Exploring therapist boredom: an integrative review
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Abstract
This integrative review addressed the issue of boredom as an understudied and misunderstood emotion affecting helping professionals. To address this problem, the purpose of this review was to present a comprehensive understanding of the antecedents, indicators, measurements, and management of the boredom that is experienced by helping professionals (i.e., counsellors, therapists, psychotherapists, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists). To gather data, a systematic and thorough review of the literature on boredom was conducted. A literature search was performed using the following four databases: ERIC, ProQuest, PsychINFO, and Web of Science. Following the database search, the reference lists of the articles included from the database search were examined to identify additional studies. Of the 412 records screened, a total of 19 studies found during the literature search met inclusion criteria. Data from both qualitative and quantitative studies was collected simultaneously. Following this, thematic analysis techniques were used to interpret data collected from the included studies. Results showed three groups of therapist boredom antecedents: (a) therapist factors, (b) client factors, and (c) therapy factors. The therapist boredom indicators were largely found to be feeling words ranging from unpleasant low arousal items (i.e., indifferent, empty, drowsy, and tired) to unpleasant high arousal items (i.e., irritated, tired of, and fed up with), and included difficulty concentrating (i.e., inattentive and disengaged) as well as feelings of emotional distance (i.e., aloof, cold, and absent). Boredom was most frequently measured with self-report instruments composed of the feeling words found to be indicative of boredom. Lastly, this review found 13 different therapist boredom management strategies: (a) training and education, (b) workplace organization, (c) awareness of feelings, (d) acknowledgement of feelings, (e) making therapeutic use of feelings, (f) analysis of feelings, (g) self-reflection, (h) acceptance of feelings, (i) supervision, (j) immediacy, (k) personal therapy and peer support, (l) practicing empathy, and (m) expressive suppression. This research integrated qualitative and quantitative themes to present information for helping professionals looking to improve their well-being, job satisfaction, and professional competency through an increased knowledge of, and resources to manage, their feelings of boredom.