Essentials of the Client-Centered Therapy
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change”
Carl R. Rogers
As a psychologist, we often come across people’s ideas about therapy and counseling. It is a common myth about the counseling process, ‘No need to talk to a therapist since I can just talk to a good friend and let my heart out to feel better.’
Let’s explore how talking to a therapist is not the same as talking to a friend. For this Rogers’ substantial work “Counseling and Psychotherapy” of 1942 gives us the best understanding of therapy sessions. His therapy worked wonderfully on his neurotic patients and led to the development of client-centered therapy or a person-centered therapy approach.
The essentials of the Rogerian approach in therapy help us understand what is different in the relationship of client-therapists as contrasted with other personal relationships.
TRUST AND RELATIONSHIP
is the baseline of the beginning of therapy work. Brian Thorne in the third edition of “Carl Rogers” explained that even when you start a therapy session, the client must trust this upcoming relationship with the therapist at an initial level..! but not of course in a naïve fashion.
UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD
With a therapist, you gain unconditional positive regard. This is actually the real beauty of client-centered therapy. There are major 3 prepositions of this master tool:
The therapist care about the client as a person; The therapist accepts the client the way he/she is. The therapist trusts the client’s ability to change since the client has decided to begin the therapy.
While in personal relationships there seems to be conditional care and concern, if the person ends up disappointing the loved one, it may be at the cost of positive regard. What Rogers termed an aspect of therapy was a “completely uncritical atmosphere”. Having respect for an individual and their feelings, values, and goals, even if they are different from those of the therapist, is called unconditional positive regard.
EMPATHY
Empathy is a synonym for a Client-centered approach, in other ways there would be no therapeutic work without Empathy. Putting oneself into another’s shoes….. implies that the therapist would enter into their client’s shoes and see the world from their point. Empathy is a ‘SUPER POWER’ that cannot be taught in a psychology class but has to be internally driven based on human values.
CONGRUENCE
Congruence refers to the willingness to transparently relate to clients without hiding behind a professional or personal façade. A person’s ideal self may not be consistent with what actually happens in the real life and experiences of the person….. or what we call “real-ideal discrepancy”. The difference may exist between a person’s ideal self and actual self, called incongruence. Through the therapy, we try to overlap the circles of the real self and ideal self, in order to maintain the client’s healthy self-image.
Although, client-centered therapy is much more than what we read. It’s a step towards finding answers about self and the world around us…!
This was a sneak peek into the core values and characteristics of the therapy process.
-Soumya Srivastava
