What is Person Centred Therapy

Person centred therapy is a talking therapy. It’s not about giving advice but rather about giving you a safe place to explore your feelings and bring about autonomy. The therapy uses three core conditions, empathy-to view the world through the clients eyes, congruence-to be completely honest with the client and Unconditional positive regard-to be completely accepting of the client. This approach has both client and counsellor as equal partners in the therapeutic relationship. The Counsellor is not the expert on how the client feels.

The client has all the answers inside of them and is responsible for their own experiences. The Counsellor is there to listen and enable the client to bring about change that is right for them. The organismic self of a person is overridden by the self concept with our true needs being ignored and pushed away. Think about the organismic self of a baby crying to have it’s needs met. If the mother doesn’t attend to the baby’s needs, then it’s self concept takes over as it starts to believe that crying is wrong and it is a bad person for wanting it’s needs met. This goes on all through our lives and the self concept eventually gains control and our organismic self is pushed further into the background until it isn’t heard at all. Person centred therapy is about listening to the organismic self and giving it back that control.