A Sense of Doubt blog post #3810 - THEORIES CLASS - Counseling - Rogerian - Person-Centered Therapy

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3810 - THEORIES CLASS - Counseling - Rogerian - Person-Centered Therapy

Next theory in this series, and possibly my favorite, though I am not sure if I will practice it without modification.

I doubt that there are any counselors who do not adhere to the idea of "unconditional positive regard."

I happen to really love that idea. We're all human beings with vulnerabilities and flaws.  Treating other people as people may seem like a no brainer, but it is amazing how often people DO NOT treat other human beings as human beings. Or rather, back again to the Golden Rule, they do not treat others as they themselves would like to be treated with love, compassion, and respect.

Here's my essay on applying Rogerian, Person-Centered Therapy to the same case as I detailed yesterday.

Thanks for tuning in/.

Week Three - Main Discussion - COUN6722

Rogerian Person-Centered Case

Chris Tower

 

Case Conceptualization

 

Theory: Person-Centered Counseling - Case of Jason

Presenting Problem: Jason is a 38-year-old Jewish Caucasian male; his family lives on the east coast where he grew up. He works 60-80 hours a week in his law practice; he considers these long hours as his main coping mechanism. Jason finds social support in the Jewish community, attending weekly services. Jason has sought counseling for severe depression and feels like he has lost meaning and purpose in his life. Jason exhibits pale complexion, sweatiness, and agitated muscle movements. He is engaged in a romantic relationship with Kevin, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and keeps their relationship secret. Jason fears the "devastating effect" the truth of his relationship with Kevin would have on his support system and even his profession. Jason has described what he sees as a betrayal from Kevin's "online affairs," involving pornography consumption and explicit sex chats. Jason views his relationship with Kevin as giving his life meaning, and he asked his counselor to "take the pain away."

 

Hypothesis: Jason’s anxiety and depression originate from his fears about his secret relationship with Kevin being disclosed and his incongruence between his family, religious, and professional communities – his perceived world – and his romantic relationships, his natural world. Jason perceives that there are “strings attached” to the respect, fellowship, and love that he receives from others. These “conditions of worth” have Jason distrusting his own confidence in running his own life and making the best choices for himself (Hazler, 2022), which has forced him into being secretive about his romantic partner. But Jason falls even deeper into incongruence, when his partner’s actions feel like a “betrayal.”

 

Goals: The primary goal for Jason is a move from his current state of incongruence to congruence to perceive his own positive nature for himself and the world around him. According to Hazler (2022, p.148) by accepting his strengths and weaknesses, Jason will reduce “distortions in [his] view of the world” finding the congruence between how he sees himself and his interactions with the people in his communities and relationships. By providing the “essential growth conditions,” Jason can realize his unfulfilled potential for “self-acceptance, self-growth, self-satisfaction, and self-actualization” (Hazler, 2022, p.148).

 

Interventions: All interventions with Jason will be conducted through the Rogerian lens of unconditional positive regard that is central to person-centered therapy.

 

Reflection of Content and Feeling: To help him move to congruence with his two separate worlds and onward to self-actualization, Jason’s words and feelings will be mirrored by the counselor via empathy exploration. The goal of this interaction will be seeing the underlying feelings the client may be unaware of expressing. Given that Jason’s worldview is one of pain over a secret relationship and a betrayal within that relationship, the reflection process will unify the complex elements of the client’s world as a whole as opposed to distinctly separate relationships and secrecies. In so doing, Jason may see a way to “revise and expand perceptions of [himself] based on counselor reflections” (Hazler, 2022, p.151). In demonstrating unconditional positive regard, the counselor will show real caring, love, and deep respect for the client affirming that he has a “capacity for self-direction” (Psychotherapy.net, 2008, 16:23). The need for positive regard is universal in all human beings and develops as the awareness of self emerges (Rogers, 1959, Chapter 17, p. 245). The reflection process and unconditional positive regard can only be achieved through “active listening,” a demonstration of empathy integral to person-centered counseling and all its interventions.

 

Immediacy: In addition to reflection, the counselor will look to address directly the “immediate situation” with Jason, another use of the mirror in empathy exploration. Though reflection provides a larger view of the client’s worldview in sum total from days or weeks all together, employing immediacy enables a “here-and-now approach to the relationship in general and to feelings in particular” (Hazler, 2022, p.151) by addressing what comes out in the therapy session as it happens. The counselor may question the contradiction between Jason’s words and his pale complexion, sweatiness, and agitated muscle movements. The counselor may also share direct observation of the statements Jason makes in the moment to better explore them immediately, such as the justifications and reasoning he may make for the secret he is keeping from everyone in his life (the relationship), including Kevin (the feeling of betrayal). In so doing, the counselor becomes “a vibrant part of the client’s experience” (Hazler, 2022, p.151). This intervention will rely on the counselor’s capacity for intuition, especially as Natalie Rogers (daughter of Carl Rogers) claimed “we're all much more intuitive than we dare admit” (Psychotherapy.net, 2008, 147:40).

This intuition can be seen in action in a YouTube video as Carl Rogers draws conclusions in counseling a client about his anger: “people don’t realize how much you hurt me” (Hill, 2017, 31:30), he says, reflecting the client’s feeling immediately, in the moment. In my own therapeutic experiences with someone using the Rogerian method, the immediate reflections provided by my counselor have allowed me to think of a situation in a new way, such as when he questioned my fears about returning to graduate school.

 

Expected Outcome: The interventions of reflection and immediacy engaged with unconditional positive regard and active listening will convey confidence that Jason is competent and reinforce trust in himself. Jason will be encouraged to believe that he “can accomplish great things on the journey to improve” (Hazler, 2022, p.143) because he has the inner resources to grow in a positive direction, regardless of how he may define that direction. Whether Jason continues to live with secrets and lies are his choices, but through person-centered counseling he may begin to see “creative ideas and actions” (Hazler, 2022, p.143) allowing him to grow in whatever new directions he sets for himself.

 

References

 

Hazler, R. (2022). Person-centered theory. In D. Capuzzi & M. D. Stauffer (Eds.), Counseling and psychotherapy: Theories and interventions (7th ed., pp. 139-164). American Counseling Association.

 

Hill, A. (2017). Carl Rogers counsels an individual on anger. You Tube. https://youtu.be/uRCD3anKsa0?si=P4cuF9ffue0f8iNh.

 

Psychotherapy.net (Producer). (2008). Person-centered expressive arts therapy [Video file]. Author. https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/person-centered-expressive-arts-therapy.

 

Rogers, Carl. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships, as developed in the client-centered framework. In H. Kirshenbaum & V.L. Henderson (Eds.) The Carl Rogers Reader. (pp. 236-257). Houghton Mifflin Company.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2407.24 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3675 days ago & DAD = 329 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.