Person Centred therapy originated from the work of Carl Rogers. He believed that certain ‘necessary and sufficient’ conditions needed to be in place for the therapeutic relationship to be successful. This includes congruence, empathy, a non-judgemental attitude and positive regard for the client. These qualities sit at the core of everything I do.
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change…
Carl Rodgers
Rogers also believed that the client knew best about what they need. This is true, in my opinion, but people can need help to draw it out. Therefore whilst I practice with person centred principles at the core, I am not the sort of counsellor that ‘just’ listens, unless of course that it what you want.
Having said that, I am not underplaying the importance of listening. It is so important to ‘be heard’ and saying things out loud to someone else can greatly increase awareness and insight into a situation. Past clients have spoken about the process helping them to create order from chaos. An analogy of files strewn across a room being filed tidily away in a filing cabinet was an excellent one.
Emotions provide useful lessons into what is going on for us and the ways we are living in a state of ‘incongruence’.
This post is the first in a series on key counselling therapies. Other posts in the series include ACT, CBT and Psychodynamic. Together these make up the set of therapies I tend to use over the course of the counselling relationship.