Paste your esIntroduction
This study is a phenomenological investigation into mothers’ lived experiences of mothering their child(ren) whilst undertaking the process of training to be a therapist. It aims to explore how mothers experience nurturing their young children whilst being taken through the challenging process of dismantling defences.
When I started my training, I was a mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old and was pregnant with my second child. My research topic emerged from my experience of being a mother of young children whilst training to be a psychotherapist. I have experienced deep transformation as well as anxiety during my training, and have sometimes worried and wondered about my capacity to mother my young children throughout a process in which it felt like I was being taken apart.
By carrying out this piece of research I hoped to explore the experience of other mothers on the same journey as myself. Did they also worry about their capacity to mother their young children at the same time as being faced with profound realisations about the way they themselves were mothered in infancy? Were they also concerned about the possible impact of their children being exposed to their own disintegration/ fragmentation/ trauma? I hoped to find out whether other mothers felt their particular experience was acknowledged and/or supported by the training organisation throughout the training period.
Reflexivity
From the start of this project I was aware that I might be looking for a replication of my own experience in other mothers. Throughout this piece of work I will detail how I have attempted to contain this bias in order that it not contaminate my findings. Robust qualitative research goes hand in hand with the process of reflexivity (Elliott, Fischer and Rennie, 1999). Reflexivity has been described as a practice in which researchers turn a “critical gaze towards themselves” (Finlay, 2003 p3). It enables the researcher to both develop an awareness of their own stance, whilst also owning it, and discern the impact it may have when surveying the experience of others (e.g. Ribbens, 1989; Smith, 1988). This evolves from the belief that it is impossible for researchers to remain removed and detached from, or unbiased about the work they do.
The topic of this study is so close to my heart that it’s impossible for me to remain emotionally detached from it. In order for me to bring my own biases or “fore-structure” (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009) into my awareness I have been recording all of the thoughts, feelings and reactions that have come up for me when undertaking writing this research since writing my research proposal two years ago.
In one of my journals during the third year of my training I described, when connecting with my childhood wounding, feeling “really scared that my children would see this shell, you know, like this devastated shell and what would that do to them?…Where would their sense of security be?” (Cassidy, 2015) listen to recording and use that instead. Throughout the course I have explored my own lived experience of being a mother and a trainee psychotherapist in my personal therapy and supervision. In addition, I have been a research participant in two other research projects about motherhood. I believe that my exploration of the issue of motherhood in different settings has given me an idea of the way in which my subjective experience will affect the double hermeneutic (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009) when interviewing my participants. I also feel these explorations have slowly brought my thoughts and feelings around this topic into a more conscious realm.
I’m aware of my own very mixed and complex feelings and experiences surrounding my exploration of being a mother on my psychotherapy training. Having had both challenging and illuminating experiences I feel passionate about other mother’s experiences being heard, and about mothers having the space to explore them in a way that they haven’t before. However, I’m aware that my own passion for the subject might affect the way that I perceive other’s experiences, especially if they happen to be very different to my own. I wonder if my experience will feel less valid than theirs if this is the case, and if I might therefore unknowingly seek narratives that I can relate to.
When I collect and analyze the data I will strive to counter, or bracket, my own bias by processing the work with my research supervisor, and in my personal therapy and journal. I know this is crucial for the integrity for the project. I also realise I must continue to acknowledge my own relationship to the topic, and to my findings throughout. I look forward to hearing other mother’s lived experiences of being counselling/psychotherapy trainees and feel passionate about giving them the opportunity to explore them in more depth.
Relevance to Psychotherapy Training and Practice
“Being a mother, speaking to the client who’s a mother, there’s a kind of empathy, an explicit understanding of, yeah…we’ve both been through this…” (George 2011, p66)
I hope that by accessing trainees’ lived experiences of motherhood my project will provide the field with a richer understanding of this experience and of the unique challenges that mothers face when training to be therapists. Celenza (2010) argues that therapists are often drawn to the profession as a result of their own childhood wounding. Because women who have children compose a significant proportion of those both training to be therapists and seeking counselling, and because parenthood itself poses many challenges, including the triggering of parents’ earlier wounding (Siegel 1999) the study of theories that examine the impact of the relationship between mothers and infants is likely to bring up difficult feelings both in relation to trainee mother’s own experiences of being mothered in infancy, and/or to their more recent experiences of mothering their own infants. For this reason, I wonder if motherhood as a subjective experience might need more explicit focus as a topic during the training in order that therapists are able to help clients who are mothers feel more able to connect with their unique experiences. Not all of those who study to be therapists are parents, however, and this approach may be very problematic for childless trainees.
