Personal Therapy and Self-Compassion: Impact on Therapist’s Personal and Professional Growth

The current research literature on the effectiveness of personal therapy has failed to conclusively determine that it is beneficial for therapists’ personal and professional development (Haikal, 2022; Macran & Shapiro, 1998). Even though various studies had reported a number of benefits of personal therapy, there were also accounts of personal therapy being counterproductive towards therapists’ growth. This article adopted a mixed-method research design to understand how non-mandatory personal therapy impacted the personal and professional development of qualified therapists in Singapore. Participants’ self-compassion was measured to examine how this trait influenced the impact of personal therapy in the participants. The findings of this article indicated that participants with higher levels of self-compassion obtained more benefits to their personal and professional development following personal therapy. In addition, this article found that participants with lower levels of self-compassion experienced more negative impacts of personal therapy. The implications of these findings and future directions for research were also discussed.