Research Paper on Personal-Centered Therapy

Introduction

Personal-centered therapy involves a therapist helping a client with personal centered problems. Hence, a counselor creates right conditions that will lead the client to self-healing. According to Kazantzis & L'Abate (2006), some situations improve human development while others hinder it. There exist three favorable conditions for person-centered therapy. Rogers found genuinely as the most crucial component of the treatment.

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Primary Conditions for Personal Centered Therapy

Empathy

This condition defines understanding of what a person express at any given time (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). In other words, compassion requires a therapist to reveal the right values and concerns which give him or her ability to understand things in a client's view. Empathy enables a client to open to the therapist. This approach requires bracketing. Bracketing refers to an event where the counselor can separate his attitude, feeling, and ideas from the interfering with attempts to understand the patients (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). Empathy can get expressed through body language, non-verbal cues and attentively listening to the client (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). To convey that the counselor attentiveness, he or she needs to paraphrase what the client expressed and asked if he or she got it right. Empathy aims to make the client relax and form a psychological contact with the therapist.

Unconditional Positive Regard

The condition defines a process where the counselor continuously offers acceptance, values and non-judging support to the client (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). In other words, the therapist expresses warm instructing and approval to the client. The client needs no offer anything to receive these treatments. The therapist must hear out and answer the client in an un-judging manner. Thus this condition promotes the atmosphere of development.

Congruence

Congruence refers to the ability of the therapist to express his or her attitudes genuinely at given time. Congruence relates to the process where an individual is aware of his or her intimate experiences and the ability to communicate what is happening (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). That is, one should not possess an awareness of inner self but also the ability to express it. For instance, a therapist soldier from the war from coming for therapy should maintain knowledge of his or her experience and expertise to tell about it, unlike the soldier client who acts as incongruent. Hence, congruence contains the internal element (knowledge and transparency) and external factor (explicit communication). The therapist must provide the willingness to listen to the client and reward his or her experience. In other words, the therapist should accept and validate the client's experience and to genuinely not practice power over him or her.

One of the main aims of congruence in therapy is to create a trust (Kolpachnikov 2013). Thus, when trust gets developed, communication gets boosted. An individual should reveal significant feeling and thoughts to the clients. Hence, for one to be congruent he or she should contain awareness of inner and external elements and apply them therapeutically when necessary (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). The expression phase needs control to avoid burdening the clients with personal issues. Congruence count as an essential part of individual-centered therapy because it enhances empathy and unconditional regards (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). The process can influence the patient's incongruence.

Some therapist disagrees with the idea that a therapist should practice congruence transparency because the technique requires a specific range of personal development and particular intellectual and value engagement (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). On the other hand, other theorists firmly believe that expressing one's feeling might make the patient think the therapist acts vulnerable, confused or weak. All the three condition act intertwined (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). Each support each other to create the right atmosphere for the client and reduce the tension of the client. Hence, the combination of the three conditions encourages the diminishing of the patients' incongruence.

Since persona centered therapy requires a therapist expression, it can prove challenging in dealing with a client with addiction issues (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006). An addicted person can express themselves in an influenced man because they act and think while under the influence. Further, people from different background express themselves differently. Some do encourage people to open up especial the males or invites hyper expressions. Therefore, the lack of emotion or violently expressing oneself can undermine the therapeutic process. On the hand, since the therapy basis relies on personalized experiences the clients healing process develops from within himself and not externally.

Existential Therapy

This form of treatment involves where the client experiences the world's problems and learn how to freely and by choice heal or recover through them (Stumm 2008). A client searches his or her life's meaning, understands life's problems and making the right choices to solve the issues in his or her life. The advantage of this therapy is that takes human being conditions to a significant level in a realistic manner as it embraces full person potential (Schulenberg 2016).

As Yalom stated, there exist four issues of maximum body concerns (existential 2018). The givens construct the framework of the therapy and therapist. This factor involves death inevitability, freedom (freedom to choose their goals) and the responsibility that comes with it, existential separateness and meaningless. The four form the ultimate catalyst for the therapy (Existential 2018).

The existential therapist guides their clients through personal truthfulness and final realization to find meaning in one's life. The techniques applied by this therapist include behavior modification and psychotherapy. Behavior modification involves teaching the clients through non-adoptive behaviors to develop adaptive manners and remove the unwanted behaviors (Existential 2018). On the other side, psychotherapy consists in help

ing persons solve issues, attain objectives, and control personal life by healing numerous of cognitive problems .the technique enhances the client's honesty with themselves, to widen their opinion on their atmosphere and environment, and to take active decisions about future goals

The base of the therapy suits persons who need to deal with the major concerns: freedom, meaningless, death and isolation (Schulenberg 2016). The existential psychotherapy suits those willing to raise their self-awareness and those ready to control their lives and make desired changes (Latz 2004). Some of the problems that can get addressed include rapport and family issues.

Bracketing

Bracketing involves isolation of feelings. This element refers to where a therapist needs to separate his or her ideas and attitudes while attending to a client. The process enables the therapist to avoid biasness (Kazantzis & L'Abate 2006).

Guided Fantasy

Human beings possess the ability to create fantastic images and ideas (Owen 2010). This mental imagery can either be positive or negative. Illusion occurs under one's control. According to Owen (2010), a therapist may introduce the fantasy process although in a structured manner. The fantasy approach can help the client to relax, speed recovery process and enhance mood. For instance, a medical trainee client can involve himself or herself in mental imagery and pretend to be a doctor and offer his experiences as a doctor.

Paradoxical Intentions

This technique refers to a place where a client gets encouraged to humorously involve himself or herself with the procedure causing the anxieties. The methods form a close association with commitment and acceptance (Schulenberg et al. 2004). The clients accept or refuse the given rules.

Conclusion

The strength of Existential therapy is that it proved useful in dealing with anxieties, which represents the total collection of cognitive illness recognized by apprehension. Moreover, the treatment deals with the fear of lacking self-control, insomnia, increased pulse and diarrhea can also follow an anxiety issue (Existential 2018).

The limitations of the therapy include weakness of its testability, empirical study, and precision. Further, the process fails to produce educational and training plans (Existential 2018).

Since existential therapy depends on the person to fight through his or her challenges, it reflects the difficulty in helping people on drugs. This person acts under the influence of drugs and others under the culture or social norms of their origin.

References

Existential Psychotherapy. Last updated: 02-06-2018. https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/existential-psychotherapy Clarifying and Furthering Existential Psychotherapy: Theories,

Schulenberg, E, S. (2016). Clarifying and Furthering Existential Psychotherapy: Theories, Methods, and Practices. Springer.

Kolpachnikov V. V. 2013. Client-Centered and Existential Approaches: Are they Mostly Similar or Different? Retrieved from https://www.hse.ru/data/2013/11/11/1335026019/14PSY2013.pdf

Latz, J. Research and Evaluation Issues in Existential Psychotherapy. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 34(4), 2004, pp. 331-332

Schulenberg et al. Use of Paradoxical Intention in the Context of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Psychological Report, 2004, 95, pp. 946-948

Stumm, G. The person Centered Approach from an Existential Perspective. Existenzanalyse, 2008, 25 (1), pp. 7-15

Owen, W, D. Spontaneous and Guided Imagery in Counselling: Putting Fantasy to Work. Turk Psykolojik Danisma ve Rehberlik Dergisi, 2010, 4(33), 71-80

Kazantzis, N. L'Abate, L. (2006). Handbook of Homework Assignments in Psychotherapy: Research, Practice, and Prevention. Springer Science & Business Media