Redefinition Of Self Research Articles

Meaning of Aging, Gerotranscendence, and Successful Aging in Older Adults With Chronic Health Conditions

Aging presents change in the form of opportunities and challenges, from common physical alterations, to major life events. Perception of such events is greatly shaped by one’s mental health, and is a major influence on gerotranscendence, a positive kind of aging involving redefinition of self, relationships, and proposed to be a precursor to successful aging. A mixed-methods cross-sectional descriptive design was used to study 50 older adults. Life Events Checklist, Gerotranscendence Scale, Herth Hope Index, and Successful Aging Inventory were administered. Mean participant age was 70.78 years; there were 9 males (18%), 41 females (82%), 13 were Black (26%), and 37 were White (74%). Participants reported a number of stressful events, most frequently transportation accidents, followed by other very stressful events or experiences, and sudden unexpected death of someone close. Gerotranscendence scores ranged from 0-10 (µ 6.88, a moderate score). Successful aging scores ranged from 40-79 (µ 62.33, a moderate score). A sub-sample of 6 participants engaged in semi-structured interviews, which were transcribed verbatim and subject to content analysis. Faith, displaced longing, temporal anticipation, proactive problem-solving/coping, and concern for future generations were emergent qualitative themes. Findings highlight opportunities for providers from multiple disciplines to target risks and possibilities for aging successfully and to promote hope, optimism, problem-solving skills, and gerotranscendence in all older adults, regardless of physical or functional health status.

Discomfort, Revolt and Abjection in Skim

This presentation emerges from our experiences teaching an online, asynchronous children’s literature graduate course. Across its six-year history, teacher-participants have responded variously to the graphic novel Skim. Recently, when confronted with an image in the novel depicting a kiss between a female high school student and her female teacher, some course members focused solely on the kiss, seeming to dismiss the text entirely. To think through this unprecedented occurrence, and to consider its philosophic and curricular constraints/possibilities, we draw on the thinking of Julia Kristeva and those who interpret her work. Specifically, we are thinking about the role of discomfort in leading to Kristeva’s abjection—or, a casting out of the perceived other—and Sonja Arndt’s “dominant need to know” as possibly protecting against dwelling within the uncertain chaos of discomfort and the resulting redefinition of self. This presentation contributes to the ongoing conversation around pedagogies of discomfort. We also consider the distinct temporal experience of reading a graphic novel and suggest that the unique temporality of both the assigned reading and teacher-participants’ lives may encourage/discourage dwelling in discomfort. In closing, we discuss possible curricular and pedagogic shifts we might make to open spaces for dwelling with/in discomfort.

Meet Them Where They Are: The Importance of Contextual Relevance in Prison-Based Parenting Programs

Parenting from prison is dramatically different than parenting in the community. The removal from home and redefinition of self that occurs within the carceral setting often leads incarcerated parents to feel anxious and inadequate in their parental role. While some prison-based parenting programs (PBPPs) can assuage these issues, they often lack contextual relevance, which can make participants frustrated and dissatisfied. Using an example of a prison-based fatherhood program, this article argues that in order for PBPPs to have sustained positive outcomes, they must also address the issues enmeshed in parenting from prison.

Staring at My Body: The Experience of Body Reconstruction in Breast Cancer Long-term Survivors.

Breast cancer takes time for its survivors after a mastectomy to adjust to their changed bodies. There are limited studies about the process of how those survivors accept the changes of their bodies and how they reestablish their new selves. The aim of this study was to understand the perception of body from women diagnosed with breast cancer more than 5 years previously and whose treatment included a mastectomy. A phenomenological method was applied to this study. Women who received a mastectomy at least 5 years previously were invited to participate. Eight participants were recruited from southern Taiwan. Twenty transcripts were obtained and analyzed using Colaizzi's method. Three themes were obtained from the data analysis: "restoration of the body image," "abandonment of objectification," and "redefinition of self." Subthemes were also identified and described. The results indicate that women with breast cancer have embodied the recovering experience to a new self and have adapted to identify their new bodies. They overcome being a female body with an absent breast(s) by discovering the value of their existence and being free from self-objectification. This study contributes to the understanding of the perception of body in long-term breast cancer survivors, which reflects the process of adjusting to the loss of a breast/breasts to reconstructing a new body experience. Health professionals could help and encourage women undergoing a mastectomy to engage in self-recovery by searching for and affirming self-value.

