The reactive therapist: The problem of interpersonal reactivity in psychological therapy and the potential for a mindfulness-based program focused on “mindfulness-in-relationship” skills for therapists.
Open accessAbstract
Impact of a short pre-session mindfulness exercise, performed by therapists in training in Bogotá city, on therapist's empathy, anxiety, attention and presence Novice therapists face a number of difficulties at the beginning of their clinical practice that interfere with their empathic capacity.This is problematic as empathy is the common factor that has been identified as the strongest predictor of clients' progress in therapy and as a necessary condition for change.Despite this, empathy has the capacity to not only be developed but also learned and empowered, and mindfulness, has proven to be a useful tool for this purpose.The present study is aimed to know the impact of a short pre-session mindfulness exercise on the therapeutic empathy of practicing clinicians, also on three variables that can influence this empathic ability: anxiety, presence and attention during the session and on the usefulness of the session perceived by the consultant.For this, a mixed sequential explanatory design was used in which 5 dyads formed by novice therapist with less than 2 years of clinical experience and consultants between 21 and 27 years old (3 women and 2 men) participated.The quantitative phase consisted of an intrasubject design of repeated measures, data was analyzed using nonparametric statistics, descriptive statistics, individual index of change and trend observation.The qualitative phase consisted of semi-structured interviews with the therapists, in which content analysis was used.The quantitative results indicate that the pre-session exercise had a varying impact for each therapist in the variables studied, except in attention, which showed a tendency to increase with the application of the exercise.The qualitative results highlight that the therapists perceived this short practice as an activity that promotes a better disposition to enter a therapeutic session and that favors their self-care.
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Mindfulness training assists therapists in developing affect regulation and reflection-in-action skills to navigate therapeutic alliance ruptures.
“Similarly, Macdonald and Muran (2021) emphasize the importance of mindfulness training as a means of assisting therapists in developing the necessary affect regulation and reflection-in-action skills to effectively navigate the inevitable interpersonal tensions that may arise in the therapeutic encounter (i.e. therapeutic alliance ruptures) while also equipping them to construct”
From Mapping mindfulness in psychotherapy: a scoping review on conceptualization, applications, and research directions (2026) · cites this paper as Macdonald and Muran, 2021
The available copy discusses a short pre-session mindfulness exercise and reports a tendency toward increased attention, but it does not address affect regulation, reflection-in-action, or navigating therapeutic alliance ruptures. Searches for those terms returned no relevant passage; the available passages have no section or page labels. (LLM, conf=0.76)
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References 94 · Cited by 23
- Authors
- Macdonald, J., & Muran, C. J.
- ORCID
- Macdonald, James
- Venue
- Journal of Psychotherapy Integration
- Published
- 2021-12
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 452-467
- ISSN
- 1053-0479 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-3696
- OpenAlex
- W3017278425
- Cited by
- 23
- References
- 94
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 6 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 0.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Journal of Psychotherapy Integration (publishedVersion)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Empathy and Medical Education
- Keywords
- therapist empathy, mindfulness, novice therapists, therapeutic presence, therapist anxiety, attention, therapist self-care, therapist training, interpersonal reactivity, therapeutic relationship
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