A phenomenological investigation into the lived experience of courage for clients in psychological therapy

This research study is a phenomenological exploration into clients’ experiences of courage in psychological therapy. The research aims to develop an in-depth understanding of how clients in psychological therapy experience their courage to understand how courage may be considered in counselling psychology, to then develop therapeutic interventions that support clinical practice.
Clients’ perspectives were centralised to highlight the importance of hearing from clients to support therapeutic practice. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and object elicitation, five participants were interviewed twice using semi-structured interviews.
The analysis resulted in three superordinate themes. The first, “Falling Apart and Coming Back Together”, explores the issues which brought the participants to therapy which they linked to their experiences of courage. The second theme, “Learning Courage Within Therapy”, demonstrates how the participants discovered and strengthened their courage in therapy, and the significance of the therapeutic relationship on their courage development. Finally, the theme, “Translating Courage from Therapy into Life”, illustrates the ordinary moments when courage from therapy was brought into participants’ everyday lives.
The findings suggest that courage is a an implicit, intrapersonal, and interpersonal phenomenon which is subjective to the person experiencing it. This study found that clients can learn and develop their courage in psychological therapy. Thus, clients may benefit from having conversations about their courage to understand how they consider it both inside and outside of therapy. Understanding clients’ courage has applied implications for counselling psychology which supports clinical practice and clients’ wellbeing such as: developing courage to confront and deal with distress; and exploring courage to develop strength-based attributes and to understand personal competences.