Understanding the clients’ internalisation of the therapeutic process outside the counselling hour

Abstract

Counselling is intended to provide an opportunity for clients to examine themselves and their lives introspectively and reflexively with the goal of fostering positive change. The internalisation of the therapeutic process can serve as a crucial gauge to assess the occurrence of this change and the achievement of therapeutic goals. The enduring impact of counselling is heightened when clients internalise the entire counselling process, that includes assimilating the therapeutic relationship and the persona of the counsellor. This study set out to ask how internalisation occurs and how it is manifested in daily life. Through narrative inquiry, the study employed semi-structured interviews with six participants recruited from gatekeeper organisations. Five participants were still engaged in counselling at the time of interview, and one participant had terminated. Narrative inquiry was the chosen approach to elicit a co-constructed meaning from the participants’ experience who played the crucial role of being co-researchers. Following thematic analysis four main themes emerged: (1) initiating counselling, (2) therapeutic relationship as foundation for internalisation, (3) the clients’ lived experience of change, and (4) carrying the counsellor and counselling in daily life. Each theme was further unfolded and a total of fifteen subthemes were identified. The main findings of the study emphasise the significance of the therapeutic relationship, counsellor attributes, a safe therapeutic environment, and the importance of making use of the intersession experience and mental representations of counselling as a way to gauge consolidation of the counselling process.