What is it about?
Effective psychotherapy relies on empathy. How and when can therapists rely on their feelings to empathize with clients? Do the therapist’s feelings mirror the client’s feelings, or are they obstacles to empathy? This article seeks answers through a phenomenological analysis.
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Why is it important?
Empathy improves therapy, but therapists often get mixed messages about what it is and how to use their own feelings. This article explains empathy as both embodied resonance and narrative understanding, warns against treating the therapist’s feelings as a mirror of the client, and proposes a step‑by‑step training approach that separates—then integrates—story tracking and bodily awareness. The result is clearer boundaries, better attunement, and practical tools for supervision and curriculum design—right when AI confusion is muddying what “empathy” means.
Perspectives
As part of my training in emotion-focused therapy, I have participated in exercises to practice empathic resonance. The idea is to try to resonate in your body with what the client is expressing; we practice this in pairs. And the trainer even suggests trying to mirror the client's body position. And then, the instruction is that paying attention to your own feelings as a therapist, you try to capture what the client is feeling, the type of emotion, their intensity, and other qualities. This and similar exercises were helpful to me in my training as a psychotherapist. However, when I tried this and similar exercises with my own psychology students, they report feelings that are at odds with the experience of the person they are listening to. For example, one person talks about a situation that makes them angry, and the listener says the story made them sad. So, the first person does not experience empathy from the listener. I've been asking myself, based on my experience of something that is useful for me, but then find it's not useful when I teach to other students, can therapists rely on their feelings to empathize with clients? And if so, how?
Juan Pablo Kalawski
Universidad Autonoma de Chile
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Therapist Empathy and the Therapist’s Feelings, American Journal of Psychotherapy, March 2026, American Psychiatric Association,
DOI: 10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.20250068.
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Resources
Phenomenology of empathy and psychotherapy
Webinar presentation
Phenomenological considerations on empathy and emotions in psychotherapy
In this article we will present a phenomenological approach to empathy and its relationship with emotions in the context of psychotherapy, highlighting the importance of empathy as a key element of the therapist-client relationship and therapeutic process, regardless of the therapist’s approach. We will use a consensus definition of empathy taken from phenomenologically oriented philosophy to analyze therapist’s empathy, as well as client’s self-empathy and client’s empathic communication with others. We will discuss emotions as they usually manifest in the context of psychotherapy, specifically describing how certain emotions can disturb empathic communication in close personal relationships and how it is possible to reestablish empathic communication in psychotherapy. This article it is not only based on evidence from scientific literature but also incorporates the authors’ practical knowledge of psychotherapy.
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