An avalanche of research on hope over the last 30 years consistently points to the benefits of hope in living and human change processes. Common factors models name hope as one of four key factors accounting for client change across psychotherapeutic models. While research provides evidence for the importance of hope, little research examines how hope is understood and practiced. This paper, the second in a two-part series, examines hope-focused interventions of 5 hope-educated psychotherapists with 11 clients early in the therapy sequence. Two categories characterized the overall findings: implicit and explicit hope-focused interventions. The first paper in this series addressed implicit hope-focused interventions. This second paper focuses on explicit hope-focused interventions (i.e., using the word hope, hoping, etc.). Explicit use of hope in therapy was found to address: (a) multiple dimensions of hope (i.e., cognitive, behavioral, emotional, relational); (b) psychoeducational hope interventions; and (c) framing problems as threats to hope. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)