Person Centre Approach: Empathy of the Therapist

Introduction

This essay aims to identify and critically evaluate two significant approach in terms of their concepts and interventions, namely the Person-Centred approach and the Cognitive-Behavioural approach. I believe these two approaches suit my personality as well as my counselling style. Both approaches meet the need of the client and inspire positive change in behaviour as well as outlooks. However, both therapy have their own strengths and weaknesses when put into practice that i will discuss in the following essay.

Person-Centred Approach

Person-centred therapy was developed during the 1940’s and 50’s by Carl Rodgers, an American humanistic psychologist who believed in a way an individual sees themselves and realising their full potential for their personal growth and personal development known as self-actualisation. Rogers believed that the behaviour can be re-organised by use of person centred therapy.

The approach was originally focused on the client being in control of their own development to be better understanding of self, self-exploration, and improved self-concept. Roger believed that every person has the ability to fulfil their own needs and potentials. This therapy has profoundly influenced the field of psychology as well as other disciplines which engage its significant concepts (Vanhercke, 2014).

Person-centred theory places great emphasis on the individual’s ability to move in positive directions as well as the desire for personal growth and change rather than viewing clients as problematic thoughts and behaviours. Person-centred approach strive to create an environment that is comfortable, non-judgemental, and emphatic. As this will allow client to express their thoughts and emotions without fear of being judged and criticised by the therapist, but primally as a listener who response in a form of paraphrasing clients statements.

This process will lead the client to look back at their own thoughts, and potentially will help the client to achieve self-realisation and appropriate action. In other words, therapist is not there to find the answer for the clients, but to encourage the client to find their own answer towards healing and growth. According to Rogers, person-entered therapist should remain non-directive. This means therapist will have to let the client to lead the discussion and not to direct the client in a specific direction as well as show complete acceptance and support for client without client being judged. (Cooper, Watson, Holldampf, 2010).

In order to achieve the goals of person-centred therapy, there are factors that the therapist has to take into consideration. These factors are the determinant of the reaction of the client as well as how they will perceive the therapists’ actions and efforts (Fischer, 2015). These factors include the psychological connection between the therapist and the client, the vulnerability of the client, congruence and genuineness, unconditional positive regard, empathy, and client’s perception, which are often called the core conditions of the six conditions. Change occurs with the core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard being in place.

Congruence or genuineness

According to Rogers, the therapist should be genuine throughout the session. When it comes to expressing commentary, they have to be honest with the client. The therapist have to set an example example of being themselves, expressing their thoughts and feelings honestly. If there is any sign that the client is going to be vulnerable, it must be a two-way thing, and the therapist must meet them halfway (Meyer, 2013). Eventually, cultivation of this honest nature for the therapist will lead to the development of self-actualisation of the client.

Unconditional Positive Regard

This concept allow the client to speak up and express their emotion without being judged by the therapist. In a situation where the therapist is in disagreement with what the client is saying, the therapist should always remember to adopt a non-judgmental attitude. This gives the client a chance to express their hardest feelings without fear of judged or criticised. Difficult emotions are the ones that carry the most weight in a therapy session. This means that if the therapist is able to take such feelings positively, then the client can easily associate with the solutions to solve their emotional problems. Finally, the factor of unconditional positive regard is a way to make clients feel more understood by the therapist.

The Empathy of the Therapist

This core condition defined as the ability of the therapist to understand what the client is feeling as this allow therapist to feel and see things from the client’s point of view. It is essential that the therapist expresses genuine empathy and concern towards the client. Eventually, this enables or encourages the client to share more vulnerable and deep information. For this reason, all therapists performing person-centered therapy are encouraged to have empathy in every single session they undertake, despite the type of information received. Therapist must feel the client’s issue as his or her own issue, but without losing the quality of empathy.(Rogers,1957).

Strengths

The strength of person-centered therapy is it aids in enabling the problems of the client to be solved through increasing their wellbeing. The client is able to explore their true self by bringing in the aspect of honest. In this case, there is empowerment of the client to solve their problems. In addition to this, this kind of therapy gives the client an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to have self-direction (Gross,2010). The person-centred therapy offers a perspective that is optimistic that clients can feel more comfortable and open to the therapist without being judged or criticised but rather showing empathy.

