Researchers have not been able to ascertain how survivors of childhood trauma, especially sexual abuse, develop resilience. To explore resilience and what influences its development, this mixed-method study investigated the roles of cognitive emotion regulation and proactive coping by using a critical-realist ontology. The data was collected from eight women (between ages 25 and 56) who considered themselves to be resilient survivors of severe child sexual abuse. Harvey's (2000) Multidimensional Trauma Recovery and Resiliency Interview (MTRR-I), the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski, Kraaij & Spinhoven, 2002) and Greenglass's (1999) Proactive Coping Inventory were used to gather the data necessary to determine whether resilience is influenced by cognitive emotion regulation strategies and proactive coping and to attempt to define what could be considered as traits of resilience in survivors or child sexual abuse. Through thematic analysis, approximately 50 a-priori codes were generated and grouped into 23 themes using the Atlas.ti program. The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between cognitive emotion regulation, proactive coping and resilience in order to better understand, and develop intervention processes that can provide survivors of child sexual abuse and other trauma with the resources needed to be more resilient. Although causality could not be determined between these variables, it became evident that the more often a participant employs adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and the higher the scores on the Proactive Coping Inventory are, the more resilient the participant tends to be. The participants who displayed higher levels of resilience also verbalised that they felt they had dealt with the abuse and had managed to move on in their lives. Even though all the participants considered themselves to be resilient, half of them were functioning at a noticeably lower rate of resilience than the others. All the participants claimed to rely on spiritual strength in some way and attribute their resilience to their faith in God. The higher the levels of resilience, the more the participants used adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and proactive coping: and the more optimistic their views of the future and the more they considered their lives to be meaningful. Because the study was based on the ecological model of human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1995, 2005,) the interplay of the proximal environment, the individual, the social context and the changes that have taken place over time, were all taken into consideration because resilience, cognitive emotion regulation and proactive coping skills all develop within and between the same systems in which an individual develops. However, Bronfenbrenner (2005) states that the family is no longer taking the responsibility for the upbringing of children as it should and that other settings in society have had to step in to fulfil the role. One aspect of mental health is the ability to develop spiritually and since schools may not include religious instruction because it is the responsibility of the family, it happens that children are not being developed spiritually and this could influence the way in which individuals deal with traumatic childhood experiences.

This study represents a shift in focus with regard to studies related to traumatic events such as childhood sexual abuse (CSA). It endeavours to go beyond documenting the prevalence of CSA to understanding the moderating factors that encourage adaptive adjustment to CSA. The rationale of this study was to understand how personal beliefs in a just world, future aspirations and proactive coping in the context of an earlier traumatic event such as CSA, are related. My secondary interest was to understand how the aforementioned constructs feature in the development of resilience. I strove to do this by exploring the relationship between proactive coping, just-world beliefs (with specific reference to personal belief in a just world) and future aspirations of a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I made use of an instrumental case study design. A single participant was purposively selected for this study due to her unique features of being a self-identified resilient survivor of child sexual abuse. Data was collected over a period of three months by means of semi-structured interviews, drawings and theory-based scales. In this study I made use of qualitative data analysis to explore the theoretical relationships amongst the constructs. The results of the study suggest that there is a relationship between personal belief in a just world and religiosity, and that this relationship may mediate the optimistic orientation in the participant of the present study. There also appears to be a relationship between the personal belief in a just world and future aspirations of the participant in this study, suggesting that the role of just world beliefs in terms of the active pursuit and investment in future goals need to be further examined. Finally, the relationship between positive future aspirations and proactive coping was less clear, requiring further investigation to elucidate this relationship.

In Adult Survivors of Childhood Emotional, Physical, and Sexual Abuse: Dynamics and Treatment, Francisco G. Cruz, M.D., and Laura Essen, L.C.S.W., two senior therapists with years of experience in treating this population, give the clinician the tools he or she needs to work with abused patients. In clear prose, the authors cover clinical assessment of adult survivors, a broad spectrum of multi-modality treatment strategies and techniques for clinical intervention (including dynamic and cognitive approaches), transference and countertransference issues, the therapeutic relationship, defense mechanisms, grief work, and special clinical problems in treatment with adult survivors. The book's eclectic approach makes it accessible to therapists across a wide spectrum of orientations.

This work addresses the specific symptoms and problems experienced by many adult survivors of childhood sexual and emotional abuse. These may include problems with substance abuse, self-mutilating behaviour, suicide attempts, eating disorders, dissociative reactions, depression, sexual dysfunctions, and serious interpersonal difficulties. The authors use imaginal exposure treatment and imaginal rescripting to replace the recurring abuse-related images with mastery imagery. They provide a comprehensive description of the cognitive behavioural treatment programme that can be implemented with survivors (male and female) of childhood sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.