If the therapist has to put down a probability on the patient having found the therapist empathic the therapist will be faster at learning when he’s perceived as empathic by their patients then if the therapist just sees the numbers.
I wonder how accurate these kinds of answers are going to be. At one point my self-improvement group was doing peer coaching sessions that involved giving your coach feedback at the end. I don’t remember our exact questions, but questions about the coach’s perceived empathy definitely sound like the kind of thing that could have been on the list.
I remember that when I’d been coached, I felt significantly averse to giving the person-who’d-just-done-their-best-to-help-me any critical feedback, especially on a trait such as empathy that people often interpret as reflecting on them as a person. I’d imagine that the status differential between a client and a therapist could easily make this worse, particularly in the case of clients who are specifically looking for help on something like poor self-esteem or excess people-pleasing. (Might not be a problem with patients who are there for being too disagreeable, though!)
I wonder how accurate these kinds of answers are going to be. At one point my self-improvement group was doing peer coaching sessions that involved giving your coach feedback at the end. I don’t remember our exact questions, but questions about the coach’s perceived empathy definitely sound like the kind of thing that could have been on the list.
I remember that when I’d been coached, I felt significantly averse to giving the person-who’d-just-done-their-best-to-help-me any critical feedback, especially on a trait such as empathy that people often interpret as reflecting on them as a person. I’d imagine that the status differential between a client and a therapist could easily make this worse, particularly in the case of clients who are specifically looking for help on something like poor self-esteem or excess people-pleasing. (Might not be a problem with patients who are there for being too disagreeable, though!)