more ambivalent feelings toward state discourses and practices as they engage moral emotions of care, love, and concern, prioritizing abused women's health and safety. Complicating this is some state actors grappling with their own ambivalent and tangled feelings as they assist abused women. Awareness of the diverse cross‐cultural range of emotional complexity can aid feminist anthropologists and activists in attempts to understand and prevent domestic violence.

Миромоделирующие природные образы в нанайском фольклоре

Regional folklore texts contain cultural and ethnic meanings, the interpretation of which reveals the perception of the surrounding world by the population of this or that locus, their religious and mythological beliefs and national spiritual values. This paper studies the images of the river and taiga presented in the folklore of the Nanai people, one of the indigenous peoples of the Amur region. These natural images are world-modeling, as they construct the world picture of the autochthonous population of the region. The analysis demonstrates the ambivalent feelings of the Nanai toward the Amur River and the taiga surrounding their camp, which are both natural treasures and formidable destructive forces. The main river of the region and the taiga are anthropomorphic in the indigenous population’s perception. The world-modeling function of natural images is also manifested in the Nanai people’s recognition of the role of ancestor for the inhabitants of these landscape phenomena of the Far East.

‘It's mostly an accompaniment to something’

‘It's mostly an accompaniment to something’

How do teachers perceive translanguaging? Teachers’ perceptions about translanguaging practices in the EFL classroom

The study of translanguaging as pedagogy, which challenges the monolingual approach to language education policy, has become an important aspect of investigation in recent years. However, translanguaging is challenged by recent data showing that teachers have ambivalent feelings and attitudes towards translanguaging practices and the evidence on teachers’ perceptions of the pedagogical approach in EFL teaching contexts in Indonesia is currently inconclusive. Therefore, our purpose was to describe how EFL teachers perceive translanguaging as pedagogy in the EFL classroom, which was conducted through a descriptive/interpretative approach. A questionnaire was used to collect data which were analyzed through both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. The findings indicate that teachers appear to have ambivalent perceptions of translanguaging. Some hold the view that EFL should be taught monolingually, while the others accept translanguaging practices. However, those who have a negative perception of translanguaging also see that the pedagogical approach is important in their EFL classes. The limitations and implications of the study’s findings for EFL education in Indonesia are also discussed.

The world is turned upside down: How parents of children with spina bifida experience transition. A qualitative study

The world is turned upside down: How parents of children with spina bifida experience transition. A qualitative study Abstract: Background: The coming of age of a child with spina bifida (SB) requires the transition from child-centred to adult-centred health care. This transition process (TP) calls for adjustments to the parental role, while health professionals assume a central position in accompanying the families. It is unclear how parents experience the TP in times of complex change and what support needs arise in the process. Aim: To understand the experiences of parents at different stages of the TP and derive the resulting support needs. Method: The qualitative study used semi-structured, guided interviews to explore the experiences of parents with a child with spina bifida before and during the transition process as well as after the transfer. The ten interviews were analysed using open and axial coding based on grounded theory according to Strauss & Corbin (1996). Results: The TP must be considered in the context of health as well as school and family. Parents experience the TP on a continuum of reorientation. This is accompanied by ambivalent feelings caused by the conflicting impulses of giving up responsibility and protecting their child. Conclusions: Health professionals should recognize the extent of change associated with the TP as well as parents' ambivalent feelings and support them accordingly. Continuous support, coordination and information by advanced professionals are important for parents' sense of security.

Longitudinal effects of ambivalent and guilt feelings on dementia family caregivers' depressive symptoms.