My hope is that a phenomenological focus on motherhood can be linked back to the way psychotherapists practice. I also hope that, by examining the experience of mothers training to be therapists, my study might inform the development of psychotherapy trainings that address the particular needs of trainees who are parents.
Research aims
My research aims to examine the way in which psychotherapy trainings impact mothers from a subjective viewpoint. This is currently an under-researched area. I aimed to investigate ‘the lived experience of mothers who are bringing up young children whilst training to be therapists: and its impact upon their mothering’. In particular, I was interested in exploring the mother’s perceived impact of undergoing the training process on their ability to attend to the psychological needs of their child(ren). I also wonder if mothers and/or parents who are training to be therapists feel the need for a specific space for them to explore the challenges particular to them, and how this might be facilitated either within psychotherapy trainings, or outside of them.
I believe an exploration of the experiences of both mothers and fathers would be of equal interest and value to the field. However, when considering the scale of this study, and when thinking about the differences in the ways in which mothers and fathers experience parenthood, I felt that including both would broaden my study too much, and therefore narrowed the focus to the experience of mothers.
Key terms
Defined below are the terms I use throughout this piece of work, and my understanding of them.
Motherhood – The state of being a mother.
ETG – Experiential Training Group.
‘Training’ – This word is used to encompass counselling and psychotherapy training, personal therapy, theoretical learning, training groups, and supervision.
‘Therapist’ – I use this word to denote both psychotherapists and counsellors.
‘Personal Process’ – I use this when referring to the therapeutic processes (both intrapsychic and interpersonal) that trainee therapists undergo during their counselling/psychotherapy training.
‘Psychotherapy’ – I use this in reference to both counselling and psychotherapy.
Literature Review
Introduction
Very few studies have been conducted into the experience of being a mother whilst training to be a psychotherapist, though there is an enormous amount of literature on motherhood. I researched the literature in the following pertinent areas: the idealisation of motherhood; motherhood ambivalence and regret; identity and transformation in motherhood; trainees’ experiences of psychotherapy training; trainee experiences from other related fields; and mother’s experiences of training to be therapists. I evaluated the merits of the existent literature, and recorded any noteworthy themes. The experience of motherhood is constantly evolving, for this reason I limited my literature search to an approximate 30-year window.
My Search
I carried out an in-depth search of the literature on Google Books and Google Scholar, Amazon books, Athens, and Pepweb. I searched the BACP, Minster Centre and Jstor dissertation databases. I also searched publications on Shibboleth, Pscyhnet, Scopus, Wiley and Taylor and Francis. I accessed articles through Oxford Libraries online (solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and individual journal websites, and through the EthOS Online (British Library thesis database). I asked contacts in related fields for references, and I put a request for relevant research out to other members of The Relational School.
I adapted my search terms as I went along, looking at the results that came up and refining my search to find any relevant literature. Bibliographies from relevant books and papers provided additional reference material. Please see Appendix 1 for a complete list of my search terms. My comprehensive search of the literature for my specific topic – exploring the experiences of mothers undertaking a training in psychotherapy – generated two small studies and a few references (detailed below) demonstrating that this is a new field. This came as a surprise to me because many trainee counsellors/psychotherapists are women, and lots of these women are also mothers.
Motherhood
In order to examine the experience of women – both as mothers and psychotherapy trainees – I feel it is important to look at how ideas of motherhood are created. There is a substantial body of literature devoted to motherhood. In this section I will break the experience down into the following sub-headings: idealisation of motherhood; motherhood ambivalence/ regret; and loss and transformation of identity through motherhood.
Idealisation of Motherhood
“Mothering is neither a unitary experience for individual women nor experienced similarly by all women.” (Arendell 2000, p1196)
Motherhood in the twenty-first century is as diverse as the individual mothers themselves. My review of the literature is set within the context of the prevailing ideologies in the west. The societal expectation is often that mothers should experience solely positive feelings about motherhood, and that they must embody the of the ‘mother’ with which society feels comfortable (Hays, 1996; Marshall, 1991; Nicolson, 1999). As a result women struggle to make sense of what idealised notions of motherhood mean to them as individuals, whilst undertaking the complex tasks involved in mothering (Choi, Henshaw, Baker, & Tree, 2005; Shelton & Johnson, 2006).
