PROFESSIONAL STRESS RESILIENCE OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS: THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ASPECTS OF TRAINING FOCUSED ON EXISTENTIAL-BEHAVIOURAL STRATEGIES FOR SELF-RENEWAL

Abstract

In wartime, the issue of teaching clinical psychologists professional resilience is becoming increasingly relevant. For this process to be effective, students must be provided with effective guidelines that allow them to identify their weaknesses (behavioural, cognitive, existential) in the context of practical encounters with the professional risks of this profession. These risks include the negative consequences of empathy, secondary traumatisation, and burnout, which clinical psychologists experience when regularly dealing with traumatic material. Psychological work with trauma shows that behavioural methods alone are insufficient for working with the meaningful level of such experiences. Such work requires the development of existential reflection (the ability to see one's own symptoms as «philosophical questions») as an important step towards self-healing. Existential psychology and psychotherapy can be an effective methodology not only for working with existential crisis and meaning, but also for providing a deep, stable foundation for meeting the standards required of clinical psychologists. Gaining existential stability means that in order to work with clients' crises of meaning, a psychologist needs sufficient «will to meaning» - their own clear, authentic existential position. If they have not resolved their own existential questions, they may not be able to withstand the client's suffering, which is an ethical risk. Given these unique risks, resilience (stress resistance) training for clinical psychologists should not be an option but a professional duty aimed at developing integral resilience - from self-regulation skills to the search for deep existential support. This requires specific didactic developments that would enable these tasks to be solved directly in the educational process. Theoretical and applied illustrations of such developments are provided. In particular, an explanation that the prevention of secondary traumatisation should be ensured as a continuous process of active self-recovery, combining behavioural discipline, a clear structure of professional employment and deep existential reflection. An existential-philosophical understanding of the ways to achieve professional stability and post-traumatic recovery is substantiated: many mental disorders are based not so much on classic psychoanalytic conflict or biochemical imbalance as on an attempt to escape from the burden of existence and fundamental philosophical questions. Therefore, healing (recovery) occurs not when the symptom disappears, but when a person achieves clarity about their existence and begins to live consciously in accordance with their discovered values. Clinical psychologists can become «unwilling philosophers» when unconscious existential questions raised by a client's trauma (death, isolation) cause their own symptoms (anxiety, sleep disturbances). In other words, the work of self-healing is not about eliminating symptoms, but about trying to realise oneself as a ‘being-in-the-world’ with its own unique structure and freedom. When the «unwilling philosopher» realises the existential cause of their suffering, their neurosis can be transformed into a healthy, albeit painful, encounter with being. This radically changes the view of mental disorders, transforming them from purely medical pathologies into existential challenges. In the context of training clinical psychologists, this conceptual position suggests that psychologists should refrain from trying to explain their own experiences to themselves and instead try to understand the symptom as a «poorly formulated question».