W4-Rogers, Person-Centered Therapy

Post#2 by Olber Lacosta-Rogers, Person-Centered Therapy

Rogers felt that clients are responsible for their problems and concerns; hence he places his faith and gives them that responsibility. According to Rogers, clients can actively heal themselves and can create their self-growth. He believes that therapeutic rapport between the client and therapist is the basis for the clients to realize their potential to heal themselves. Therefore, Rogers hypothesized the required and appropriate environments for sufficient therapeutic personality transformation based on the quality of the relationships. Among the fundamental approaches or conditions that Rogers came up with include understanding the client genuinely, genuinely and unconditionally caring about the client and being authentic in the therapeutic relationship.

For a change, growth, and drawing out the client's potential, these conditions ensure the following. First, the conditions ensure that both the therapists and the clients are in an emotional bond, whereby the patient is in a state of incongruence and very susceptible, and the therapists are in a congruence state (real/authentic) to be perceived by the patient (Corey, 2012). The conditions also help the counselor to practice unconditional positive respect for the patient. The therapists are also mandated to practice empathic understanding of inner reference and endeavors of the clients and share with them about the experiences. When therapists share their unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding to the client, they only tend to achieve a minimal degree of change. Thus, the core conditions are necessary and sufficient for clients to realize their potential in a therapeutic relationship.

The concern I have about Roger's approach is the difficulty experienced by clinicians when working with clients. The problem starts with establishing the therapeutic alliance to develop and meet treatment goals since there are many obstacles. For instance, the Rogerian approach promoted a client-centred therapy, which the clients may sometimes flaw. Sometimes, the patients may be unable to develop measures that promote change on their side, making it challenging to acquire change. At other times, countertransference may happen, where the therapist may develop particular emotions or reactions towards a client, disrupting the treatment process.

I like Rodger’s approach because it makes the therapists available and accessible for the clients. Also, the approach is mainly based on the therapeutic relationship, creating a good working environment between the client and the therapist that aids change. However, one of the things I dislike about the approach is that it is prone to bigotry; some clients/therapists may have a negative perception of the other party, hence hindering the flow of effective communication necessary in this approach for clients to recover quickly (Rodriguez-Nogueira et al., 2020). Besides, clients may not disclose important information needed by the therapist for effective treatment to happen. Therefore, this approach requires therapists to create a warm and friendly therapeutic environment.

Rogers integrates empathy, therapeutic communication, and positive regard in his approach to achieve enhanced patient’s outcome. Therapists utilizing the Rogerian approach strive to create a non-judgmental, comfortable, and empathetic therapeutic environment. In this approach, empathetic understanding enables clinicians to reflect the feelings and thoughts of the clients allowing them to gain a comprehensive perception of their inner thoughts and emotions. Therapeutic communication helps therapists to share their feelings honestly. It also helps the client to develop good communication skills, enabling them to manage dialogue without being directed towards a certain course. Finally, total positive regard helps the therapist to acknowledge the client for who they are without any judgment. It is more likely for the client to develop some positive changes when a therapist is feeling optimistic, accepting boldness towards the patient at the moment. Integrating the three conditions helps to achieve psychological growth of the client, helping develop self-awareness, changing their actions through self-direction.

Lastly, one of the diagnoses that would correlate best with this therapy modality is depression. Depression affects the emotions, thoughts, and actions of the client. Person-centred therapy approach can be integrated in such a scenario to enhance the psychological growth of the patient. It can help the patient become more self-aware and direct himself by changing his behaviors (Mahafzah & Jaradat, 2020). Additionally, an effective therapeutic environment can make the patient feel safe and free from judgment through empathetic understanding and unconditional positive regard and acceptance. Patient with depression can then eventually develop a healthier view of the world and improve their self-perception.

 

References

Corey, G. (2012). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy. Cengage Learning.

Mahafzah, R. A., & Jaradat, A. K. M. (2020). The Effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Person-Centered Therapy on Depression and Quality of Life among Divorced Women Who Have Lost Custody of Their Children. Journal of Al-Quds Open University for Educational & Psychological Research & Studies, 11(30), 13.

Rodríguez-Nogueira, Ó., Morera Balaguer, J., Nogueira López, A., Roldán Merino, J., Botella- Rico, J. M., Del Río-Medina, S., & Moreno Poyato, A. R. (2020). The psychometric properties of the person-centered therapeutic relationship in physiotherapy scale. PloS one, 15(11), e0241010.