What is Person-Centred Therapy?
Would you like a space where you can explore your difficulties in a supportive, reflective way? Want the freedom to reflect on past events or current challenges? Person-Centred Therapy is based on the idea that you are the expert on you but that in the right conditions, where we feel free from threat, this enables change.
It seems counter-intuitive; if we feel truly accepted as ourselves this may actually lead to change. However how often is it that we are in a space where we can truly reflect and process our innermost feelings, no matter how we feel about them? American psychologist Carl Rogers founded Person-Centred Therapy in the 1940s. He identified what he called three core conditions that the therapy provides and ultimately allows us to fulfil our potential:
- unconditional positive regard
- congruence
- empathy
Person-Centred Therapy has been found to be effective for a range of difficulties including depression, anxiety, grief, low self-esteem, relationship difficulties and past trauma.
What Does it Involve?
In Person-Centred Therapy the sessions are led by you. This isn’t to say that they are without challenge. The relationship of trust created between you and your therapist allows you a different kind of exploration than you might have with friends or family.
Person-centred therapy can help you to:
- identify and name your feelings
- stay with your feelings long enough to process them
- identify and harness your own strengths
- feel confident in who you really are
Eleanor’s Story
Eleanor felt down and anxious when she first came to therapy. She had the sense there should be more to life. Eleanor was adopted as a young child and although had loving parents never felt quite good enough. In the non-judgemental setting of therapy she felt truly valued and understood.
Eleanor was therefore able to connect to her feelings of grief for her birth parents, sense of being different from peers at school and begin mourning. She explored what she felt she had missed out on but also what made her unique and made room for these difficult and complex feelings for the first time. As the sessions moved on she felt she was nearing acceptance of herself. By the end of her therapy, Eleanor felt something had lifted and noticed a lightness in her body.