Tara Fox

Aim/Purpose: The broad research aim of this was exploring therapists’ awareness of how their spirituality presents within the therapeutic relationship in their clinical practice. The sample was drawn from therapists who identified as spiritual and who worked in secular as opposed to faith-based settings. The overarching question was: How does your spirituality play a part in the counselling process? How does it manifest in the therapeutic relationship? Design/Methodology: A qualitative methodological approach was adopted with a sample of three experienced counsellors. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used as the method of data collection. The data was analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) from a social constructionist framework. Therapist spirituality manifests as an openness to connection with the client which was described by the participants as containing energy or ‘third other’. These experiences are felt to be natural when working with clients. It also emerged that there is a reticence or a fear of being judged for having spiritual experiences or beliefs when working as a practitioner. The development and strengthening of therapist spiritual awareness emerges over time through counselling training and client work. A limitation within training programmes is that spirituality is not theoretically embedded in courses. It was addressed informally only. It is concluded from this study that therapists’ experience and openness to spirituality mean that therapists are competent to working with not just the psychological but also the spiritual dimension and the depth of connection that can emerge in the therapeutic relationship with their clients. The researcher poses a concluding question: Could training providers better prepare therapists for working with spirituality in the therapeutic relationship? What are the self-care implications for working at this depth?

Tara Fox and Jayne Godward explore the concept of identity and look at how the PD group can be used to become more aware of ourselves and our reactions to other people.

ara Fox has gradually been introducing some mindfulness on the courses she teaches on and has been studying this in relation to self compassion. In chapter 16 , she shares her views and findings in this area. This will be a useful introduction for students who find it difficult to be ‘in the moment’ with clients and who suffer from anxiety about their performance as fledgling counsellors, tending to be overly self-critical.

Research literature has highlighted the occurrence of deathbed vision (DBV), deathbed coincidence (DBC), and after-death communication (ADC) phenomena. To better inform the mental health profession about how psychotherapists respond to and are affected by working with these client experiences, we interviewed four therapists in private practice in the United Kingdom who reported having worked with clients who disclosed one or more of the phenomena. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), we identified three main themes from their accounts: (a) making sense of inexplicable transpersonal experiences on a professional and personal level, (b) experiencing personal transformation, and (c) perceiving clients’ therapeutic benefits from addressing DBV, DBC, and ADC experiences. We discuss these findings in the context of the existing literature along with implications for clinical practice and possible future research directions.

Aims/Purpose: The purpose of this research was to explore the experience of University students who have engaged voluntarily in a 12-week resilience training programme during their first year of study. Design/Methodology: Initially we conducted a scoping literature review guided by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) and (Peters et al. 2015b; Khalil et al. 2016) methodology, this helped us to formulate our research question. The pilot study involved facilitating a focus group with seven students who were all on an undergraduate degree relating to the field of mental health. The participants, drawn from 70 cohort had engaged & completed a minimum of 80% of the resilience programme which had met 12 times weekly. The focus group enabled participants to speak freely enabling the moderator of the group to ‘access participants everyday vocabularies’ (Silverman 2020: 223). The group interview was transcribed verbatim and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Ethical Approval: Ethical approval was granted through the Leeds Beckett University School of Health and Community Studies Ethics Board. Results/Findings: The in-depth analysis of the group’s account captured participants’ journeys through the process of learning resilience skills and implementing them in their everyday lives. The findings suggested that most participants considered resilience skills beneficial in terms of helping them to cope with the emotional and cognitive challenges of not only their educational experience but also life in general. Research Limitations: The ‘clients’ were selected from one cohort of students on the same course; therefore the perspective is of the experience of the same programme. There was also a time limitation in that the study results are drawn from a short time of engagement with the programme rather than a longitudinal study. Conclusions/Implications: Seven themes provided in-depth information about participants’ lived experiences of attending and being in the resilience group, implicating exploration of current practice and development in resilience training/programme service provision in higher education/other organisations supporting mental health students. Recommendations from this study offer ways in which students’ resilience could be strengthened and ways their multiple needs may be met. The findings can inform students’ mental health and wellbeing policies as well as education strategies for teaching first year students many of whom are away from home for the first time.