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Background: Many adolescent clients come to treatment reluctantly, at the initiative of others. Adolescents also quit therapy prematurely more often than adult clients do. This points to the value of finding good ways to engage adolescent clients in treatment and understanding more of what therapists do to achieve this task. Methods: We used focus group methodology to explore therapist strategies and behaviors to engage adolescent clients who come to therapy at the initiative of others. Ten focus group interviews with a total of 51 therapists were conducted with existing treatment teams from seven different clinics in community mental health care for children and youth. Reflexive thematic analysis was used as a framework to guide the analytical process. Findings: Navigating a position allowing the therapist and adolescent to meet and work toward a shared understanding of the situation and what could help was considered the main gateway to client engagement. To do this, therapists had to manage the pull between system requirements and their obligation to the individual adolescent client, represented by the theme Managing system requirements . The process of working with the adolescent to ensure engagement is represented by the four themes: Counteracting initial obstacles for client engagement - "You are not trapped here"; Sharing definitional power - "What does it look like to you?"; Practicing transparency - "I want you to know what I see"; and Tailoring as ideal - "I will design this therapy for you." Implication and conclusion: Therapists want to understand their adolescent clients' position better, and subsequently adjust the treatment goals and techniques to establish sufficient common ground to allow both the therapist and adolescent to find the therapeutic project worthwhile. However, system requirements and service organization were found to obstruct and influence these processes in several ways, pointing to the significance of exploring the interplay between system organization and therapeutic practice more thoroughly. There was also a variation between therapist behaviors described by different therapists within the same treatment teams, as well as systematic differences between treatment teams, pointing to the importance of future research differentiating wanted from unwanted variation in treatment., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Stige, Eik, Oddli and Moltu.)

Identities used to describe oneself after trauma may influence recovery, and searches for acceptable identities after sexual assault can be challenging. Fifteen Norwegian female survivors of sexual assault were recruited at a clinical center, and were individually interviewed about post-assault discussions with others. Our focus was on the experiences of non-blaming and believing interactions with others, and how these interactions can be understood as a process of searching for acceptable identities after sexual assault. A reflexive thematic analysis resulted in four themes: navigating between other people's stories and one's own ; realizing the seriousness of the assault without drowning in the upset of others ; finding a place between too much closeness and too much distance ; and being more than a victim . We discuss the importance of participants retaining agency in post-assault interactions. We suggest that being a survivor of sexual assault increases the probability, even in believing and non-blaming interactions, of being cast in a subject-object relationship with less freedom and agency than before. Navigating toward acceptable identities may mean working one's way back to being a subject in a subject-subject relationship again., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Dundas, Mæhle and Stige.)

Background: Parents play a crucial role in the development, maintenance, and deterioration of child difficulties. Emotion focused skills training (EFST) targets parents' capacity to provide their child with emotion-oriented skills in order to promote good child mental health. Few qualitative studies have specifically investigated parents' experiences of receiving such programs., Objective: This study aimed to explore how parents experience working with their own and their child's emotions undergoing a short-term program in EFST; in particular, changes in their experience of being a parent and in everyday life are reported., Method: Semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 14 parents who had completed a short-term EFST program (2-day group training and 6 h of supervision). Interview transcripts were analyzed using a reflexive thematic analysis approach., Results: A total of 14 parents (40% men, four couples, M age = 39.5, SD = 4.4) participated in the study. Our analysis resulted in the following three themes: (1) "Coming home" as a parent, with the following subthemes: (a) New ways of being with their child and (b) Parents' painful inner world; (2) Reclaiming parenthood-applying new tools and learning in challenging situations; and (3) This is us-changing the heart of the story. The first theme was related to the descriptions of the changes that emerged in parents' inner lives, the second revolved around the employment of their skills intuitively and creatively based on what was required by the challenging situations, and the third theme referred to new discoveries on family dynamics., Conclusion: Parents' experiences of having wisdom and calmness inside them ( being ) and doing parenting differently, as well as the changed perspectives of the family ( living ), resonate with the theoretical ground of emotion-focused therapy (EFT). The findings also indicate that therapists should be aware of potential parental distress when working in view of changing unpleasant emotions in such skill-based programs., Competing Interests: NA and JS discloses a conflict of interest because they work in an organization that conduct training in the method. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Ansar, Hjeltnes, Stige, Binder and Stiegler.)

