What is Person-centred Counselling?

Person-centred counselling has a long history dating back to the Client-Centred approach first pioneered by Carl Rogers in the 1940s. Person-centred therapy seeks to facilitate a client’s self-actualising tendency, “a person’s inbuilt tendency toward growth and fulfilment”, though the experience of acceptance (unconditional positive regard) from the therapist along with the therapists’ congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding.

 

The Person-centred way of working is typically non-directive, offering a confidential safe space that is non-judgemental allowing you to work through whatever is troubling you. The person-centred approach holds that rather than the counsellor being the expert who can “fix” you, it is the individual that has the ability to work towards resolving their own issues when given the support of genuine acceptance and empathic understanding which comes from the working relationship between client and counsellor.

 

Part of the discipline of the person-centred approach is not to make assumptions about the client’s appropriate process, but to follow the process laid out by the client.
― Dave Mearns

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