Carl Rogers pioneered the person-centered approach to counseling, which has made the most significant contribution to the field. Rogers’ approach is founded on the premise that people naturally tend toward “self-actualization,” which includes being spontaneous, open, trusting, and trustworthy, accepting of oneself and others, and reaching one’s full potential.
What Is Person-Centered Counseling?
Counseling is the skillful and principled application of a relationship to promote self-awareness, emotional acceptance and growth, and the optimum development of personal resources. The overarching goal is to provide an opportunity to work toward a more satisfying and resourceful way of life.
Counseling relationships may be concerned with developmental issues, bringing up and resolving problems, making decisions, dealing with crises, developing strong insights and knowledge, working through emotional responses to inner conflict, or improving relationships with others, depending on the need. Multiple Pathways Treatment can help with this.
The purpose of the counselor is to assist the client in working in ways that respect the client’s values, personal resources, and capacity for self-determination.
What Are The Core Conditions Of Effective Counseling?
Rogers defined three “fundamental conditions” that he believed were necessary for the establishment of a good therapeutic relationship. Congruence (or authenticity), unconditional positive regard, and empathy are the three.
Congruence (or Genuineness)
The therapist is ‘congruent’ when they are openly being who they are in response to the client – when their behavior is exactly reflective of what they are feeling on the inside – when their response to the client is genuine and not a ruse.
Why Is Congruence Important?
Trust: When the therapist is open, honest, and genuine, the client might learn to trust him or her and the process.
Self-Acceptance: Clients become more tolerant of their feelings and responses when the counselor is open and honest about their feelings and responses, even if this involves admitting to being confused, helpless, misguided, and so on. A key goal of person-centered counseling is for the client to become more congruent, which is less likely to happen if the counselor is unable to be authentic and true.
Response: The congruent replies of the counselors allow the client to see how their behavior impacts another human being. How they are being addressed.
Guidelines
The counselor’s attention is always on the client’s needs, which include the desire to be accepted, the need for empathy, and the need for genuineness in the counselor. Recognizing this, counselors are frequently careful about being congruent, wanting to ensure that they are replying to their client rather than the impulse to ‘sound off.’ When the counselor uses congruence correctly, it is as follows:
- Responding to sensations that are directly related to the client’s experience
- Their responses are pertinent to the client’s present issues
- They are detecting persistent feelings in themselves and discuss them with the client.
Unconditional Positive Regard
Unconditional positive regard refers to the ability to respond with compassion without judging, debating, or criticizing. It is also known as regard, non-judgment, acceptance, and praise. We spend a lot of our life being trained to behave in a certain manner in order to be accepted, often by people who care about us. Our perceived flaws, errors, and omissions are frequently the focus of attention, and we may be terribly wounded and feel so worried and scared that we throw up barriers and convince ourselves that we are not acceptable.
You may recall instances when you received messages concerning what you did or did not do correctly. The message is clear: you are a slacker, a moron, an annoyance, or a burden. If the listener can offer warmth and non-judgmental acceptance, the speaker will begin to see themselves as worthy of attention and will be able to explore themselves and their experiences in a non-threatening manner. When considering acceptance, keep in mind that acceptance is mostly contingent on accepting ourselves.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability of one person to detect the feelings and personal meanings of another person as they appear to that person and to express some of that understanding. It is the ability to “put yourself in the shoes of another person,” as if you are that other person. The ‘as if’ is necessary since it is useless to get lost in another person’s emotional world; nevertheless, it is useful if you can communicate that you understand something of how that person feels, no matter how different it is from your own experience.
When you need help it is important for you to seek the right Intensive Outpatient And Outpatient – Telemed services that can help with Person-Centered Counseling. Please get in touch today.