PT46 Enable The Client To Express Feelings and Emotions Within Humanistic Therapy

1
PT46 Enable the client to express feelings and

emotions within humanistic therapy
OVERVIEW
This standard is about working with feelings and emotions as a central aspect of
humanistic therapy. It focuses on how the therapist enables the client to connect with
and express feelings and emotions that are difficult to access and name, using creative
and active methods of expression. It describes how to work effectively with the feeling
and emotional content of a clients experience, as well as drawing on the therapists
emotional response to them.
This standard describes therapeutic practice adopted successfully in mental health and
wellbeing interventions for adults, based on the philosophical tenets of the humanistic
tradition and incorporating a range of approaches from a humanistic value base. (See
reference in the additional information section on page 3.) To apply this standard,
therapists also need to take account of the multiple problems and complex
co-morbidities that individual clients may bring to therapy.
Users of this standard will need to ensure that they are receiving supervision and that
their practice reflects up to date information and policies. This standard should be
understood in the context of the Digest of National Occupational Standards for
Psychological Therapies.
Version No 1
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
You will need to know and understand:
Understanding of human emotion
1. the range of feelings and emotions likely to be encountered in therapy

2. the verbal and non-verbal signs of an emotion that is present but unexpressed
3. methods by which expression of feelings can be expressed and moderated
4. the feelings and emotions the therapist finds it harder to access personally
Conditions for therapeutic change
5. the rationale for responding empathically to the client and being warm, open,
PT46 Enable the client to express feelings and emotions within humanistic therapy Page 1 of 4
Final version approved June 2010 © copyright Skills For Health
For competence management tools visit tools.skillsforhealth.org.uk
non-judgmental, genuine and transparent
6. how to employ the specific methodology, key concepts and relevant components
of the model being used
7. how to maintain therapeutic conditions
8. the psychological conditions that make change more likely
Principles of humanistic therapy
9. philosophy and principles that inform humanistic therapy

10. humanistic theories of therapeutic process
11. approaches to psychological therapy that have grown out of the humanistic
psychology movement
12. experiential methods of learning
13. non-humanistic approaches that influence humanistic therapy
Mental health and wellbeing
14. the range and severity of mental health difficulties and their presentation
15. factors associated with the emergence, development and maintenance of mental
health difficulties
16. humanistic models of mental distress
17. the ways in which mental health difficulties can impact on personal and
interpersonal functioning
18. models of a fully functioning individual
Human growth and development and the origins of psychological difficulties
19. models of change, health and wellbeing

20. the impact of conflicts within the individual
21. the impact of social context on psychological growth and development
22. the role that emotional experiencing has in an individuals awareness of how an
action contributes to growth
23. the role of relationship in the development of self-experience
24. the mechanisms and effects of internal processes out of the clients awareness in
the development of self-experience
25. the role of internal processes out of the clients awareness in difficulties in
self-experience
26. how thinking, feeling and behaviour are determined by an individuals subjective
reality
27. the impact on psychological development of empathic attunement and acceptance
and the extent of its absence during the formative years
28. the mechanism and effects of internalisation of the values, beliefs and attitudes of
others
29. the development and benefits of the capacity to reflect on inner processes and
experiences
30. the development of the capacity to balance inner and outer realities
31. multiple perspectives from which human experience can be viewed
Relational processes in the immediate therapeutic relationship
32. the mechanism and nature of shared meanings co-constructed by therapist and
client
33. how the therapeutic relationship reflects the relationship histories of both the client
and the therapist
34. how the explicit and implicit meanings that shape the clients and therapists
perceptions of their world may be experienced within and influence the therapeutic
relationship
35. how the clients explicit, manifest communications may contain an implicit, latent
meaning
36. ways in which aspects of past events can be re-experienced in the present
37. how the therapist may make use of their immediate emotional and embodied
reactions to the client
38. the ways in which the therapists immediate responses and experiences within
the therapeutic relationship can form a basis for communicating empathic
understanding and informing exploration of the clients subjectivity
The actualising tendency and process
39. the role of actualisation in human growth and health

40. the ways in which internal processes out of the clients awareness can
undermine, distort or block the actualising tendency
41. how the actualising tendency is expressed in the practice of humanistic therapy
42. the concept of symptoms as a signal for integrating experience and growth
43. the concept of symptoms as indicators of the actualisation process
PERFORMANCE CRITERIA
You must be able to do the following:
1. recognise the ways in which the client manages and processes their feelings and
emotions
2. attune to and empathically engage with the clients world
3. draw on your own emotional response to what the client is saying
4. discern and distinguish between the clients and your own emotional processes
5. draw on your own and the clients embodied experiencing
6. be open to dialogue between different aspects of the clients experience
7. help the client not to be overwhelmed by their emotions
8. acknowledge and empathise with the client over the risks they wish to take
9. help the client to express unexpressed emotions
10. accept and be aware of your own and the clients resistance to fully experience
feelings and emotions, where this exists
11. recognise the clients expression of their feelings towards you as therapist and
determine what they might mean, where this is of relevance to the client
12. enable the client to reflect on and make choices about the expression and
containment of feelings and emotions
13. help the client to develop, from their frame of reference, awareness of the impact
of their feelings and emotions on others
14. use supervision to uncover and explore your own unrecognised emotional
responses to the client and understand further their emotional world
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
This National Occupational Standard was developed by Skills for Health.
This standard is derived from research reported in Roth A D, Hill A and Pilling S (2009)
The competences required to deliver effective Humanistic Psychological Therapies.
Centre for Outcomes Research & Effectiveness (CORE) University College London.
This standard has indicative links with the following dimension within the NHS
Knowledge and Skills Framework (October 2004):
Dimension: Core 1 Communication

PT46 Enable The Client To Express Feelings and Emotions Within Humanistic Therapy

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

PT46 Enable The Client To Express Feelings and Emotions Within Humanistic Therapy

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

PT46 Enable The Client To Express Feelings and Emotions Within Humanistic Therapy

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

1

PT46 Enable the client to express feelings and

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

You will need to know and understand:

Understanding of human emotion

1. the range of feelings and emotions likely to be encountered in therapy

Conditions for therapeutic change

Principles of humanistic therapy

9. philosophy and principles that inform humanistic therapy

Mental health and wellbeing

Human growth and development and the origins of psychological difficulties

19. models of change, health and wellbeing

Relational processes in the immediate therapeutic relationship

The actualising tendency and process

39. the role of actualisation in human growth and health

You must be able to do the following:

This National Occupational Standard was developed by Skills for Health.

Dimension: Core 1 Communication

You might also like