Motherhood Ambivalence/ Regret
Despite the fact that no universal experience of motherhood exists (McMahon 1995) and children don’t inspire one single emotion in mothers (Arendell 2000) those who find themselves unable to fit into the dominant ideology often feel guilty and to blame (Arendell, 1999; Phanco, 2003; Raskin, 2006; Parker, 1995; Smith, 1994). Personal accounts that describe the reality of the experience of motherhood, which include mothers feeling lonely and exhausted, paint a picture that is at odds with idealised notions of motherhood (Turner 2016, Cook 2012, Cusk 2003).
Women who have addressed the hardships involved in mothering in their writing describe a wide range of emotions, with blissful fulfilment at one end, and maternal ambivalence/ regret at the other (Shelton and Johnson 2006; Parker 1994 and Donath 2016). Examining motherhood through the prism of psychoanalysis, Parker (1994) says maternal ambivalence is “the unacceptable face of motherhood” (1994, p14) which is part and parcel of mothering. In Shelton and Johnson’s (2006) study, which explores ideologies of mothering as well as the real experiences of mothers, participants voice their experiences of maternal ambivalence. Recent studies exploring motherhood have given voice to feelings that are so socially unacceptable to be almost completely disavowed.
Israeli sociologist Donath (2016) published a narrative study based on interviews with 23 Israeli women who regretted being mothers. One described her experience as “the nightmare of my life” (Donath, 2016 p356). Donath argues that, for some, motherhood can be “a realm of distress, helplessness, frustration, hostility and disappointment” (Donath, 2016 p344). Feelings of wanting to undo motherhood are often viewed by society as unsavoury, even deviant, and as a result, the experiences of women who feel this way continue to be largely unvoiced. I believe Donath’s study brings to light experiences of mothers that must be heard, however it is important to note that Donath purposefully excluded some mother’s experiences, with five of the participants who expressed a willingness to take part, but who later said they experienced ambivalence rather than regret about their motherhood, left out of the study.
Loss and Transformation of Identity through Motherhood
Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern (1998) say motherhood brings about a major transformation in a woman’s sense of identity, and this is borne out in the research. Arnold-Baker’s (2014) phenomenological research examines how women make sense of their journey into motherhood; the meaning motherhood has for them; and how they integrate this new identity into their sense of self. Arnold-Baker discovered that the reality of being a mother was very different to how these women imagined it would be, and that motherhood caused women to reassess their beliefs, values, and motivations in life.
Cole’s grounded theory project (2005) examined cultural representations of motherhood and their impact, specifically on mothers. Their seventy-two participants filled out a questionnaire, seventeen of which then took part in a research interview by email, and four of these mothers were then interviewed face-to-face. This study paints a multi-layered picture of how these western women made sense of and experienced their identities as mothers in the context of the early twenty-first century. These women said they experienced social constructions of motherhood as idealistic, and that these resulted in mothers feeling guilty. They believed their identities as mothers were impacted by a wide range of influences, and they said they experienced maternal ambivalence as well as loss and transformation through the process of becoming mothers. Holmes’ (2006) thesis also explores the question of how a group of mothers felt ideologies around motherhood in the twenty-first century constricted or empowered them. Interviews were conducted with eight women in Greater Vancouver. Some mothers said that at times they felt pressured to live up to the idealized notion of motherhood, however others believed that decisions they made in relation to mothering were influenced, in the main, by their own beliefs and choices.
In 1997 Weaver and Ussher explored the way that women’s sense of their identities changed after becoming mothers. They discovered that the societal expectations and idealisation of motherhood and the demands of being a mother often resulted in women feelings of disillusionment and loss of identity. In contrast Laney et al’s (2014) grounded theory study examined how being a mother contributes to the development of adult identity. The thirty participants were all members of academic staff at colleges and universities across the United States. The main theme to emerge was that of motherhood expanding the self ‘personally, relationally, generationally, and vocationally’ (Laney 2014, p1). Several of the women said that having children had made them more attentive to others’ needs, and they described motherhood as an experience that altered their identities. The results of this study were limited in that the participants came from a similar social class, and were similarly educated, however, I believe it broadens our knowledge of motherhood identity by pinpointing areas in which women who become mothers experience a deep sense of change both within themselves, and in relation to others.
I turn my attention next to the context of psychotherapy trainings.