Promoting well-being through group drumming with mental health service users and their carers

ABSTRACTPurpose: Music has been linked with well-being across clinical and community settings. Yet, research has focused on assessment of single dimensions of well-being and on the typical receiver of support services. Acknowledging the burden that a caring role encompasses and integrating recent proposals for a multifaceted definition of well-being, we explore the extent to which group drumming interventions translate into multidimensional well-being change for both mental health service users and carers. Method: Thirty-nine participants engaged in one of a series of community drumming programmes were assessed via semi-structured interviews (n = 11) and focus groups (n = 28) at the end of each programme. Data were analysed using IPA. Results and Conclusion: Emotional, psychological and social dimensions of well-being emerged for both patients and carers, accounted for through six themes: (1) hedonia: positive affect and pleasant physical effects of drumming; (2) agency: initiative and sense of control; (3) accomplishment: non-specific and in relation to musical goals; (4) engagement, through focus and flow; (5) a redefinition of self, through self-awareness, construction of a positive identity, self-prospection and incorporation of a musical identity; and (6) social well-being, through connectedness and positive relationships. The potential of such interventions for clinical contexts is discussed.

'Intensive care unit survivorship' - a constructivist grounded theory of surviving critical illness.

To theorise intensive care unit survivorship after a critical illness based on longitudinal qualitative data. Increasingly, patients survive episodes of critical illness. However, the short- and long-term impact of critical illness includes physical, psychological, social and economic challenges long after hospital discharge. An appreciation is emerging that care needs to extend beyond critical illness to enable patients to reclaim their lives postdischarge with the term 'survivorship' being increasingly used in this context. What constitutes critical illness survivorship has, to date, not been theoretically explored. Longitudinal qualitative and constructivist grounded theory. Interviews (n=46) with 17 participants were conducted at four time points: (1) before discharge from hospital, (2) four to six weeks postdischarge, (3) six months and (4) 12months postdischarge across two adult intensive care unit setting. Individual face-to-face interviews. Data analysis followed the principles of Charmaz's constructivist grounded theory. 'Intensive care unit survivorship' emerged as the core category and was theorised using concepts such as status passages, liminality and temporality to understand the various transitions participants made postcritical illness. Intensive care unit survivorship describes the unscheduled status passage of falling critically ill and being taken to the threshold of life and the journey to a life postcritical illness. Surviving critical illness goes beyond recovery; surviving means 'moving on' to life postcritical illness. 'Moving on' incorporates a redefinition of self that incorporates any lingering intensive care unit legacies and being in control of one's life again. For healthcare professionals and policymakers, it is important to realise that recovery and transitioning through to survivorship happen within an individual's time frame, not a schedule imposed by the healthcare system. Currently, there are no care pathways or policies in place for critical illness survivors that would support intensive care unit survivors and their families in the transitions to survivorship.

Exploring YouTube as a Transformative Tool in the “The Power of MAKEUP!” Movement

Exploring YouTube as a Transformative Tool in the “The Power of MAKEUP!” Movement

A fractured journey of growth: making meaning of a ‘Broken’ childhood and parental mental ill-health

ABSTRACTThe psychopathological impact of parental mental ill-health on children is well known. However, little research explores positive and negative interpretations of such exposure in childhood, from the adult child's perspective. Using interpretative phenomenological Analysis this study sought subjective interpretations of the ‘lived’ experiences of growing up in a family with parental mental ill-health. A purposive sample of seven adult children provided data for analysis through semi-structured interviews. One superordinate theme: A fractured journey of growth to adulthood, overarched six subordinate themes. Four themes captured stigma, shame, social isolation and betrayal. Juxtaposed with this, two themes captured purposeful redefinition of self and psychological growth. This study captures the chronicity of traumatic distress and sense of betrayal experienced by these participants in childhood through unrelenting exposure to parental mental ill-health. However, despite unpredictability, fear, and neglect in childhood, they identified the emergence of inner strengths in adult life: unexpected growth in empathy and compassion, high resourcefulness, and personal authenticity through higher education. Findings highlight that positively redefining ‘self’ in adult life is possible in the aftermath of childhood trauma associated with parental mental ill-health. Implications for therapy include: (a) moving forward from childhood trauma and (b) managing ongoing family dynamics in adult-life.

