Positive Personal Growth

Human beings are sometimes faced with difficulties in life.  Often these difficulties appear to be insurmountable and overwhelming problems, which greatly inhibit us from experiencing joy in everyday life. In cases where these problems are not confronted and continue to remain unaddressed, they can escalate.  As a result, people often lose insight into their own behaviour. In an effort to enhance psychological wellbeing and gain clarity into how to resolve problems, people often turn to counselling.

For a Person-Centred counsellor, the aim is to effectively form an enabling and responsive relationship with the client. The counsellor offers the core conditions of Acceptance, Congruence and Empathy, and follows the client's agenda to facilitate an individualistic and diverse process of intervention leading to Positive Personal Growth for their client.

This essay will critically examine the concepts of the three core conditions, whilst also drawing on a practice example. The practice example will focus on the validity of Person-Centred Counselling. It will also demonstrate how the core conditions create a growth-promoting climate, which subsequently leads to the release of actualizing tendencies assisting the client in overcoming obstacles.

The concept of Acceptance, Congruence and Empathy emanates from the works of Carl Rogers, the Humanist Psychologist who developed Person-Centred Therapy (PCT). Rogers identified the core conditions as the necessary and sufficient tools needed to achieve a positive outcome in therapy.

Nonetheless, to successfully achieve a desired outcome, the client's capacity for self-determination within therapy is important. Therapy is not a matter of doing something to the client, or even getting him to do something about himself.  Instead, it is a matter of liberating him so that normal growth and development may continue.  This is achieved by removing the hindrances and barriers that prevent him from taking charge of his life. In his book Learning and Being in Person-Centred Counselling, Tony Merry explains "person-centred counselling is a sensitive exploration of a person's inner world, a reliving in a safe and caring relationship of those things that hurt and damaged us". The healing potential of therapy develops in a positive and constructive manner only if the climate of acceptance, respect and trust is established

Acceptance

Acceptance can be defined as Unconditional Positive Regard.  It is one of the three characteristics or attitudes that form an integral part of every successful therapeutic relationship. This condition exists when the counsellor develops a warm caring for the client. A caring which is not possessive and demands no personal gratification. It involves feelings of acceptance of the client's negative, despondent and painful emotions as well as their positive, good, mature and sociable feelings.

A counsellor shows acceptance when he or she adopts a non-judgemental stance in a way that conveys respect, warmth and genuineness. This communicates to the client a feeling of self-worth and value and this facilitates a process of self-acceptance and growth.

In showing acceptance, the client's behaviour is not ignored but rather seen as reaction to the underlying problem they are presenting. The counsellor's role is to help in ways which respect the client's values, personal resources and capacity for self-determination. Counsellors do not automatically jump in to smooth away unhappiness or try to cheer clients up. Instead, they encourage clients to express their feelings fully and to come to terms with things as they are at the present.

In Person-Centred Communication, Hanka Grobler et al explains the importance of self-acceptance "when an individual is able to symbolise most of his or her experiences and integrate them into a total self concept, such individual will display greater understanding of themselves..." When clients' experience acceptance from a counsellor, they begin to accept themselves, which increases their self-esteem. Low self-esteem is at the root of many problems because it erodes our confidence in our ability to manage our lives.

Congruence

Congruence in is a relationship implies a measure of equivalence. It is the degree to which we are able to relate to people in an honest, sincere, and transparent manner. In Person-Centred counselling, skills and techniques play a much less important role than engaging and relating with the client authentically. To be able to demonstrate congruence in a therapeutic relationship, an awareness of self and an acknowledgement of our own beliefs, prejudices and values are important.  Effective therapy depends wholly on the degree to which the counsellor is integrated, open, genuine and self-aware of potential blind spots.

In Becoming a Therapist, Malcolm Cross and Linda Papadopoulos assert "since counsellors are asking people to take an honest look at themselves and to make choices concerning how they want to change, it is critical that counsellors themselves be open to the same kind of personal scrutiny". Genuineness encourages client's self-disclosure, although, it is imperative to note that a congruent counsellor should not feel under any compulsion to disclose; either about events, situations or feeling aroused within the counselling relationship. Counsellors continually strive to keep client's agenda in focus, by recognising and accepting aspects of the client's behaviour that may possibly be conflicting with their own personal values.

Empathy

Empathy is often characterised as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes". It is the ability to recognise, perceive and feel the emotion of another. Although absolute empathy is probably unattainable, a high degree of empathy is essential for a successful counselling relationship. It is a personal quality which some people naturally have and which can be further developed through practice. Empathy is the capacity to enter into the feelings, thoughts and experiences of another; to understand what the other person is experiencing. There is an emotional content and intellectual element to the skilled exercise of empathy. When a counsellor senses and responds to the experience and perceptions of the client, it may help the client to form relational connections with the counsellor, thus provoking healing and development.

Based on my personal experience of using empathy in personal relationships, I have found that it can often be difficult to put a sensitive and accurate understanding of another person's experience into words. The value of being understood by another human being is enormously important, not least because it can lead to self-understanding. Self-understanding can last a lifetime, and also deeply enhances self-discovery.

Learning to be empathic requires knowledge as well as being able to evaluate oneself thoroughly. It involves the examination of stereotypes which we may be carrying around about others, and the acquisition of cultural and structural understandings about society. It also requires the ability to feel with someone else, while observing the boundaries of what your own feelings are.

