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  • Title: How to become a responsive therapist: A study of experiences of developing therapists.
    Author: Wu MB, Levitt HM.
    Journal: Psychother Res; 2022 Jul; 32(6):763-777. PubMed ID: 34871126.
    Abstract:
    OBJECTIVE: : A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that psychotherapy is more effective when therapists tailor interventions to fit their specific clients' needs, a concept referred to as therapist responsiveness in the psychotherapy literature. However, the question of how therapists learn to become responsive rarely has been examined. METHOD: : The central question of this study, put to eleven graduate student therapist trainees, was, "How did you learn to be responsive to clients as a novice therapist, and in what ways have you become responsive?" A critical-constructivist grounded theory method was employed to generate themes from trainees' replies. RESULTS: : The analysis showed that trainees learned to improve their responsiveness to clients by: (1) becoming more aware of cues that signaled the need to adapt interventions (as related to psychotherapy change processes, client-therapist relational dynamics, clients' identities and cultural contexts, and the maximizing of clients' agency); (2) developing attunement to their own emotions and engaging in self-care; and (3) adopting mindsets that facilitated their trying new relational or therapy approaches while also maintaining professionalism. CONCLUSION: Based upon these findings, preliminary suggestions for responsiveness training are presented to guide programs that wish to train responsive psychotherapists .
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