The cross-functional team, composed by film producers, music lecturer and psychologists, developed the boxing workshop with the aim to help women who were sexually abused in their childhood to have a better wellbeing in their lives and to facilitate their recovery. The diaries were selected to compound the project with the aim to analyse through their registers the repercussion of the boxing sessions in their lives.
The workshop lasted 8 weeks and was held with 8 participants. There were produced 58 diaries, which were carefully reviewed and, due to the sensitive content, are not being showed here. I carried an analysis through each diary itself (focused on the user) and also through all diaries together (focused on the group). You can see in the picture above the preliminary major and minor themes that appeared, corresponding to each passage in the diary. After careful consideration, the themes were discussed with the team to define the main subjects to analyse and the name of the themes.
Three themes were identified for the purpose of the research: Empowerment, Connection/DIsconnection and Validation. These themes express a broader understanding of the feelings of being abused and conflictions around control, along with a sense of autonomy and agency, the (im)possibility of making a choice, and how they were now fighting back.
Lastly, the findings supported that the workshop achieved its goals and the users were benefiting from it. It also opened a path to the use of physical activities in psychotherapy.
Prospective PhD Student
The University of Melbourne
Feb 2020 — Oct 2020
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