TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 33 reconstruction (e.g., structure of categories, themes, relationships, definitions, conclusions), and process notes (e.g., trustworthiness notes relating to credibility and dependability). Data triangulation (Thurmond, 2001) was implemented by soliciting feedback from participants during the analysis stage of data collection. The participants’ diversity of experience, theoretical perspectives, demographic variability and length of experience as licensed professionals in their fields helped the researcher gain a clearer understanding of the phenomenon of crying and how it applies to counseling. Participants were allowed to see the interview questions prior to the interview, in order to provide more in-depth and thoughtful answers regarding the phenomenon being investigated. Member checking was implemented to test the accuracy of the categories, interpretations and conclusions of the researcher with the participants from whom the data were originally obtained. This procedure was conducted informally during the normal course of observation and conversation with the participants at the time of their interviews. A more formal procedure was implemented after the researcher transcribed the interviews and sent them to participants for investigation. After the evaluation stage was complete and themes were established for the phenomenon of crying in session with clients, an email was sent to participants with a summary of the thematic conclusions, soliciting feedback, challenges or additional information from participants. An external audit was conducted throughout the evaluation and analysis stages, in which the author discussed the data with a colleague who was not a part of the mental health profession. The purpose of choosing this colleague was to have an unbiased person who would not be swayed by training as a counselor and the ethics of the profession. The researcher’s assumption was that mental health professionals would be more prone to accept, tolerate and be nonjudgmental toward clients’ intense emotional experiences, even to the point of crying with them. Another external audit conducted to foster the accuracy and validity of the present study included advising from a faculty member in the applied statistics and research methods department of the university where the participants were sampled. Results Through analysis of the participants’ interviews, invariant horizons were identified and themes were extracted and clustered through the reduction process (Moustakas, 1994). Following are textual descriptions of the prominent identified themes that emerged, including awareness, empathy, modeling and authenticity. An examination of participants’ experiences also was extrapolated from the data. Theme 1: Awareness Each of the participants spoke about the skill of awareness as a decisive factor as to whether they would cry in session. Awareness was described as a skill that could be learned and used by the counselor, not only to determine whether to cry in session, but whether the voluntary nature of crying as an emotional response could be used to facilitate a therapeutic interaction. One male counselor-participant described crying as follows: Crying means different things in different cultures. Some cultures and people may see crying as a sign of weakness, whereas others encourage its expression to practice being humble and exercise social kindness. As part of being culturally sensitive, a counselor needs to pay attention and try to explore with the client about this behavior. Crying is like a universal language that involves a list of vocabulary from different cultures and persons. Awareness was an essential component of whether crying was considered therapeutic for the client. Even though all participants had cried to some degree or another in session, their respective levels of comfort and