There are several different types of counselling which can make it difficult to choose which one is right for you. I would always recommend that clients do some research about the different types before deciding and if in doubt try out different types until they find the best fit for them.
In this blog I will describe the type of counselling that I provide called person-centred counselling. Hopefully this will make deciding which therapy type is right for you a bit easier. Person-centred can also be called person-centred psychotherapy, humanistic therapy, or Rogerian psychotherapy. Person-centred counselling was developed in the 1940s by psychologist Carl Rogers.
Carl Rogers based his therapy around the idea that everyone has within them the tendency toward growth which he called the self-actualizing tendency. The natural growth process can be blocked by experiencing difficult events and person-centred counselling works at removing those blocks. The person-centred counsellor provides 3 conditions to allow growth to happen. The first condition is acceptance (or unconditional positive regard) so the client can feel safe within the counselling room and free to be who they truly are without fear of any judgement. The second condition is congruence (or genuineness) so that the client can feel that the counsellor is being honest to create trust. The third condition is empathy so that the client can feel completely understood. With these 3 conditions in place the client can explore their thoughts, feelings, and goals for the therapy within a place where the growth is optimised.
One of the things that Carl Roger was famous for was the videos where he demonstrated his style of counselling with Gloria in 1964. The videos can be view at the following link.
The purpose of the video was to show how different the approach was from others, specifically Albert Ellis and Fritz Perls. Each had a session with Gloria which can also be found on YouTube. Albert Ellis developed rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) and Fritz Perls developed gestalt therapy.
For more information contact me at info@forcounselling.co.uk.
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