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The Black Panther Party and Transformative Pedagogy: Place-Based Education in Philadelphia, by Omari L. Dyson. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014, 214 pp. $85.00, hardback.Efforts to provide a remedy for the overwhelming ills suffered by inner city Black youths has formed the basis of Omari Dyson's The Black Panther Party and Transformative Pedagogy. Dyson has merged the two fields of study, education and post-colonial studies, to argue about the influence of the teaching philosophy of the Philadelphia Black Panther's political education classes and how it could socially transform the conditions of Black youth. In the book, he chronicles the social climate of 1960s North Philadelphia, how it impacted the Panther's teachings and social relief programs, and its demised caused by state repression.In the prologue and the first chapter, Dyson defines the current conditions of inner city Blacks as the aftermath of internal colonialism. Emerged in 1960s as a discourse among Black Power activists and intellectual scholars, internal colonialism labeled Blacks in America as colonial subjects, not second class citizens. To Dyson, U.S. society currently consists of a racial-class caste system. Institutional racism, not pathological behavior, is considered responsible for the escalation of an urban crisis upon Blacks. The lack of progressive public policies and economic shift to globalization has helped to escalate Black-on-Black crime, poverty, underemployment, and low self-esteem.The second chapter traces the antecedents of Black Nationalism and education in response to racism prior in antebellum era Philadelphia. Black churches and schools controlled by free blacks served as the example of Black self-determination and the center of Black education. Such institutions challenged Black inferiority, created positive self-esteem, and promoted Black independence.The third and fourth chapters' details urban inequality and how it influenced the formation of the Philadelphia Panthers. In conjunction with police brutality, Black residents experienced poor housing, Black-on-Black gang violence, lack of community services, and lack of no positive role models or Black teachers in public schools. Alongside the 1964 Philadelphia rebellion, the Black Power Movement and the anti-Vietnam war protest led to a revival of political consciousness and a redefinition of self. In 1968 in Mary Robbins Bookstore, the Panthers were created by Mumia AbuJamal (formerly Wesley Cook), Terry McHarris, and Reggie Schell. As an alternative to public education, it held political education classes, critiqued capitalism, taught global politics, and promoted Black self-esteem. Dyson contends the political classes consisted of three concepts: reading and dialogue for the purpose of problem solving; the concept of Huey P. …

An Exploration of Positive Identity Development in Women Living with Chronic Pain

We explored the concept of living positively with chronic pain using a mixed - methods design that relied primarily on hermeneutic phenomenology. Ten women described their experiences of developing a positive identity while contending with chronic pain. Throughout their journeys, the women interviewed experienced a number of key themes including: the sense of being separate from their bodies, the failure of the biomedical system, and the creation of support networks. Three major categories emerged from the data: (a) Before Diagnosis , (b) Redefinition of Self, and (c) Moving Forward. The implications for healthcare providers and the limitations of this study are discussed.

Uncommon Women: Gender and Representation in Nineteenth‐Century U. S. Women's WritingLauraLaffrado. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009.

