Journeying to authentic self : a hermeneutic inquiry into one person's process of empowerment
Date
1998
Authors
Oakes, Judith Marie Oakes
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Abstract
What does empowerment mean? How does one know when one is empowered? What information can we explicate from an individual's experience and description of their empowerment process? How might one person's empowerment process inform, energize, excite, and enlighten another's Inspired by my interest in my own process as a counsellor, a woman, and a person, as well as my desire to facilitate the process of others, I began to research counsellor trainees' experience of becoming empowered Engaging in a process of writings that eventually become the data in this research, I experience, document, investigate, disclose, and explore my journey to authentic self.
Using interpretive inquiry or hermeneutic research methods, I identify four interactive sub-processes mastering, hearing internal voices, identifying locus of control, and choosing Mastering refers to my ability to engage in a process of becoming able to do a thing. Hearing internal voices requires that I consciously attend to my internal cognitive and emotional expression. Identifying where my locus of control is situated, externally or internally, raises my awareness of my beliefs and determines my perceptions of personal power. Choosing, the fourth sub-process, is the action i take to exercise personal power internally and externally. It empowers me to shift my locus of control.
Engaging in my process of wild-writing enables me to clearly hear my internal voices identifying my dis-empowering and empowering belief systems. Identifying which belief system is operating offers me the opportunity to choose to resolve my issues, to choose to do what it takes to access my internal authority and wisdom. This can cause my dis-empowering belief system to fearfully struggle to regain control. Compassionately and assertively interacting with my dis-empowering beliefs, being willing to do what it takes to hear my internal authority, and calling on my Higher Power for help, resolves the internal conflict in favour of my empowering belief system. My Higher Power, the intrinsic life force of the universe, the power that comes from within, is the energy source that helps me to overcome my dis-empowering beliefs.
In this thesis i offer a new perspective on human issue, confirm other teachings and inner knowings, and invite you, the reader, to engage in your own relationship with this work. I invite you to engage in your own relationship with your authentic self. While this work is presented in an intellectual manner, I stay connected to the humanness of my experience. I take an experiential, human, hones, and humble look at my own change process. This work could increase, confirm, challenge, validate, and inspire your own thinking, awareness, and internal knowings. It illustrate and normalizes a change process. It talks about one person's intellectual knowing about the importance of doing it a little at a time and it models the doing of it a little at a time. This thesis acknowledges and represents the turbulence of my empowerment process. It depicts internal storms, the lack of clarity, moving through the storm to a place of calm and a return to order. It is like a work of art. It encourages you, the reader, to engage in your own relationship with the work. Your reaction tells you something about your self. It is no longer about me. I hope it invites you in, encourages you to take your own risks, and sparks you to expand your horizons.
including the experience of doing the writing of this thesis, within the thesis, attracts different people to read it. It provides an example for other researchers interested in doing qualitative research, specifically hermeneutic or interpretive inquiry. It could acknowledge, validate, and encourage the experience of other counsellor trainees and other individuals engaged in their own empowerment process. It challenges you, the reader, to engage in your own process of becoming personally empowered, to be authentic and ot blossom in the very best way that your can.