In Integrative Counselling Skills in Action, Sue Culley and Tim Bond explain "because we are all separate, unique beings, it is impossible for us to understand our clients completely. No one can experience clients' lives as they experience them because of the uniqueness of their experience. However, empathic understanding offers vital acknowledgement, witness and recognition". Empathic understanding enables me as a person to accept and enter the world of the client irrespective of his or her own personal and cultural baggage.

Therapeutic Change

In some instances, the relationship between client and counsellor is itself the vehicle for therapeutic change. Genuine empathy, essential congruence and real acceptance will quite often provide the wherewithal for clients to overcome encrusted habits, pain, divisive disordered thoughts and dysfunctional behaviours. Clients who experience their counsellors' empathy and understanding, develop an increased self-acceptance and self-empathy, which are powerful sources of personal growth in their own right.

In Helping the Client: A Creative Practical Guide, John Heron says "In personal-development work, confronting interventions seek to raise consciousness about conventional and compulsive states of the person."

When clients accept responsibility for their behaviour and emotions, they recognise that even in the most difficult of circumstances, they have the ability to choose how they respond.

As human beings, we gain great relief when are being attentively listened to, especially when a person is prepared to help bear some of the weight we are carrying. Telling ourselves the truth can be a painful experience but one that is deeply healing and reparative. It is however, important to acknowledge that clients are courageous in confronting their problems, as no counselling relationship can be successfully established without the active cooperation of the client.

One of the principles underlying counselling is the desire to empower clients to take responsibility for themselves and to identify, develop and use resources that will make them more effective agents of change in the counselling sessions as well as in their everyday lives. This is central to the reciprocal relationship that lies at the heart of effective and reflective practice, and counsellors have the task of paying attention to the client's expressed needs.

In Mastering Counselling Skills, Lance & Jennie Lindon explain the significance of paying attention to the clients "when you attend fully to someone else, you are choosing to value that person and what she or he says to you. Full attention is crucial in your work with clients, at all levels of communication".

Case Study

The following is a succinct narrative of how the use of these core conditions enabled me to effectively work with a client that put up barriers of reluctance, hostility and resistance in my first meeting with him.

My client, lets call him "Mr. A", is a middle-aged man, originally from Bangladesh. He is a mini-cab driver who had been a victim of theft four times in six months. All the alleged perpetrators are black (the significance of this will soon become clear).

A referral was received from the police, and I subsequently telephoned Mr. A and arranged for a home. I called Mr. A and during the conversation, he continually thanked me for contacting him, and it did appear that he was desperate to get support from the organisation I volunteer with. At the agreed date and time, I visited Mr. A's house, and when he opened the door and saw me, he looked a bit shocked. I was not sure why he reacted this way, but I sensed that he did not want me in his home.

At this point, I decided to look beyond Mr. A's countenance and behaviour and focus on him as an individual (with the use of Unconditional Positive Regard) who is probably still dealing with the effects of the crime he encountered. I introduced myself, and showed him my ID card.  He then invited me into his home.

I began talking to Mr. A, asking him how he was feeling generally. Mr. A then recounted the whole incident (I used active listening, minimal prompts, empathic understanding, and congruence to facilitate this process). Mr. A emphatically said that he hated black people and will not have anything to do with them, because they are dangerous, useless and have ruined his life. He went on to say he has had over £3,000 worth of personal belongings stolen from him, and he said he still has panic attacks and nightmares as he had been threatened with a gun and knife in the most recent incident. Mr. A said he would never let any black person into his cab, no matter how desperate he was for the money.

All through the conversation, I noted that Mr. A repeatedly said, "I am not racist but....".  By having empathic understanding, I completely understood Mr. A's difficulties.

I surmised that first, he had not expected me to be black, and secondly, I probably did not fit into his own idea of all black people being dangerous. By being accepting of Mr. A, I was able to tune into his own feelings, and see past his behaviour, but crucially addressing the underlying feelings of anger, pain and fear that arouse from the traumatic experience he had had.

Listening to Mr. A talk about my culture, making disparaging remarks and sweeping generalisations, made me feel aggrieved.  It seemed as though he did not have any regard for me as a person from the same ethnic group. However, I am pleased that he trusted and allowed me to explore the deep-rooted conflicting feelings he was harbouring within himself.

According to Patricia D'Ardenne and Aruna Mahtani  in Transcultural Counselling in Action, "the issues of prejudice and racism are difficult and painful areas for both parties (counsellor and client)".

Conclusion

The use of the core conditions of Acceptance, Congruence and Empathy in my personal and professional relationships has been a very illuminating experience. I am now able to unburden myself with the task of doing it right and can focus on being with the client selflessly in a non-judgemental capacity. The use of core conditions has also helped redress the balance in my own relationships, and I am now able to move through personal blocks, for example, my fear of being able to discuss difficult feelings with others.

By being congruent, I have found that it shows to the client that it is desirable to be oneself and discourages the view that the facilitator is the all knowing expert.   This makes the client more likely to be able to get in touch with their own inner resources, thus contributing to their own Positive Personal Growth.

Bibliography

Becoming a Therapist: A Manual for Personal and Professional Development by Malcolm Cross and Linda Papadopoulos

Integrative Counselling Skills in Action by Sue Culley and Tim Bond

Transcultural Counselling in Action by Patricia D'Ardenne and Aruna Mahtani

Person-Centred Communication, by Hanka Grobler, Dries Du Toit, and Rinie Schenck

Helping the Client: A Creative Practical Guide by John Heron

Mastering Counselling Skills by Lance Lindon & Jennie Lindon

Learning and Being in Person-Centred Counselling by Tony Merry