‘It’s important for me not to let go of hope’: Psychologists’ in-session experiences of hope

Abstract

Helping professionals are often expected to have a ready and limitless supply of hope. However, novice and experienced psychologists alike recognize the challenge of maintaining hope when working with difficult presenting problems and demoralized clients. As professionals, to hold hope in session while witnessing our clients’ hopelessness and experiencing our own can be very difficult. The importance of client hope is well recognized in psychotherapy research, yet research exploring psychologists’ own experiences of hope has been neglected. This study, part of a larger program of research on hope in psychological practice, invited psychologists to reflect on their experiences of hope in practice. Interpersonal Process Recall allowed psychologist-participants to view playback of their video-recorded session and reflect on their in-session experiences of hope. Using basic interpretive inquiry, this case study identified categories of: (a) psychologist self-influence on hope, (b) client-specific factors relating to psychologist hope, and (c) psychologist hope experienced in the therapeutic relationship. Implications for practice include encouraging psychologist self-awareness about hope, recognizing that psychologist hope can fluctuate naturally in session, encouraging psychologist hopeful self-care, and seeing psychologist hope as providing therapeutic information.