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Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work

Clients who seek psychotherapeutic treatment have had personal experiences involving some form of distress. Although research has shown that the client's ability to experience and express painful emotions during therapy can have a therapeutic benefit, it has also been argued that displaying dis...

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Autor principal: Muntigl, Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7042173/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32140117
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03052
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author Muntigl, Peter
author_facet Muntigl, Peter
author_sort Muntigl, Peter
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description Clients who seek psychotherapeutic treatment have had personal experiences involving some form of distress. Although research has shown that the client's ability to experience and express painful emotions during therapy can have a therapeutic benefit, it has also been argued that displaying distress may convey a form of helplessness and vulnerability, and thus, clients may be reluctant to cast themselves in this light. Using the methods of conversation analysis, this paper explores how a client's upsetting experience is managed over the course of a single session of client-centered therapy. The main analytic focus will be on (1) the different therapist practices used to orient to the client's distress, (2) the varying forms of client opposition to the therapist's attempts to work with the distress, and (3) the context sensitivity of orienting to distress and how certain practices may be uniquely shaped by what had occurred in prior talk. It was found that, whereas certain types of therapist responses tended to be endorsed by the client, others were forcefully rejected as inappropriate displays of understanding or empathy. By focusing on repeated sequential episodes over time in which a client conveys distress, followed by the therapist's response, this paper sheds light on the interactional trajectory through which a client and therapist are able to resolve impasses to emotional exploration and to successfully secure extended and intense emotional work.
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spelling pubmed-70421732020-03-05 Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work Muntigl, Peter Front Psychol Psychology Clients who seek psychotherapeutic treatment have had personal experiences involving some form of distress. Although research has shown that the client's ability to experience and express painful emotions during therapy can have a therapeutic benefit, it has also been argued that displaying distress may convey a form of helplessness and vulnerability, and thus, clients may be reluctant to cast themselves in this light. Using the methods of conversation analysis, this paper explores how a client's upsetting experience is managed over the course of a single session of client-centered therapy. The main analytic focus will be on (1) the different therapist practices used to orient to the client's distress, (2) the varying forms of client opposition to the therapist's attempts to work with the distress, and (3) the context sensitivity of orienting to distress and how certain practices may be uniquely shaped by what had occurred in prior talk. It was found that, whereas certain types of therapist responses tended to be endorsed by the client, others were forcefully rejected as inappropriate displays of understanding or empathy. By focusing on repeated sequential episodes over time in which a client conveys distress, followed by the therapist's response, this paper sheds light on the interactional trajectory through which a client and therapist are able to resolve impasses to emotional exploration and to successfully secure extended and intense emotional work. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-02-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7042173/ /pubmed/32140117 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03052 Text en Copyright © 2020 Muntigl. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Muntigl, Peter
Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work
title Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work
title_full Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work
title_fullStr Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work
title_full_unstemmed Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work
title_short Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work
title_sort managing distress over time in psychotherapy: guiding the client in and through intense emotional work
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7042173/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32140117
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03052
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