Being a Therapist - an Art of Balance: Three family therapists' experience and awareness of managing their own feelings in meeting with clients

Abstract

This study has looked at self-awareness of three Family therapists when it comes to managing their own feelings. The data collection method used is qualitative semi-structured interview, with a phenomenological background. To analyze the data, The Constant Comparative Method from Grounded Theory (Postholm, 2005) was used as inspiration.

Three main themes emerged from the data; 1)"The art of Balance", which is a theme shining through the whole thesis. 2) "Human meets human" is a theme that provides important background information on the way the therapists think about their practice and helps us understand their kind of awareness. And 3) "Meeting with one`s own feelings" which contains the research participants understanding of feelings in general and how they relate to and manage their own feelings.

In order to shed light on the data and contextualize them, different theories have been used. For instance, Rogers (1961) is used to shed light on the relationship between client and therapists, Jordan (Jordan, 2001, 2011) for understanding self-awareness and Kvalsund (2005), Damasio (2002) and Hørven (2004) in order to explore the phenomenon of feelings. In addition, new research has been used to show the relevance of this study, such as Moltu, Binder, Nielsen and Høstmark (2010).

The study shows that self-awareness is important for therapists in order to manage their own feelings in meeting with clients and that becoming aware of the process going on inside oneself and reflecting upon it is an invaluable resource for a therapist. The research participants highlighted inner dialogue as a tool for doing this, and the inner dialogue is a process of reflecting upon and realizing what is going on inside, and what that is about.