‘It’s about having exposure to this’: investigating the training needs of therapists in relation to the issue of anomalous experiences

ABSTRACT

Two focus groups, consisting of six participants each, were conducted to explore the training needs of therapists when working with clients reporting anomalous experiences (AEs). AEs are those that ‘depart from our own familiar personal experiences or from the more usual, ordinary, and expected experiences of a given culture and time’ [Braud, W. (2012). Health and well-being benefits of exceptional human experiences. In C. Murray (Ed.), Mental health and anomalous experience (pp. 107–124). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.]. A thematic analysis revealed four themes: ‘Quite often we get taken by surprise because it’s a subject we don’t talk about’, ‘It’s just having this in our vocabulary’, ‘Demystifying and valuing AEs as normal human experiences’ and ‘To ask or not to ask?’. Most of the participants felt that they were unequipped to work with clients reporting AEs and suggestions were made for overcoming this.

KEYWORDS:

• Anomalous experiences
• focus groups
• counselling training
• students
• qualitative methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Roxburgh is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Northampton and course leader for the BSc Psychology and Counselling degree. She was awarded her PhD by the University of Northampton for research exploring the phenomenology and psychology of Spiritualist mediumship. Elizabeth has been awarded grants to undertake research on mediumship, synchronicity in the therapeutic setting and counselling for anomalous experiences. Elizabeth previously worked for the National Health Service as an Assistant Psychologist in a variety of clinical settings, including mental health, forensic and learning disability services. She is now a BACP-registered counsellor and volunteers for a charity organisation.

Rachel Evenden is a Lecturer at the University of Northampton. Her research and teaching covers a broad range of subject areas including counselling, spirituality and positive psychology. Rachel is a BACP-registered counsellor and was awarded her MSc in Integrative Counselling from the University of Northampton where she undertook research on a counselling approach to mediumship, which explored adaptive outcomes of grief following an exceptional experience.

Notes

1. The Division of Clinical Psychology informed us that they could not send out our request for research participants on the Pre-Qualification Group announcement list because they do not circulate individual research requests in line with the DCP’s email announcement list policy. We were also unable to post on the discussion forum of the DCP website as neither author is a member of this division. We could have posted a notice in The Psychologist to recruit participants but this incurs a charge and no funds were available to do so.

2. The authors would be happy to design such a resource in collaboration with the BACP.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bial Foundation under Grant number [108/12].