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Rebecca "Becca" L. Butler, Psy.D., is a 2025 graduate of the Psy.D. Program in Clinical Psychology at Antioch University, New England

Dissertation Committee:

  • Martha Straus, PhD, Chairperson
  • Jennifer Leslie, PsyD, Committee Member
  • Barbara Belcher-Timme, PsyD, Committee Member

Keywords

personal therapy, psychotherapy, clinical trainee, imposter syndrome

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

Graduate students in clinical and counseling psychology programs face an inordinate amount of stress: coursework, learning a new job, emotional challenges inherent to providing therapeutic services, and general life stressors. Some trainees seek personal therapy and usually describe their experience as positive for both personal and professional reasons. Psychologists working as researchers and clinicians generally advocate for therapists to engage in personal therapy. However, research into the impact of personal therapy on professional functioning remains scarce. The extant literature includes numerous critiques of the methodologies used to investigate the impact of personal therapy, such as small sample sizes, unclear methods, and snapshot qualitative opinions from therapists. I conducted a pilot study of a longitudinal investigation into the impact on client outcomes of individual therapy for graduate-level clinical and counseling trainees to prove a design to fix such holes in the literature. I compared client outcomes for trainees who are currently in therapy, have had previous experience with therapy, and report no experience with personal therapy. The study examined progress twice during one semester in a training year exploring symptoms of imposter syndrome in the clinical trainees and outcomes for clients. A small sample size in the study limited the power of analyses using this dataset, but performed analyses demonstrate which tests could be run. Results from the present study revealed non-significant relationships for all hypotheses but showed a connection between shared theoretical orientation with a trainee’s personal therapist and effectiveness of the personal therapy. Overall, the goal of this research was to create a blueprint for a larger study to explore the impact of personal therapy on graduate-level trainees, and to demonstrate analyses that could prove useful in future investigations. Further implications of findings and limitations of the study are discussed to improve future research. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

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ORCID ID: 0009-0000-5694-2142

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