Click to edit Master subtitle style Personal Lives/Professional Practice The impact of the therapist’s personal life on their work with clients Marie Adams, MSc

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

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

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

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

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?

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 haven’t I asked you that you would like me know about you, particularly in relationship to your work with clients?

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.

Therapists’ depression

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

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.

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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