Each month we highlight some practical resources for therapists interested in compassion. Our aim here is to provide a brief overview and offer you a few resources where you can find out more information if these ideas are of interest to you.
This Month’s Tool: Effective Use of Self-Disclosure in ACT with Compassion
Here is a handout we put together based on our experiences in working with self-disclosure with highly self-critical and shame prone clients. We decided to create this handout because the therapist’s personal disclosures can often be very useful in helping clients with perspective taking skills by developing a view of the therapist as someone who is compassionate, human, and kind and through this to be able to see themselves from a similar vantage point. In addition, these disclosures can be very helpful in creating a sense of shared humanity and also strengthening the therapeutic relationship, which can be particularly key when working with highly shame-prone and self-critical clients. At the same time, many of us have either been taught to avoid self-disclosure in therapy or have not had self-disclosure be a focus of training and so we feel hesitant to disclose. We hope this offers some helpful ideas in terms of how you might use self-disclosure most effectively. As always, we welcome your feedback.