Managing emotional labour in the provision of psychotherapy – what matters most

ABSTRACT

Objective

The current study sought to explore holistic factors perceived to be key in managing emotional labour effectively in psychologists providing psychotherapy. Identifying applicable factors in this occupational group is vital to understand how psychologists manage emotional labour and related constructs. The study aimed to contribute to a burgeoning conversation around the topic of emotional labour in psychologists and examined the following research question: How do psychologists providing psychotherapy manage emotional labour?

Method

Reflexive thematic analysis of data collected from 24 semi-structured interviews with psychologists who provide individual psychotherapy was conducted. This method enabled broad themes relating to the research question to be identified.

Results

Key factors for managing emotional labour were found and summarised by key themes of effective in-session regulation, effective post-session regulation, positive therapeutic relationships with clients, general lifestyle factors, evaluating therapeutic effectiveness, personal predispositions, and career experience.

Conclusions

Analysis of the findings found that novel factors including psychological flexibility, self-compassion, self-reflection, and career experience are important for effectively managing emotional labour. Researchers and clinicians would benefit from integrating the study’s findings into their respective practices.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Consistent with broader literature, emotional labour has been found to have relationships with undesirable constructs such as burnout in psychologists.

2. Some factors relevant to the management of emotional labour have been identified in other occupations for which the quality of emotional labour is different and therefore not necessarily transferrable.

3. Research examining the management of emotional labour has been limited to exploring strategies subsequent to its elicitation.

What this topic adds:

1. This study explores specific concepts key to the management of emotional labour in this unique profession.

2. These concepts are holistic and identify key management factors key that exist prior to, during, and consequent to the experience of emotional labour, including factors that are novel to the emotional labour literature.

3. The analysis contributes to a needed conversation around emotional labour in psychologists providing psychotherapy and provides interesting insights for researchers and practitioners to integrate into their daily practise.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional labour
• psychological flexibility
• self-compassion
• psychotherapy
• thematic analysis

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data are not available