The Impact of Training to be a Therapist on Personal Process and Relationships
Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern (1998) describe motherhood as a life-altering event, and the process of change involved in psychotherapy training is arguably an equally transformative experience (Clifford 2010, Grafanaki 2010, Pascual-Leone et al 2012). Clarke’s (2010) paper, which sets out to examine the parallels between ‘becoming a mother and becoming a psychotherapist,’ unfortunately keeps the exploration of being a mother separate from the experience of training to be a psychotherapist.
The Role of the ‘self’ in Training to Become a Psychotherapist/ Counsellor
Grafranki (2010) believes that “learning more about the challenges counsellors encounter during their training years can significantly contribute to the advancement of counsellor education.” The development of the capacity for self-reflection is an essential component of all psychotherapist/counsellor training courses, and it is widely recognised that the training process can result in “intense stress” (Skovholt & Ronnestad, 2003, p45) as “significant shifts in identity, self knowledge and confidence” take place in individuals (Folkes-Skinner, Elliott, & Wheeler, 2010, p90). Inevitably these changes in the person of the trainee impact all of their close relationships. Currently, extant research in the field focuses on the effect of trainee therapist on how they practice therapy, rather than the impact that undertaking the training has on the world of the trainee (Truell, 2001).
Some qualitative research projects (Rønnestad and Ladany 2006, Folkes-Skinner 2010, De Stefano et al (2007), Howard et al 2006) have explored the following areas of counselling/psychotherapy trainings: the attainment of skills and the trainee’s perspective on the effectiveness/ ineffectiveness of their experience of psychotherapy training; the trainee’s experience of learning; and the emotional demands of therapy trainings. However, these areas remain to be under-examined.
Personal Accounts of the Experience of Training
Personal accounts of the experience of training have been written by Baker (1998), Battye (1991a), Johns (1996), Karter (2002), Tran (2004), and Nabal (2009). Despite being limited, these small studies, in one of which the experience of motherhood and training is also briefly explored (Battye 1991a), bring to life the experience of training to be a therapist.
One facet of training to be a counsellor which some studies have attempted to examine is the impact the experience has on the personal lives of trainees. Considering the intense ‘process’ that takes place during this period, and the necessity of deep personal involvement on the part of the trainee counsellor when conducting therapy, the trainee and their lives outside of the training are likely to be deeply impacted by the experience in various ways.
Sampaio (2007), McAuliffe (2002), Pascual-Leone et al (2012), Skovholt and Rønnestad (2003), Bavridge (2011), and Morgan (2007) all undertook research projects that aimed to address how training to be, and practicing as, a professional counsellor affects one’s life. Collectively these studies go some way to illustrate the way that trainees are impacted by the undertaking.
Sampaio (2007) conducted semi-structured interviews with six professional counsellors who had qualified between 2 and 10 years ago. Participants spoke of improved boundaries in relationships, better communication skills and self-care, as well as an improvement in their relationships with others since training. The negative impacts reported by some of the participants included reduced personal resources and difficulties with regards to separating their personal and professional lives. McAuliffe’s (2002) research study asked fifteen undergraduate students training to be counsellors in the US how they changed during their studies and what influenced these changes. The research findings highlighted three areas of transformation: increased reflexivity; increased autonomy; and valuing dialogue. The results of this research are limited for my purposes because the study focused on aspects of the study program rather than the personal impact of the training on trainees.
Using grounded theory analysis, Pascual-Leone et al (2012) explored the impact of psychotherapy training on trainee’s lives. Twenty-four senior undergraduate psychology students gave narratives of their experiences while on an introductory psychotherapy course. Unfortunately, the findings revealed more about how the course impacted the students’ professionally rather than how it impacted them personally. Skovholt and Rønnestad (2003) undertook a large grounded theory study over 15 years during which they interviewed a hundred American counsellors and therapists. Their study highlighted the stressful nature of the training process. Trainees were found to experience guilt and depression which stemmed from unrealistic expectations of themselves. Personal life was ranked as the fourth most impactful area of change in the therapists, however no insights into how the training impacted their personal relationships were included in the results.
Bavridge (2011) completed an IPA study on the impact of integrative counselling/ psychotherapy training on personal process and relationships. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four therapists who had completed their training within the last 2-6 years. The results highlighted how participants used their insights from the training to forge more healthy relationships, but there were no in-depth reflections on how the training had changed the participant’s personal relationships.