Weaknesses

Person-centred therapy is a therapy that has a limited range of clients that could present their problems. It is a very long course of therapy and it is very hard to apply in a short therapy. The approach from person-centred therapy lead the therapist to be supportive to their clients instead of challenging them to open their main problems until the client feel like they have to open on their own. This type of approach has to be active and direct in order to be effective. this type of method can be felt inappropriate approach toward the clients and also this technique lack of technique to help clients solving their problems.

Reason I choose person-centred therapy is because I like the fact this approach let the clients get all the attention and focus during therapy. Also, the relationship is formed between the clients and therapist. I believe this allow client to be more comfortable and expressive. Most importantly the clients will feel they are not being judged or criticised for their behaviour and emotion during in the therapist.

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioural therapy was first developed by Albert Ellis in 1959s called Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), then in 1960s Aaron Beck developed Cognitive therapy. The focus in REBT is on changing irrational thinking, rather than dealing with feelings. According to Ellis, people are not aware that many of their thoughts about themselves are irrational and negatively affect the way they behave. These thoughts that lead people to suffer negative emotions and causes the most problems. Ellis believes that humans are capable of changing their irrational beliefs, if they put their mind to it and willing to work on it.

The cognitive behavioural Therapy is based from the theoretical rationale that the way in which we feel and behave is determined by how we perceive and structure our experience. The main goal of cognitive behavioural therapy is to teach clients to monitor and observe their own thoughts and reality.

Cognitive behaviour therapist begins by helping out the client to actively identify the problematic beliefs (Baucom, 2013). The negative thoughts can lead to behaviours that are problematic and can affect a number of life including romantic relationships, work, family and academics. Change would occur for the client in cognitive behavioural therapy through assisting the clients into identifying negative thought patterns and then the process shifted to change their irrational beliefs. By changing thoughts, we can change the way in which we react to situations and events.

As in other therapy models, behaviour therapy also focuses on the importance of the therapeutic relationship (Corey, 2013). Both therapist and client have valuable contributions to bring to therapy, and the relationship is a partnership in which both therapist and client work together to reach the client’s goals. (Bordin, 1994)

Strengths

Cognitive behaviour therapy is undoubtedly an attractive , efficient therapy that is pretty easy to learn and deliver and produces good result in many instances. Cognitive behaviour therapy is really effective in treating depression and other mental health problems. Compared to the other method of therapy , cognitive behaviour therapy can be completed in just a short time and does not need a long period of therapy to help client. Cognitive behaviour therapy can help to stop negative thoughts that make an individual feel anxious or fear, this can make problems are more controllable and help in changing our negative thoughts and improve the way an individual feel about their life. Cognitive behaviour therapy can be effective treatment for some mental health disorder. Skills learnt in CBT are useful, practical and helpful strategies that can be incorporated into everyday life to help a person cope better with future stresses and difficulties, even after the treatment has finished.

Weaknesses

There has to be client cooperation in order to make problems go away. The client needs to commit themselves to the process. In addition to this, the therapy process is time consuming and may require creation of more for the client. This means that it may highly interfere with the schedule of the client. Since the therapy process is characterised with confronting anxieties as well as emotions, the client may experience initial periods where they are emotionally uncomfortable or even more anxious. Also due to the nature of cognitive behaviour therapy, it may not be suitable for people with more complex mental health or learning difficulties especially in children. Cognitive behaviour therapy cannot cure a physical symptoms but can help people feel better with their problem such as anger, drug use, relationship problems ,insomnia, depression, panic, post traumatic stress disorder and etc. Cognitive behaviour therapy only focus on one individual and only focus on people emotions, thoughts, feelings and behaviour and not fixing a bigger problems such as families who may cause problems for individual.

Conclusions

I learned there are similarities between these two approaches. Person-centred approach focused on the client being in control of their own development and Cognitive behavioural therapy focused on individual’s thought and point of view that result in the way we behave and feel. Both, person-entered approach and cognitive behavioural approach offer places great emphasis on the individual’s ability to move in positive directions as well as the desire for personal growth and change rather than viewing clients as problematic thoughts and behaviours. As Ellis stated that humans are capable of changing their irrational beliefs, if they put their mind to it and willing to work on it. Roger believed that every person has the ability to fulfil their own needs and potentials.