This study investigates what the stories of forgiving parents that a counseling major graduate student experienced through counseling training course are; the purpose of this study is to understand what the student experiences during that process and ...
This study investigates what the stories of forgiving parents that a counseling major graduate student experienced through counseling training course are; the purpose of this study is to understand what the student experiences during that process and what that experience means according to
the temporal, social, and place flow. For this, in this study, three pieces of puzzles are set; the first piece of the puzzle is on how the counseling major graduate student should approach the feelings hurt from the relationship with
the parent; the second is during the counseling training course, how the experience of forgiving parents develops stories and what that means; the third puzzle is how the counseling major graduate student’s experience of
forgiving parents relate to the story of life later on. The counseling major graduate students in school for master’s degree who have experience of forgiving parents and can recount the process of anger handling in detail were selected as the participants of this study. The data collecting period was from June 2016 to June 2017, and the data was analyzed according to the narrative inquiry method of Clandinin and Connelly (2000). The study text was written within the three dimensional narrative
inquiry space. The researcher of this study heard experiences of forgiving parents of [Soyeon Kim] and [Jeong-a Yoo], the participants of this study, through
counseling training course, and by comparing the participants’ experiences to wild roses, the meanings of those experiences could be recited again. When [Soyeon Kim] was a primary school student, she was separated
from her parents and lived only with her older sister and brother due to her parents’ business. She considered this an emotional abuse since she did not study and had troubles dealing with people as she became lethargic due to her longing for her mother. After she got married, when she faced economic difficulties due to the failure in stock investments of her husband, she felt that she has turned out like that because her mother did not properly care for
her during her childhood and as a result, she gave up studying; she started to hate and resent her mother and even became confused whether she was ever loved growing up. The story of [Soyeon Kim], who lived powerlessly all her life yearning for being cuddled in her mother’s arms, is similar to the legend where a wild rose died after collapsing from looking for its family after
coming back to its hometown with the longing heart for its family. [Soyeon Kim] had a chance to take another look at the hurtful memories of her mother when she was taking a group counseling class during her first semester of her graduate school and saw a professor who resembled
her mother. She, then, realized that the ambivalence towards her mother has made herself miserable. As she took classes on counseling theories and actualities, she became interested in person-centered therapy of Rogers; as she studied this theory, she realized that her mother loved [Soyeon Kim] that way her mother wanted to, not the way [Soyeon Kim] wanted; and this was why [Soyeon Kim] had hard time accepting her mother’s love. In addition, she became aware of the reasons of her current situation with no house and not being socially successful, which she herself has responsibilities on not studying with sincerity and regretted on her conducts. Like the thorns on the wild rose stem, [Soyeon Kim] was able to identify with her mother’s love as she interpreted her thorn-like scars, which was deeply embedded in her inner side, with the counseling theories, and hereby was able to get rid of all the resentment and hatred towards her mother and finally forgive her mother. After experiencing the forgiving process of her mother, [Soyeon Kim] realized the tensions, which she felt whenever she saw the professor who resembled her mother, had disappeared. Also, just like she experienced change through person-centered theory of Rogers, she promised herself to become a counselor who can help the clients live coherent life and reach self-realization in life. There is a sad myth about the fruits of wild roses, but those fruits are used for medicinal purposes and help people; like this, [Soyeon Kim] has grown into a counselor who can better embrace others’ pains by overcoming her own wounds. [Jeong-a Yoo] has always felt hatred, resentment, and anger towards her father, who constantly tormented the family, blamed, and never reacted to her, and thought herself as a child with a wounded heart. [Jeong-a Yoo] got interested in the childhood of her father when she had a chance to recollect of her late father through her relationship with her husband, and she heard her father’s story through her mother. After hearing the story of her father, [Jeong-a Yoo] decided to cognitively understand and forgive her father. Just like the deep sorrow of a dead girl who collapsed in the deep woods looking
for her family but failed, [Jeong-a Yoo] had that deep resentment towards her late father who hurt her so much.
Through counseling theories, practical training, and self-reflection which she experienced during the counseling training course, [Jeong-a Yoo] kept repeating the process of recalling her thoughts and feelings towards her father and talking about them. Through that process, [Jeong-a Yoo] was able to release negative feelings, and by hearing of new information from her mother about how her father devoted himself to take care of his family, [Jeong-a Yoo] deeply understood and forgave her father. After preceding the cognitive change towards her father and through the counseling training course, [Jeong-a Yoo] experienced emotional change and was able to experience a deeper level of forgiveness. As if a wild rose finds its way to an
appropriately sunny place to bloom, by actively following the counseling training course to understand her experience and heal her wounds, [Jeong-a Yoo] could experience a deeper level of forgiveness. After forgiving her father, [Jeong-a Yoo] was able to take pride in herself as the beloved daughter of her father, and miss her father. With these changes, [Jeong-a Yoo] treated her husband with even more respect on behalf of her late father, and became more enthusiastic in studying about the field of family counseling. The analyzed results of the meaning of the experiences of forgiving one’s parents through counseling training course of graduate students who participated in this study are as follows. First, the counseling theories and practical training experiences learned through the counseling training course gave places to find peace where
[Soyeon Kim] and [Jeong-a Yoo] could put out and control the resentment anger of not getting loved by their parents during their childhood. These kinds of experiences helped them understand and accept the differences of
their own psychological structures and those of their parents, and become aware of their responsibilities for creating their current psychological difficulties or negative self-images. In addition, through these processes, they
could develop their professional and personal qualifications as counselors. Second, the emotional weakness they felt from their parents during their childhood made them think of themselves as the unloved children of their parents, and as a result, those feelings made them have low self-esteem, and let them have distant relationships with their parents. In addition, they were able to break off from the dichotomous perspectives to form positive self-concept and forgive their parents. Third, forgiving of parents is the process to accept the way their parents loved their children and confirm that they were beloved daughters of their parents; and this process influences the improvement of relationship later
on in their lives and the actualization of their career paths as counselors.