Since 1994, the award-winning Cambodian Genocide Program, a project of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, has been studying these events to learn as much as possible about the tragedy, and to help determine who was responsible for the crimes of the Pol Pot regime.

In January 1979, Pol Pot and his brutal Khmer Rouge regime were defeated. Under new progressive leadership, the country struggled to re-emerge from the devastation and pioneer the difficult transition to a new era of peace and tranquility for a country and people that had endured an unprecedented reign of terror. That era of peace and tranquility continued as Cambodia embarked on the 21st century and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the ECCC, successfully prosecuted and imprisoned senior regime leaders in a sequence of criminal trials that many Cambodians viewed in person. Justice having been served, even if imperfectly, the country and its people are now poised to enter an era of greater peace and tranquility. That peace will be inspired by how the nation reconciled itself to this difficult era and triumphed over it, confident that the tragedy it created will never be repeated.

My personal life trauma experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime are described in this paper along with applications to Constructivist Self Development Theory (CSDT). This theory provides a basis for understanding the interrelatedness of biological and psychological self adaptation necessary to surviving and maintaining a consistent sense of self and the world. Five areas of self that were described in CSDT and which were applicable to my experiences of trauma are as follows:

The aim of the present study was to investigate the moderating role of racial–ethnic identity in the relation between emotion dysregulation and alcohol use and related harms among Asian Americans.