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An Explanation and Personal Reflection on Person-Centered Therapy

Chen Yun

The School of Positive Psychology

Graduate Diploma in Applied Positive Psychology

GPSY 03: Introduction to Counselling, Psychotherapy and Coaching

Assignment 1

Mr. Laurence Ho

25-Mar-2021
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Abstract

In this paper I explore into the Person-Centered Therapy for deeper understanding and

discussion. Part 1 provides the explanation of one key concept, a therapeutic goal and a

particular technique. I also argue a particular strength and shortcoming of Person-Centered

Therapy. In part 2 I take a deeper personal reflections to demonstrate how the Person-Centered

therapeutic concepts and implication resonate with my own values and experiences.

Keywords: Person-Centered, therapy, concept, therapeutic goal, technique, personal

reflection, value, experiences.

Part 1 Exploration of Person-Centered Therapy

In Person-Centered Therapy, one of the key concepts is that mental health is the

congruence of ideal-self and real-self. This concept is the basis of the therapeutic goal which is

to provide a safe climate conductive to the clients’ self-exploration to be able to recognize

barriers to change and growth, as well as to be able to experience aspects of self that were

formally denied or distorted. An important technique of achieving this therapeutic goal is to

demonstrate and communicate unconditional prostate regards towards the clients by the therapist.

Person-Centered Therapy has been widely adopted and expanded into different specific

therapeutic approaches, such as Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) approach. It certainly

has its very unique strengths, and some shortcomings under specific contexts.

Concept: Congruence of ideal self and real self as mental health

In the humanistic approach, the self is our inner personality for who we really are as a

person (McLeod, 2014). The self-concept is unique to each individual person, and include three

components.

(1) Real-self

Real-self (also known as self-image) is our current view of oneself, as “who I am”. For

example, someone may perceive himself / herself as someone who is good or bad, smart or

stupid, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. This perception of oneself affects how the person thinks,

feels and behaves. However, this real self may not necessarily reflects the reality. If someone

who has been imposed with negative conditions, in an overprotecting or dominating

environment, he / she may develop negative self-image (AIPC, 2010).

(2) Idea- self

Ideal-self is the person who we would like to be. It contains our goal, ambition and

inspiration in life. It is dynamic and changing as we move into different stages in life, and shaped

by observing the environments. It’s also influenced by the standards and expectations from the

surroundings.

(3) Self esteem

Self-esteem is also known as a person’s feeling of his / her self-worth or self-value.

Rogers emphasized that someone has developed the feelings of self-esteem from the interaction

with parents in early childhood and subsequently with significant ones when grow up (McLeod,

2014). When someone sees himself / herself not able to meet up the standards and expectation

from the surroundings, he / she would develop low self-esteem, which may lead to self-doubt,

self-denial and even self-harm, and be defensive and guarded with people. Low self-esteem is

usually a result of a person in a state of incongruence of experiencing gaps between real-self and

ideal-self. In contrast, someone with high self-esteem has higher confidence and positive feelings

about himself / herself, with higher resilience to overcome challenges in difficult situations and

open up with people.

In summary, when a person has alignment of his / her views of real-self to ideal-self, his /

her feeling of self-esteem is relatively high and is able to think, feel and behave with confidence

and positive energy. It’s a process for a person to continue the tendency of self-actualizing, and

being a fully functioning person who has “ideal emotional health” (AIPC, 2010). A fully

functioning person usually is a high achiever in society, who processes the five characteristics as

indented by Rogers: open to experiences, existential living, trust feelings, creativity and fulfilled

life (McLeod, 2014).

Therapeutic Goal: To provide a safe climate conductive to clients’ self-exploration so that

they can recognize blocks to growth and can experience aspects of self that were formerly

denied or distorted

Rogers defined the purpose of Person-Centered Therapy is to reduce the incongruence

between real-self and ideal-self, and hence improve the feeling of self-worth and hence help the

person become more fully functioning (Miller, 2012). For a person to get into the core real-self,

and match to the ideal-self, it requires a climate which is an atmosphere for the person to feel

safe to bring out things they have never dared to even express to himself / herself, and to say

things him / her has never dared to tell others. This safe climate created by the therapist for the

client is a prerequisite to succeed in any Person-Centered Therapy. Only when the person feels

safe, he / she can only start to open up himself / herself.

In particular, the safe climate is created in a therapeutic relationship, in which the focus is

solely on the client for his / her needs. In the being time limited, the therapist has the intention to

hold a safe space with full presence, be close with the client, and allow the clients for self-

explorations. Indeed a therapeutic relationship is different from any other kinds of personal or

professional relationships that we have in our life, at work and social circles, in which we have

needs on each other and want to do things together in that particular relationship (Miller, 2012).

