Therapists’ emotional responses and their relation to patients’ experience of attunement and responsiveness

OBJECTIVE: therapy sessions, and patients' experience of them as attuned and responsive. METHOD: Forty patient-therapist dyads participated in 16 weekly sessions of Supportive Expressive Psychotherapy. Therapists' emotions were assessed on the Feeling Word Checklist-58. We examined one positive feeling (Parental) and one negative feeling (Inadequate) Following each session, patients and therapists rated responsiveness on the Patient's Experience of Attunement and Responsiveness. RESULTS: the session were positively associated with patients' ratings and their own ratings on all 3 PEAR subscales. Feeling Inadequate after the session was negatively associated with patients' ratings of helpfulness, achievement and empathy. Therapists' ratings were only negatively associated only with helpfulness. CONCLUSION: The study demonstrates that therapists' emotional reactions play a role in their patients' experience of their responsiveness.