Reflective Skills, Empathy, Wellbeing, and Resilience in Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Trainees Participating in Mindfulness-Based Self-Practice/Self-Reflection

Self-Practice/Self-Reflection (SP/SR) is an aspect of therapist training and professional development aimed at enhancing therapy skills, empathy, wellbeing, and resilience in the ultimate furtherance of client outcomes. For many decades, intensive SP/SR has been a required part of therapist training in many countries but relatively little is known about the effect of SP/SR. Studies have found cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) therapists trained under a Beckian CBT paradigm benefitted from more time limited Beckian SP/SR. Mindfulness-based CBT is a more recent third-wave CBT paradigm with psychological process aims similar to those of SP/SR. While training in mindfulness-based CBT often has prominent SP/SR aspects, and mindfulness practice has been shown to benefit health care providers personally and professionally, to date no evaluations have been reported specifically of effects of participation of CBT trainees in stand-alone mindfulness-based SP/SR that meets regulatory requirements for more intensive SP/SR. A study on SP/SR training meeting German requirements is reported here. Post-graduate CBT trainees (N = 95) were assigned to delayed or immediate SP/SR with those in the delayed SP/SR condition crossing-over into SP/SR training after two baseline evaluations on a variety of reflective skill, wellbeing, and resilience measures spaced six to 9 months apart before participating in 120–150 hours of stand-alone mindfulness-based SP/SR followed by a third reevaluation on all study measures. Participants assigned to the immediate SP/SR condition underwent identical SP/SR training with pre/post assessments. Results indicate participation in intensive stand-alone mindfulness-based SP/SR resulted in favorable changes in measures operationalizing all variables. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for training and professional development of CBT therapists.