A Single Case Study of an Emerging Adult Complex Trauma Survivor Pursuing a Graduate Degree

A complex trauma history is progressively detrimental and interferes with education in emerging adults. Instead of completing education at a higher level where fewer cases are found, previous studies have mostly targeted educational failure at the undergraduate level or below. A shift to a more positive view of the future for complex trauma survivors needs to be explored. A study of emerging adult graduate student complex trauma survivors helps understand the possibility of posttraumatic growth. This article presents a case study of a 24-year-old male who completed his graduate studies despite multiple stressors, i.e., the Covid-19 Pandemic and living with childhood complex trauma perpetrators. In addition to understanding growth and its dynamics, this study aims to understand whether the process was interrupted and whether relapse should be anticipated. There are four-theme results from interpretative phenomenological analysis that demonstrate academic persistence regardless of various difficulties, in line with resilience: firstly compromising with the demand, secondly negotiating self-potential despite shortcomings, thirdly opposing unchangeable destructive relationships with constructive ones. Posttraumatic growth may actually be indicated from areas outside the master's study, namely by developing meaningful relationships with compassion for perpetrators, gaining other significant persons, and persistently developing a talent that is the reason for higher education. The final one is the fourth result. Educators or practitioners can optimize student growth by encouraging each student's meaning of the major, understanding its relevance to the area they wish to develop and implicating it in assignments that pay attention individual uniqueness, as well as considering strengths in prognosis and interventions such as academic persistence, positive attributional style, coping flexibility, cognitively-controlled emotion-focused coping, and available support outside the family.