Use Emotional Validation to Manage Negative Countertransference

Providers inevitably encounter patients towards whom they have negative countertransference. Identifying, understanding, and managing those feelings are critical to our own resiliency and clinical effectiveness. One method for managing these situations is validating the patient’s emotional experience by recalling how we share certain emotions with the patient. Whether the patient is hostile, overly dependent, help rejecting, or simply stagnant in treatment, clinicians can lessen their own negative emotions by identifying a core emotional experience of the patient.