Are you qualified to do "emotional work"?

Treatment Tips

Aug 31

Written By

I am going to keep this post short and simple, with a followup blog in the near future.

How many therapists (PTs, MTs, OTs, SLPs, etc.) feel they have the training and legal ability, through their professional scope of practice/practice act, to deal with the emotional aspects of their patient’s pain/dysfunction? To define my term "deal with", I am speaking of moving past a sense of supporting a patient/client when their emotional past or present comes to the surface. I am speaking of purposefully using methods you learned in your schooling or post-schooling to encourage, facilitate, or even provoke emotional release.

I do realize there is a HUGE amount of wiggle room here, as most who were taught emotional work/emotional release (myself included) were told that we never lead, only follow. But in hindsight, revisiting my learning experiences, I can now see there was much more happening than just following my patient's lead. I believe that the mere suggestion to a patient that they may experience an emotional awareness/release/experience is enough to set forth an an expectation, or even possibly an agenda. Having an expectation for emotional release or seeing my patient begin to emote and acting in a way to encourage them to dive into this emotion exceed my scope of practice. Perhaps even using manual techniques that foster or aim to provoke an emotional reaction is beyond my scope of practice.

Why am I asking this question? It is not fear-based, as some may portray this, but out of concern. I am concerned that therapists who are ill-trained for dealing with true emotional/psychological problems can easily get in over their head. There are reasons why mental health therapists are required to have a minimum of a Master's degree, with many at the PhD level, to practice mental health therapy and counseling.

I hadn’t looked at mine in a long time. You can look at it here: The Model Practice Act for Physical Therapy

If my scope of practice makes no mention of something, I am not legally allowed to practice it. My physical therapy scope of practice/practice act makes no mention of emotional work or emotions in general.

Does your scope of practice allow you to do “emotional work”? How fuzzy is the line defining 'emotional work'?"