Uncommon Women: Gender and Representation in Nineteenth-Century U. S. Women's Writing Laura Laffrado. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009. In Laura Laffrado's feminist study it might be more expected for her to point out all the ways the women she includes are ahead of their time. Instead, Laffrado showcases the ways these women took pains to align themselves with conventional class and gender expectations of their eras. Even as Sarah Kemble Knight is mistaken for a prostitute because she is traveling alone, she looks down upon the women who are acting out of their positions, talking too much, or not eating with proper etiquette. Uncommon Women is a study in how these white middle-class women were able to transcend society's boundaries by painting themselves within the lines of the socially acceptable. Although Laffrado's focus is on both gender and class, her main interest is not where these authors lie within social divisions but how they represent themselves within those categories. Laffrado sees these women representing themselves as conventionally normative in the same moments as they act outside of convention. Laffrado is careful to state that she is not making a monolithic statement about the role of autobiography in the nineteenth century; she is instead looking at women who, in their self-narratives, simultaneously reveal how they are outside the normal. By using the discourse of the conventional, these women are able to circumvent the hostility often aimed at those outside traditional boundaries and become accepted in mainstream culture. All of the texts Laffrado examines were first published in the nineteenth century, though one was actually written much earlier. Sarah Kemble Knight's Journal, the focus of the first chapter, was first published in 1825; however, Knight wrote it shortly after 1704-1705 trip to New York and New Haven, and then circulated it among family and friends. By placing the Journal as a nineteenth-century text, Laffrado uses it to examine less Knight's identity and more the moment in which it is published. Laffrado is careful to not overstate her claims about the state of women in the nineteenth century. She does not suggest that Knight's Journal, or the other works she examines, was brought to print because the publisher was a protofeminist, particularly promoting women's writing. Instead, the publishers of these works recognized a valuable piece history to be shared, or merely a story that would sell well. In the same vein, Laffrado also does not claim a transformation of the way women viewed themselves with the publication of these texts. Instead, these books were published at a moment when women's places in society were beginning to shift. Through their writing, these women displayed the inadequacies of existing frameworks. By providing this context, Laffrado uses the chapter on Knight to foreground the terms of discussion for the remainder of the book. Throughout the work, Laffrado continues to use the historical and cultural context to make her argument about these women's self-representations. In contrast to the first chapter's focus on Knight's single text, the second chapter takes up Fanny Fern's periodical oeuvre spanning the years 1851-1854. According to Laffrado, the nature of Fern's genre calls for very different ways of constructing identity; each article she published allowed for a new redefinition of self. Fern's anonymity allowed her relative freedom to address and adopt many different personas. Because each of these articles was written in the same voice, making it evident there was only one author, readers often wondered whether Fern was male or female, young or old, etc. By so successfully inhabiting each of these subject positions, Fern made it evident that one narrow category was not enough to define her or any other woman. In this chapter, as in the others, Laffrado is sure to acknowledge other contributors to Fern scholarship and relates some of what they argue about Fern, but, importantly, also establishes where she stands in relation to that work and adds her own insight and research. …

Redefining relationships and identity in young adults with type 1 diabetes

This paper is a report of a study exploring the meaning of interactions with and supports of self-management from parents and other significant others for young adults with type 1 diabetes. Adolescence and young adulthood is known to be a critical period for people living with diabetes in terms of diabetes control, which is why support from significant others is of utmost importance during the transition to adult life. A grounded theory approach was used. Interviews with 13 young adults with type 1 diabetes and 13 parents 2 years after transfer to adult diabetes care were conducted during 2006-2007. Internet communication between young people on a diabetes website was also included in the constant comparative analysis. Transition to adult life for young adults with diabetes was characterized by a relational and reflexive process leading to ongoing redefinition of relationships and identity. Parents were perceived as the most reliable supporters, compared to partners, siblings and other significant others. Chat friends can also become important through emotional, social and diabetes-related support in internet communication. The young adults showed growing awareness of their own capacities, shortcomings and emotional reactions, reflections which contribute to a redefinition of self. Further research is needed to explore how contemporary interactions contribute to development of the self. By focusing on supporting relationships, nurses are in a strategic position to develop knowledge and modify clinical programmes that promote diabetes management and care by taking supporting interactions into account from a contemporary point of view.

The Use of Narratives to Identify Characteristics Leading to a Productive Life Following Acquired Brain Injury

To determine the factors leading to successful recovery and productive lifestyles after acquired brain injury (ABI). Qualitative investigation examined semistructured interviews of 31 survivors of ABI. Thematic analysis followed a phenomenological approach and revealed 4 major themes and 28 subthemes in the interviews. Four participants stood out as exemplars of the themes embodied by all the participants in this investigation. Quotes from each are used to highlight the prevailing themes. The following 4 major themes emerged from the interviews: development of social support networks, grief and coping strategies, acceptance of the injury and redefinition of self, and empowerment. The issues raised in these interviews may serve to inspire other survivors and provide them with hope and motivation as they progress through the recovery process. Suggestions on how clinicians can help to facilitate this process are discussed.