To establish a safe therapeutic relationship with the clients, it starts with the therapy’s view of

human nature, core beliefs and values, and then apply the approaches and techniques used in the

therapy session. The three conditions to create the safe climate are unconditional positive regard

and acceptance, accurate empathetic understanding and congruence from the therapist.

Technique: Communicate Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR)

Iberg (2001) identified that the communicated UPR from significant others is one key

driver for a person to move towards less defensive and healthier adjustment to decrease the

conditions of worth and to increase unconditional self-regard. Therefore, to archive the

therapeutic goal for providing a safe climate for the clients’ self-exploration, the therapist is

required to communicate UPR to the client, and subsequently help the clients to carry the

increased unconditional self-regard outside the therapy sessions, and hence continue their self-

actualizing into the rest of their life. In the context of self-esteem, the therapist firstly comes with

the mindset and intension to accept, respect, care and support the worth of the client and the

choices of the clients make for their lives, even though the therapist may hold very different

views from the clients, such as disagreement on the clients’ behavior, belief, value, life style, etc.

As Rogers also highlighted that for effective therapist, UPR occurs at many moments and

to varying degrees, and hence Iberg (2001) placed the emphasis on activities especially pertinent

to the momentary enactment to UPR. He summarized the collective activities into four aspect to

help the therapists to develop capacity to have UPR for clients:

(1) Drop any attempt to control or change the client.

(2) Use all the senses and sensations, as well as the conceptual grasp of all possibilities to

understand the environment and the client at the moment.

(3) Maintain a non-categorizing mentality, attending to the details of what the client

expresses and experiences, without any thoughts to fitting things into categories.

(4) Allow yourself to be moved by what you hear from the client.

In addition, Farber and Doolin (2011) emphasized that therapists cannot content with

feeling good about their clients but instead should ensure that their UPR feelings and experiences

are communicated verbally and non-verbally through reflection and questioning to the clients.
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One strength and one shortcoming of Person-Centered Therapy

The optimistic humanistic view is that people have a vast potential for solving their own

problems given the right therapeutic environment. Therefore, one strength of the Person-

Centered Therapy is that clients are given the empowerment to take an active stance and assume

responsibility for the direction and decision of the therapy (AIPC, 2010). As a result, the

motivation to change and grow is rather intrinsic and self-driven, which in some ways align to

the self-determination theory in my view. In addition, as the clients feel more trusted and

empowered, they learn to be more expressive of the feelings, and then be more willing to listen

and to hear, and then possibly sit on their own feelings, in their lives in general (Miller, 2012).

At the same time, the corresponding shortcoming of empowering the clients from Person-

Centered Therapy for taking their own responsibility to make decision, is the lack of techniques

to help clients solve problem (AIPC, 2010). In another words, many clients have been feeling so

much of the burden from the problems, and they feel strong needs for greater direction and

structure from the therapist who is expected to use some techniques to help the clients solve

problems more efficiently. Especially when the clients who are in crisis, more directive approach

would be required from the therapist. For example, there may be danger for a furious client to

drift into self-indulgence, and thinks that for him / her at the moments the most important thing is

to work through his / her anger or pain. Therefore, this will require the therapists to apply some

techniques and questioning to bring the client back from the deep emotion back to logical

thinking and start exploring the problems within himself / herself and then define goal and

solutions.
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Part 2 Personal Reflections on Person-Centered Therapy

View of human nature

In Person-Centered Therapy, the way of thinking about clients is the optimistic view of

human nature. In general, people have a vast potential for solving their own problems given the

right therapeutic environment. This indeed aligns to my way of thinking about clients from my

own core value and experiences.

I have left my hometown and came to Singapore alone for study since teenage. Now I

have been in Singapore for more than 20 years. Throughout the decades, I have gone through a

lot of good times as well as difficult times in my study, my work and various relationships in life.

