Therapeutic trust in complex trauma: a unique person – centered understanding

ABSTRACT

We investigated the lived experience of therapeutic trust and its ruptures in working with clients with complex trauma presentations, a vulnerable and under-researched client group. A total of 13 clinicians and key informants, working in the field of complex trauma, were interviewed. Transcripts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to identify recurrent themes. The Nature, Function, Components, Process, and Challenges of building and maintaining therapeutic trust were identified. Therapeutic trust was experienced as a mechanism for reducing threat, processing vulnerability, and enabling accurately symbolisation. Focusing on trust and its ruptures seems key in working with clients presenting with complex traumas and potentially other severe and/or complex presentations. The importance of trust-focused person-centred approaches for addressing key psychological challenges, increasing engagement, and addressing experiences of disengagement in complex trauma is stressed. The central role of trust in the therapeutic relationship as a catalyst of change brings person- centred models to the fore of psychotherapy for complex trauma, as well as severe and/or complex presentations. In a traumatogenic world, therapists will be increasingly called to work with more clients presenting with traumas. A person-centred understanding seems to hold a lot of promise. Strategies for actively facilitating trust – focused, practice are proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Therapeutic trust
• therapeutic relationship
• complex trauma
• qualitative
• strategies for practice

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Correction

Acknowledgments

We thank the University in East of Scotland for supporting this work and for funding the study. We are grateful to clinicians and other key informants for their participation in this study. We are also grateful to Mrs Shauna Cleary Kielty, who was the research assistant to the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2023.2231195)

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Edinburgh Napier University [N/A].