Personal Lives/Professional Practice

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Personal Lives/Professional Practice
The impact of the therapists personal life on
their work with clients Marie Adams, MSc
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Background to the study

• Personal experience
• How did this affect my work ? Who noticed?
• Collegial support and revelations concerning
  other therapists experience
• Questioning my own contribution to the disaster

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How do therapists give meaning to their
personal lives in relation to their work with
clients/patients?

• Methodology
• Sample
• Process of analysis
• Preliminary findings
• Emerging themes
• Discussion

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Methodology

• The research is based on
• Interviews with 40 therapists
• Semi- structured interviews lasting between 35
  minutes and no longer than an hour
• Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
• Transcribed
• Nvivo programme for coding transcripts

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Sample

• 10 each in four traditions Humanistic,
  Psychoanalytic, Integrative and CBT
• UK, Canada and Australia
• Approached through internet searches,
  professional lists, personal referral and
  conferences, research website
• Gender 22 female and 18 men

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Questions

• Significant life event?
• How did you manage your working life around this
  event?
• How did this event impacted your work with
  clients?
• Would you manage things the same way now?
• Have you ever felt unfit to practice?
• Depression/Disenchantment
• What did you do about it?
• What did this mean to your ability to connect
  with your patients?

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Additional questions

• What do you think is significant in your history
  that led you to becoming a therapist?
• What do you think is significant in your history
  that has led you to becoming the kind of
  therapist you are?
• What havent I asked you that you would like me
  know about you, particularly in relationship to
  your work with clients?

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Preliminary finding

• 24 therapists revealed they had suffered
  depression in the course of their working lives
• 16 episodic
• 8 chronic
• Pope and Tabachnick (1994), 61 of 500 therapists
  questioned reported suffering depression, 29 had
  contemplated suicide.

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Therapists depression
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Abandonment in childhood

• 16 therapists abandoned in childhood
• 13 of depressed therapists experienced
  abandonment
• 2 others of those abandoned spoke of suffering
  anxiety, one chronically and the other
  episodically

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Time out when depressed

• Of 24 therapists, 15 took time out from working
• 12 admitted they would manage things differently
  if faced with same circumstances again.
• Of these 12, 9 struggled with episodic depression
  and 3 with chronic.

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Emerging themes

• How supported or not- therapists feel in times
  of struggle
• Importance of our history to our becoming
  therapists
• And the type of therapists we become as a result
  of our history

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Discussion?
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Thank You
mariead_at_aol.com www.marieadams.co.uk