With the support of systems and people around me, I manage to overcome every obstacle, and

keep on learning new skills outside my regular job at the corporate world. Since last year, I have

started the journey in Positive Psychology study and Life Coaching. This has actually further

reinforced my belief that each individual has the unlimited potential to solve his / her problem as

long as the right support is sought and given. Indeed, I was finding myself in the state of

depression during the lock down period last year due COVID-19. I was staying alone at the

house, while working from home for my full time job to meet the project deadlines though

virtually connection with my co-workers. I at the same time was still experiencing the loss from

the break up in my previous relationship then. I missed my family abroad very much with the

anxiety about the uncertainty of the pandemic situation. As I have learnt the basics of application

of psychology at the Positive Psychology course, I knew I needed to seek help and support, even

though I could not physically contact anyone during the lock down. I called the hotline of our

company’s Employees Assistance Program (EAP), and started a 4 months counselling journey

with an experienced psychologist who helped me find back my way to a positive and bright
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outlook in life. Indeed, this experience was one of the drivers that motivated me to take up a

scholarship offered in my company for training in coaching and then became a volunteered

internal coach to help my other colleagues to maximize their potentials. Every coaching session

is always an inspiration for me to see how a client put up a big smile at the end of the session. I

have also broaden my perspectives of life through the clients’ new awareness they have created

for themselves.

In short, the optimistic view of human nature allows myself to focus on possibilities in

life and move forwards to what I believe work the best for myself.

Conversations of Person-Centered Therapy

The conversations in Person-Centered Therapy is to communicate trust, warm, safety,

acceptance, care, understanding, openness and for the client’s self-exploration. The therapist is

authentic and congruent in his / her way of use non-directive communication, and also sharing of

reflection to the clients. Indeed, I think this sort of conversations is needed not just in therapy,

but in our every day’s conversation at home, at workplace and many other social set ups. It’s our

intension to carry a conversation to archive a desired positive outcome and also enhance the

relationship with the other person. Therefore I always want to remind myself to apply what I

have learned in coaching in my ways of communications to others.

However, I realized that in a therapeutic set up when I am a coach, I have no much

difficulties to carry the sorts of conversations with the client following the Person-Centered

Therapy. I know clearly the therapeutic relationship I hold with the client and the only focus is

on the client’s needs during the session. In my everyday life, I find that my own needs in other

relationships with family, friends and co-workers, sometimes become the block in between my
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true intention and my ways of communication. I sometimes subconsciously communicate in

unconstructive ways and not convey my real intension for trust and understanding. Upon

reflections, I will want to keep on my regular daily practice of mindfulness.

In summary, I will continue to adopt the sorts of conversations in Person-Centered

Therapy in my coaching sessions, and will want to use them in my everyday life to communicate

my very true and kind intentions with others.

Personality Fit

Among the 16 personalities, I am the “defender” (ISFJ-T) type. Indeed I take

responsibilities personally, consistently going above and beyond, doing everything I can to

exceed expectations and delight others, at work and at home. Altruism is also one important part

of me. These two strengths of my personalities are actually hold me naturally well with the

humanistic view of human nature and the concepts of Person-Centered Therapy. In fact, at the

very beginning of my coaching practice, I found myself able to easily hold a safe space for the

client with my nature and presence.

In my personal life and at work, being a “defender” helps me archive a good status of

what I am doing through my enthusiasm and handwork. However, as I take things too personally

sometimes and become too sensitive and anxious about the future not meeting the expectation.

This thinking and emotion sometimes over rule my way of being and make me behave in

opposite direction to my true self. This realization has now helped me once again understand

myself better. I also often learnt about the similar realization in my clients in the coaching

sessions. Nevertheless, my altruism gets me to believe in accepting myself and move on from
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now instead of the past. I believe that being kind and caring to others and myself is the

fundamental for myself to be able to take the lesson leant and move forward for a better future.
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References

Australian Institute of Professional Counselors (AIPC). (2010). A Guide to Counselling

Therapies (DVD) Person-Centered Therapy. Retrieved from

https://www.aipc.net.au/articles/person-centred-therapy/

Farber, B. A., & Doolin, E. M. (2011). Positive regard and affirmation. In J. C. Norcross

(Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work: Evidence-based responsiveness (p. 168–

186). Oxford University

Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737208.003.0008

Iberg, J.R. (2001). Unconditional Positive Regards: Constituent Activities. In J. D. Bozarth & P.

Wilkins (Eds.), Rogers’ therapeutic conditions: Evolution, theory and practice. Vol 3:

Unconditional positive regard (pp. 109–125). Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.

http://previous.focusing.org/upr_iberg.pdf

McLeod, S.A. (2014). Carl Rogers. www.simplypsychology.org/carl-rogers.html

Miller, A.MFT. (2012). Instructor’s Manual for Carl Rogers on Person-Centered Therapy with

Carl R Rogers, PHD, and Natalie Rogers, PHD, REAT. Psychotherapy.net.

https://www.academia.edu/35717924/Instructors_Manual_for_CARL_ROGERS_ON_PE

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