Stress of Trying Daily Therapy Interventions

Emily Kathryn Hansen, Brigham Young University

Abstract

This study is focused on clients' daily experiencing of stress, and measures how this stress might affect their implementation of ideas and recommendations from therapy. Typically, clients attend therapy with the intention of making positive changes. Part of the therapeutic process involves clients completing therapeutic work in their daily lives (Conklin, Strunk, Cooper, 2017); however, stressful tasks and other elements often preclude this therapeutic work from occurring (Kazantzis & L'Abate, 2005). In this study we examine which interventions from therapy are most likely to be attempted at home, and the level of stress in making these attempts. A series of multi-level models were used, controlling for daily stress and examining partner effects. This study will be viewed from the conceptual lenses of window of tolerance (Siegel, 1999) and the Yerkes-Dodson law (Hanoch, Vitouch, 2004) on stress.