5.1 therapeutic skills

5.1 therapeutic skills

Emphatic response

• emphatic understanding

• emphatic affirmation

• emphatic evocation

• emphatic exploration

• emphatic conjecture

emphatic understanding : what it does

Captures & articulates the client’s emotional experience, helping them stay with it & explore it.

emphatic understanding : when to use it

• When you want to bring the focus onto the client’s emotional experience or facilitate experiencing.

emphatic understanding : how → typical language / tone

• Warm

• Accepting tone

• Name an element of the client’s emotional experience

empathic affirmation : what it does

• Validates & legitimises the client’s experience, especially when they judge, reject, or feel ashamed of it

empathic affirmation : when to use it

• When the client criticises, doubts, or feels ashamed of what they are experiencing.

empathic affirmation : how → typical language / tone

• Affirming tone; make the reasons for the experience explicit: “No wonder…”, “It makes sense…”

Emphatic evocation → WHAT — What it does 

• Brings the client into closer contact with an emotional experience, rather than simply describing it.

Emphatic evocation → WHEN — When to use it 

• When a primary emotion is present but not yet fully activated or experienced.

Emphatic evocation → HOW — Typical language / tone

• Emotional or vulnerable tone; use bodily references, expressive or metaphorical language.

Empathic exploration → WHAT — What it does 

• Follows the emotional edge of the experience to discover what is emerging or meaningful.

Empathic exploration → WHEN — When to use it 

• When you notice an emotional marker or something meaningful that could be explored further.

Empathic exploration → HOW — Typical language / tone

• Curious, tentative tone; invite the client to stay with & explore their experience.

Empathic conjecture → WHAT — What it does 

• Tentatively puts words to something implicit in the client’s experience & checks whether it fits.

Empathic conjecture → WHEN — When to use it 

• When an important aspect of the experience is present but the client has not yet put it into words.

Empathic conjecture → HOW — Typical language / tone

• Tentative language: “I wonder if…”, “Could it be that…?”; always check the fit.

Empathic Responses in experiential therapy allow the therapist to

• move from understanding the client's experience towards helping the client enter into, deepen, & transform that experience.

Empathy can do more than reflect experience

•  it can help the client stay with it, feel its legitimacy, deepen it, & discover what lies beneath it.

Emotions in Emotion Focused Therapy

• Primary adaptive emotions (all emotions)

• Primary maladaptive emotions (sadness, shame and fear)

• Secondary emotions (usually anger, anxiety)

• Instrumental emotions

Primary adaptive emotions (all emotions)

• These are healthy, useful emotional responses to a situation that help us identify what we need & guide us towards an appropriate action.

  • Example: sadness after a loss → “I need comfort and connection.”

Primary maladaptive emotions (sadness, shame and fear)

• These are deep emotional responses that were once useful but have become unhelpful because they are triggered automatically in situations where they no longer fit.

  • Example: feeling worthless whenever someone criticises you → the old emotional response is activated even when the criticism does not mean you are worthless.

Secondary emotions (usually anger, anxiety)

• These are emotions we experience in response to another emotion—often because the primary emotion is difficult to access or tolerate.

  • Example: feeling angry because you are actually hurt (shame) or afraid.

Instrumental emotions

• These are emotions expressed or displayed to influence another person or achieve a particular interpersonal outcome, whether consciously or unconsciously.

  • Example: displaying anger to make someone back down, even when anger is not the underlying feeling.

 How to empathically respond to each emotion?