Supervisory and therapeutic alliance among clinical psychologytrainees: The moderating role of emotion regulation strategies

Clinical psychology trainees may encounter compelling emotions while conducting sessions with clients even though they are not licensed yet in the period of training. Psychotherapy supervision which is a triadic (supervisor-trainee and therapist-client) process has a crucial role to help trainees to realize emotion regulation processes. There is limited research on the role of emotion regulation strategies in training therefore, a need appears to investigate the role of emotion regulation strategies in trainees. To date, no research investigated the moderating role of emotion regulation strategies in supervision and psychotherapy context. The present study aimed to investigate the moderating role of reappraisal and suppression between the supervisory and therapeutic alliance. Three hypotheses were as follows: 1) supervisory alliance and therapeutic alliance are positively correlated, 2) a higher level of reappraisal strengthens the relationship between supervisory alliance and therapeutic alliance, and 3) a lower level of suppression strengthens the relationship between supervisory alliance and therapeutic alliance. Seventy-eight clinical psychology trainees participated. Turkish Working Alliance Inventory – Therapist Form, Short Form of Turkish Working Alliance Inventory – Supervisee Form, and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire were used to measure therapeutic alliance, supervisory alliance, and emotion regulation respectively. Results indicated that there was a positive correlation between supervisory and therapeutic alliance. There was no significant moderation effect of reappraisal. However, there was a significant moderation effect of suppression. Findings suggested that suppression improved the relationship between supervisory and therapeutic alliance. Results were discussed in accordance with the literature. Practical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future studies were provided.