The world prevalence of people with dementia is increasing. Most of the care received by people with dementia is provided by family caregivers, and this prolonged activity has a significant impact on caregivers' levels of depression. Stressors and frequency of leisure are known predictors of caregivers' depressive levels. The longitudinal impact of caregivers' ambivalent and guilt feelings is unknown. Participants were 177 family caregivers of relatives with dementia who were assessed three times during a 2-year period. In addition to demographic variables, psychological symptoms of the dementias, and frequency of leisure activities, caregivers' ambivalent feelings, guilt, and depressive symptoms were measured. The longitudinal association of changes in these variables with changes in caregivers' depressive symptoms over time was assessed using mixed linear models. Changes over time in the assessed variables predicted 48.05% of variance of changes over time in depressive symptoms. Even when variables strongly associated with increased depressive symptoms were controlled (lower caregivers' age and educational level, higher reaction to BPSD, and lower leisure activities), increases in ambivalence and guilt contributed to an increase of 9.22% of the variance of changes depressive symptoms over a 2-year period. The effects of ambivalent feelings on depression are indirect, mediated by guilt feelings. Cessation of caregiving do not seem to alter these findings. Caregivers' ambivalent and guilt feelings are significant predictors of caregivers' mental health. Caregivers may significantly benefit from early detection of ambivalent and guilt feelings and preventive strategies targeting triggers associated with ambivalent and guilt symptoms.

Cluster analysis of school emotional engagement among Portuguese children in elementary school

The association between school emotional engagement and child mental health and school success highlights the importance of understanding how child–school relations are developed and what factors are related to this affective process during the initial years of schooling so that early intervention is possible. This study examined emotional engagement in Portuguese children attending elementary school and aimed to identify and characterize subgroups based on the child’s school liking and avoidance, using a model–based cluster analysis. In addition, differences between clusters in what concerns individual (self–efficacy, behavioral engagement, externalizing, and internalizing problems), family (parental emotional support), school (teacher-student closeness), and family-school relation (parental school involvement) variables were analyzed. The sample consisted of 394 elementary school children, 353 parents, and 35 teachers using a multimethod assessment (i.e. children, parents, and teachers’ reports). Cluster analysis identified three patterns of emotional school involvement: emotionally involved, emotionally involved with some avoidance, and emotionally ambivalent. Results showed that many children experience ambivalent feelings toward school in the first years of schooling. The emotionally ambivalent group stood out negatively from the other groups concerning self–efficacy, behavioral engagement, externalizing, and internalizing problems. Suggestions for future research and practical implications for schools are discussed.

Withdrawal of A Decent Man: On the Irony in “Running for Governor”

Mark Twain’s short story “Running for Governor” is threaded with irony, which achieves a structural effect and contributed a lot to the organization of the story on the macro-level, and achieves a strong rhetorical effect with artful linguistic devices on the micro-level, therefore forming a sharp contrast between truth and falsehood. Irony in the story is effectively penetrating and powerful in its function of plot development, characterization and the demonstration of authorial attitude. This paper aims to reveal how the artistic effect of irony is achieved in this story, and show that the artistry of Mark Twain’s irony lies in creating the tension between ambivalent feelings through which there comes a direct communication between the author and reader through the ingenious organization and masterful use of language.

심리상담기관을 이용하고 있는 어머니의 남성상담사 인식에 대한 주관성 연구

Objectives This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of mothers utilizing psychological counseling services towards male counselors, exploring subjectivity and characteristics associated with these perceptions.
 Methods For this purpose, a male counselor based in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, visited two psychological counseling centers where he conducted individual in-depth interviews with 10 mothers, resulting in 153 statements. A total of 24 mothers were selected as the P sample, and Q classification was conducted. The col-lected data were analyzed using the QUANL Program.
 Results The research results revealed a total of three types: Type 1, characterized by a 'Positive Perception of Healthy Male Archetype'; Type 2, identified as 'Gender Aversion with Emphasis on Traditional Gender Roles'; and Type 3, manifested as the 'Ambivalent Feelings of Appreciation but Unfamiliarity.
 Conclusions Through the Q methodology, this study aims to find out the subjective perception patterns and char-acteristics of male counselors of mothers using psychological counseling institutions, and to suggest the pro-fessional identity of male counselors working in the counseling field and the direction of counseling education and counseling training process for male counselors.