The Nature of Collective Resilience: Survivor Reactions to the 2005 London Bombings

Accounts from over 90 survivors and 56 witnesses of the 2005 London bombings were analysed to determine the relative prevalence of mass behaviors associated with either psychosocial vulnerability (e.g. ‘selfishness’, mass panic) or collective resilience (e.g. help, unity). ‘Selfish’ behaviors were found to be rare; mutual helping was more common. There is evidence for (a) a perceived continued danger of death after the explosions; (b) a sense of unity amongst at least some survivors, arising from this perceived danger; (c) a link between this sense of unity and helping; and (d) risk-taking to help strangers. We suggest a novel explanation for this evidence of ‘collective resilience’, based on self-categorization theory, according to which common fate entails a redefinition of self (from ‘me’ to ‘us’) and hence enhanced concern for others in the crowd.

Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Its Treatment Affecting the Self

There has been a great deal of qualitative research conducted that has examined the impact of breast cancer on the Self, however, there has been little effort to analyze these findings from a meta-perspective. This study sought to fill this gap by conducting a meta-synthesis of the qualitative research on breast cancer and its treatments affecting the Self. Meta-method and meta-synthesis techniques were used to integrate findings across 30 qualitative research reports conducted between 1990 and 2003 with a total of 795 women, from several different countries.The fusions identified from this meta-synthesis revealed 4 aspects of the Self affected by the diagnosis of breast cancer and its treatment: awareness of their own mortality, living with an uncertain certainty, attachment validation, and redefinition of Self. These findings were validated through use of a comparison study. The women adapt to being a breast cancer patient; redefining their lives and their self. This study highlights the existential process that women of many cultures move through as they incorporate the meaning of breast cancer into their lives. Nurses who are aware of these processes are better able to link women with resources to help them in their adaptation to living with breast cancer.

Voices of Resilience

Terminally ill older adults have the capacity to live well in the context of dying. Having negotiated a lifetime of challenges, they have resources to demonstrate resilience and achieve wholeness in life's final phase, but research has not adequately investigated this process. This qualitative research study considered the paths to resilience used by 30 older adult hospice clients in Kansas and Illinois. Responses were coded using the grounded theory method of Strauss and Corbin (1990) where data drives interpretation and text is coded into categories. Results centered on four themes that included: (1) a redefinition of self; (2) use of religion/spirituality or openness to uncertainty; (3) maintenance of social investments; and (4) guarding independence even as the scope of life contracted. Results imply that attention should be paid to building environments of wellness. This may be accomplished paradoxically through facilitating continuity of client interests and yet opportunities for creativity and growth as well. Listening with a healing stance and cultivating a habit of being fully present in interactions with clients assist in this process.

The Role of the Bereavement Group in the Face of 9/11: A Self–Psychology Perspective

The sudden traumatic loss of a spouse equates to an assault on self and the loss of both an internal and external self–object. Mourning requires compensatory self–objects to help in the restoration of self and in the creation of new self–structure. The catastrophe of 9/11 not only assaulted thousands with unanticipated traumatic loss, but also devastated the usual networks of support. In this light, the bereavement group became a valuable venue for self–restoration and recovery. In her group work with 9/11 corporate and uniformed service widows, the author applies a self–psychology perspective that considers that empathic immersion not only affords safety and stabilization, but the opportunity to have self–object needs met in a process that restores and develops self–structure. She proposes the bereavement group as a cohesive self–object milieu serving mirroring, twinship, and idealizing needs. Drawing upon clinical examples, she illuminates the capacity of the group to establish safety, regulate affect, reduce isolation and shame, rekindle memory, and foster coping skills. As such, the group affords a restoration of the assaulted self, an integration of the loss, and an emerging redefinition of self.

White Women Writers and Their African Inventions (review)