In 2007, Morgan used hermeneutic phenomenology to carry out a research project that explored seven recent graduate’s lived experiences of psychotherapy training. Some of the themes that emerged included the emotional impact of the journey on the trainee’s lives during and after the training. Participants in the study, six of whom were women, described how their habitual patterns and ways of being in the world were disrupted, and the effect this had on their personal lives. The participants who were mothers spoke of how the course impacted on their relationships with their children. One mother described how the training made her question her parenting skills: “I was sure I had done great damage to my children…”. Mothers said they experienced improved relationships with their children, “I notice the difference in the way they [her children] talk, and the way I am able to be with them, and the way I’m able to be with them with their feelings,” explained one, and another said “I think they [her children] lost something of me for a while. But they got something better back…I came out of being so shut away from things I didn’t want to see, and I became more engaged with them. I probably became more present for them.” Whilst this research explored mothers’ lived experiences of being on psychotherapy training, their experiences weren’t given particular focus, but were interwoven into the body of the study.
The Stressful and Painful Nature of Training to be a Therapist
Research indicates that the stress involved in counselling training can be detrimental to trainees’ (Shapiro et al 2000). Due to a lack of further research material that explores the stress experienced by counselling/psychotherapy trainees, I widened my search to include other related areas. In the field of family therapy, two papers highlight the experience of parents training as psychotherapists. One paper, which explores the experience of married trainees in marriage and family therapy training (Polson 1989), uncovered the fact that trainee parents were more stressed than those without children. Another study (Sori et al 1996) investigated the stressors and enhancers for students on family therapy graduate programs. Results indicated that trainees who were parents felt guilty about not having enough energy or time for their children, and this resulted in them feeling stressed.
Folkes-Skinner et al (2010) undertook a qualitative analysis of how a trainee counsellor made meaning of and understood the changes experienced during the first term of training. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted, the findings of which highlighted the painful nature of the training, along with the emotional demands of the process.
The Experience Of Mothers In Training/ Student Mothers
Due to the general lack of existent research material that explores specifically mothers’ experiences of training to be counsellors/psychotherapists, I widened my search to include other related areas of professional training, these included family therapy, psychology, social work, and teaching. Most of the research that has been done in this area addresses the unique challenges that students, who are also mothers, often face (Astin 1993; Duncan 2000; Griffiths 2002; Kevern 2003; Lidgard 2004; Nel 2006; White 2008; Thompson 2000; Neale 2001; Welsh, 2003; Pierce 2013; Bosch 2013). The studies highlight the emotional impact on students that result from juggling the roles of parent and student, and balancing time and energy between these.
Many research projects (Stanley-Clarke 2000, Lynch 1997, Walkup 2004, White 2006, White 2008, White 2009, Lynch 2008, Griffiths 2002) identify a lack of emotional and practical support from families and places of study, along with the sense of guilt felt by mothers when trying to perform the dual roles of mother and student (Welsh, 2003; White 2009; Bosch 2013). In addition, the research highlights the burden of financial and time stresses on mothers. Worries about the wellbeing of their children, and the impact of their studies on their children is also a prominent feature of all of these projects. Nel’s (2006) IPA study into the experiences of six trainee family therapists, four of whom were female, included intimate accounts of their experiences. All of the mothers said they believed their studies had made them less physically and emotionally available for their families (Nel, 2006). One participant expressed concern that prioritising her studies might cause damage to her family.
George (2011) did an IPA study into the experiences of six trainee clinical psychologists on a Child and Adolescent Mental Health training who were also parents. Some of the participants said their professional experiences made them feel like “good” parents, however this was juxtaposed with their studies triggering their anxieties about the way they had parented in the past. One participant said, “there are times when I feel a really bad parent because I realise when she was first born and I didn’t attach with her properly…" (George 2011, p11). Others said they had come to an understanding about the anxieties associated with their own parenting, “the whole good enough parenting bit…its all about being kind of somewhere in the middle ‘good enough’ kind of thing and not…this is right this is wrong…” said one participant (George 2011, p91).
On the positive side, in two of the above research papers some participants said they believed their studies had given them a higher sense of self-esteem, and had taught them to become better, and more confident mothers, giving them a clearer understanding of their children’s needs (Walkup 2004; George 2011).
The Experience of Psychotherapists who are Mothers
Having found only a small amount of material on mothers who are training to be therapists, I searched for material written by mothers who are practicing therapists. The literature exploring the experience of parenthood while practising as a therapist is limited. Marlin (1988) writes about the practical struggles of combining the two roles, along with her feelings of guilt about not being a good enough therapist or mother, and Basescu (2001), a psychodynamic psychotherapist, wrote a chapter on parenthood in a book about the experience of being a therapist. She discusses a variety of experiences in which the issue of her being a parent has been salient. She also reflects on how her work with patients impacts her life as a parent, and addresses the conflict inherent in the fact that as parents, therapists have to deprive their own children for the sake of their patients.