Mental health problems start early in life. However, the majority of adolescents fulfilling the criteria for mental health disorders do not receive treatment, and half of those who do get treatment drop out. This begs the question of what differentiates helpful from unhelpful treatment processes from the perspective of young clients. In this study, we interviewed 12 young people who entered mental health care reluctantly at the initiative of others before the age of 18. Their journeys through mental health care varied significantly despite sharing the same starting point. Our analyses resulted in a model of three trajectories. We describe relational and structural facilitators and obstacles within each trajectory and have formulated narratives highlighting core experiences differentiating them. Trajectory 1 ( I never saw the point - Being met as a case ) was characterized by a rapid loss of hope, leading the adolescents to conclude that mental health care was not worth the investment. Trajectory 2 ( I gave it a go, but nothing came of it - Being met by a therapist representing a rigid and unhelpful system ) was characterized by a lingering hope that never materialized into a constructive therapeutic process despite prevailing efforts by both therapists and adolescents. Trajectory 3 ( Something good came of it - Being met by a therapist who cares and wants to help ) was characterized by genuine meetings, allowing the therapist to transform from an unsafe stranger into a safe, competent, and benevolent adult. We discuss how our results have implications for understanding agency displayed by adolescent clients in therapy, therapist flexibility and authenticity, service organization, and attributional processes influencing clinical judgment and therapeutic processes when adolescent psychotherapy has a difficult starting point (i.e., initiated by adults)., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Stige, Barca, Lavik and Moltu.)

This qualitative study investigated ways in which student participants in a three-session self-compassion course became more compassionate toward themselves and challenges related to this change. Ninety-four participants completed an online survey and 12 participants were interviewed face-to-face. First, a thematic analysis of the responses from the online survey was conducted, and then sorted by frequency, indicating their representativeness in the written responses. The following themes were identified: (1) being more supportive and friendlier toward self, (2) being more aware of being too hard on oneself, (3) feeling less alone when having painful feelings, (4) having more acceptance of painful feelings, and (5) feeling more stable and peaceful. These five most frequent themes served as a basis for a structured phenomenological analysis in the next analytic stage. They were used as a template for a content analysis of the interview material. Subsequently, a phenomenological analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts covering the five thematic areas., (Copyright © 2019 Binder, Dundas, Stige, Hjeltnes, Woodfin and Moltu.)

Background: The therapeutic relationship is regarded as an important source of change in emotion-focused therapy (EFT) (Greenberg, 2014; Watson, 2018), but few qualitative studies have specifically investigated how clients experience the role of the relationship in EFT. Aim: The purpose of the present study was to explore what clients experienced as helpful or hindering aspects of the therapeutic relationship when undergoing EFT for depression, anxiety, and severe self-criticism. Methods: We interviewed 18 clients after a clinical trial of time-limited EFT, to explore their experiences of the relationship with their therapist during treatment. The interviews were analyzed using hermeneutic-phenomenological thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Binder et al., 2012). Results: We identified four main themes: (1) Forming a trusting relationship or finding it hard to connect, (2) Collaborating and struggling to find new ways to relate to painful feelings, (3) Alliance ruptures and needs for repair when working with distressing emotions, and (4) The significance of new relational experiences. Conclusion: Clients described therapists' genuineness and the establishment of trust in the relationship as important preconditions to open up to vulnerability and painful feelings, and engaging fully in specific EFT interventions. The findings also indicate that the therapists need to be mindful of different client preferences and monitor potential alliance ruptures when working to change distressing emotions in therapy., (Copyright © 2019 Nødtvedt, Binder, Stige, Schanche, Stiegler and Hjeltnes.)