Reviewed by: White Women Writers and Their African Inventions Lezlie Margaret Hall Lewis Simon. White Women Writers and Their African Inventions. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2003. vii + 263 pp. On a continent whose countries are still attempting to negotiate between fragile democracies and despotic regimes in the aftermath of postcolonialism, any scholarship that tackles the thorny and divisive history of imperialism and works to move the reader to a greater political awareness has merit. Lewis Simon's White Women Writers and Their African Inventions is well worth the read and contributes substantially to this discussion. Lewis divides his book into three sections whose titles are taken from Isak Dinesen's euphonious first line of Out of Africa (1883): "I," "Had a Farm," and "In Africa," to examine how identity is constructed and possession is understood in European and Euro-African texts written by white women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He draws on Raymond Williams's model of the city versus the country, transforming it into metropole versus colony, and addresses the pertinent question Nadine Gordimer raises in The Essential Gesture (1988), "Where do whites fit in?" to determine whether Euro-African authors subvert or support the imperialist claim to the continent—or manifest an uneasy ambivalence—and whether their texts have worked to enhance or hinder the political process toward self-rule. Much of his scholarship is dedicated to Olive Schreiner and Karen Blixen, and he begins his discussion by navigating the territory of their writings through several channels: the redefinition of self, the construction and use of masks, and the fascination with orphanhood. The first two chapters dedicated to the authors' definitions of "I" and their use of masks cover ground already explored in texts on Schreiner and Blixen by biographers and scholars such as Susan Hardy Aiken, Judith Thurman, and Susan Horton. Lewis mines that material a little deeper but uncovers no revolutionary new evidence as to how Blixen in particular and Schreiner to a lesser degree invented and reinvented versions of themselves: to justify their presence—for Blixen certainly—in an alien country, to transcend traditional female roles of the late Victorian and early-twentieth-century era, and to allow them space to write. However, the discussion of self and mask is an important one on a continent whose European colonials continually redefined its indigenous citizenry in damaging, malevolent ways. If Schreiner and Blixen's affinities often lay with the native peoples, their literary agenda was less to champion the cause of those citizens brutally subjugated on a continent that rightly belonged to them than to establish independent, speaking selves that were not subject to patriarchal mandates of silence and respectability. Those goals were important, and Schreiner and Blixen both attained [End Page 232] literary notoriety, putting "women's" writing on the map, which was a valuable achievement—but at whose expense? Blixen's lament in Out of Africa at the loss of her African Eden, her coffee farm in Kenya, and her expulsion back to Denmark, barely addresses the country's real history of land acquisition by white settlers (such as herself) through the forceful and often brutal removal or relocation of tribes like the Gikuyu to nearly uninhabitable areas. Blixen is acutely aware of the injustices inflicted upon the Gikuyu, many of whom she befriended and genuinely cared for, but they are present in her work only as servants or hired hands, as foils to her invented benevolent persona. She presents herself as their champion, placing them in an idealized pastoral, but turns them into literary myth to enhance her fantasy of Africa, a textual appropriation that casts the indigenous populations as secondary and diminishes the historical traumas to which they were subjected. Schreiner fares better, and deservedly so, although Lewis reserves well-grounded criticism for her as well. Schreiner's depiction of indigenous Africans was often racist, and her representation of the spaces of South Africa as empty is problematic. As I read her, "empty space" for Schreiner, particularly the great Karoo, became territory that could not be commandeered by Europeans and thus was a way to resist imperialism. For Lewis, however, constructing any topography as "empty space", translated by colonialists as...

Chronic Pain and Returning to Learning: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Three Women

An in-depth analysis of the post-secondary learning experiences of three women revealed that their decisions to participate in college and university courses in Canada were interconnected with lived experiences of chronic pain. A causal link between chronic pain and returning to learning was an unexpected outcome of a study focusing on women’s learning experiences in post-secondary institutions. Each woman in this study learned to cope with and adapt to her chronic pain, and over time, returned to learning to undertake new areas of study to accommodate a redefinition of self based on chronic pain. Eventually chronic pain became a conduit to more positive experiences of learning and reflection. The role and meaning of chronic pain in the learning equation represents a blind spot in the existing educational literature and it is through such indepth, descriptive stories of participants that we learn how this invisible barrier may influence the learning decisions of women.

Individual and Societal Influences on Participation in Physical Activity Following Spinal Cord Injury: A Qualitative Study

Despite evidence that physical activity, a tool of rehabilitation, affects health and improves functional ability in people following spinal cord injury (SCI), such people are often physically inactive. We used a qualitative method to explore the experiences of individuals with SCI during participation in physical activity. The participants were 8 adults (5 male, 3 female), ranging from active to inactive, who were 2 to 27 years post-rehabilitation following SCI (paraplegic). We used semistructured ethnographic interviews to explore barriers and enablers to participation in physical activity following SCI. Emerging themes were derived from the participants' experiences. Two themes were identified: (1) individual influences, defined as a period of loss of "able identity" and subsequent redefinition of self in which participation in physical activity may be a vehicle or an outcome, and (2) societal influences, which included environmental and attitudinal barriers. The participants' experiences offer insight for therapists regarding physical activity following SCI.