When reading this chapter, it occurred to me that on psychotherapy/counseling trainings, mothers and fathers are managing all of these emotionally complicated tasks whilst also going through deep processes of change and learning. In 1992 Derry undertook a study in the US on how female psychotherapist’s experiences of motherhood influenced the way they conducted their therapy. Having children was seen to have a significant impact on their attitudes in interactions with their clients, with therapists reporting that they felt more connected to their client’s material because of being mothers. Derry perceives motherhood as a psychological life transition that results in increased empathy and therefore changes the way that clinicians work with their clients.
The Lived Experience of Trainee Therapists who are Mothers
O’Reilly (2016) carried out an IPA study with three mothers in their last year of a psychotherapy training. Her aims were to explore how the training had impacted them, and to try to discern whether their experiences of being a parent during the process resulted in changes in their relationships with their child(ren). She collected data by using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Her participants spoke about the impact the process had on their family life and the way they related to their children. They all said they had been challenged in a variety of ways throughout their trainings. O’Reilly identified three main themes: ‘looking back with emotion’, ‘stepping back with awareness’, and ‘moving forward with growth’, which reflected their experiences of change over the course of training. As in other research papers, the mothers expressed guilt about leaving their children in order to study, difficulties managing the practical considerations necessary to train, and stress around negotiating the dual role of mother/trainee. Whilst this study adds to the field, I felt an in-depth questioning of how the training impacted these mothers’ experiences of mothering was lacking.
In 2016 Hassid undertook an IPA investigation that explored the lived experience of mothers training to be psychotherapists. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three women from two different integrative psychotherapy trainings. Superordinate themes that were identified included: ‘unrecognized motherhood’; ‘unrecognized aspects of self’, ‘feeling torn’, and ‘the impact of training and integration on motherhood.’ Hassid’s findings show that the mothers felt torn between their dual roles as mothers and trainees. The participants experienced feelings of guilt, shame, and self-censorship on the training, which came about as a result of the lack of recognition of their motherhood. They all felt the needs of non-mothers contributed to their experience of their motherhood being kept out of the training, and they believed that training to be a therapist had changed the way they mothered their children positively.
Conclusion
Despite there being indications in the existing literature that motherhood influences female identity more significantly than any other aspect of their professional or personal lives (Rogers & White, 1998) and has a big impact on women’s sense of meaning in their lives (Ross & Van Willigen, 1996), motherhood-identity remains to be an area that is understudied (Arendell 2000). I believe more explorations into women’s lived experiences of motherhood will provide a greater depth of understanding of this experience and will enrich the current literature.
McCourt (1999, p16) says that the fact psychologists cannot separate their personhood from their work is one of the features that sets the profession apart from others. He goes on to say that psychologist’s own experiences can be their most valuable assets. I would argue that the same goes for the field of counselling/ psychotherapy, hence my desire to focus on the unique experiences of mothers in this piece of research. I believe the need for further research is advocated by the limited number of researchers who have explored this phenomenon. Literature about psychotherapy trainings identify it to be a complex process that requires a serious level of psychological change in the individual. This brings into relief the limited number of voices of mothers and their experiences of training to be psychotherapists. Further research will bring recognition to mothers' experiences will and highlight any changes to counselling/psychotherapy courses that might enable mothers to feel more supported during their studies, and might help to determine the “additional needs and training considerations” (George 2011 p16) of psychotherapy/counselling students who are mothers.
Research method
Marecek (2003 p55) says qualitative researchers “take seriously what participants say: they leave the way open to hear what they did not expect”. I hoped to explore the depth and complexity of my participant’s experiences, and for this reason I didn’t want to use a method that would seek to reduce this in any way (Etherington, 2004); the use of quantitative methodology would not be fit for my purposes, as it is grounded in objectivity, unconcerned with participant’s realities, uses a large sample, aims to dis/prove a hypothesis, etc. I wanted my study to focus on how my participants found meaning and made sense of their experience of training to be therapists whilst also being mothers. Qualitative methodologies are subjective and as such are conducive to description rather than explanation. They aim to develop insight and understanding rather than trying to find out about cause and effect. Having considered the possibility of both Narrative Analysis and Grounded Theory,
I chose the method Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).
say in here…