Therapists' in-session experiences with depressive clients: A grounded theory

Objective: This study explores the experiential process of psychotherapists during a session with a currently depressive client.

Method: Individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 30 therapists and the grounded theory method was used as a methodological framework.

Results: The therapists' experience was conceptualized as Experiential oscillation between getting closer to a client's depressive experience and moving away from it. Its development over the course of a session is depicted by a six-phase Depression Co-experiencing Trajectory model.

Conclusions: The resultant theory interconnects different therapists' emotional responses to a depressive client within a coherent process model, which allows us to track the changes in therapists' experiences, to name the relations between them, and to connect them with the therapy's in-session microprocesses.