April 2023 Clinical Supervision Topic: Unconditional Positive Regard
See previous years’ posts here.
Unconditional positive regard is one of the common factors.
Unconditional Positive Regard according to Carl Rogers:
To the extent that the therapist finds himself experiencing a warm acceptance of each aspect of the client's experience as being a part of that client, he is experiencing unconditional positive regard. . .It means that there are no conditions of acceptance, no feeling of “I like you only if you are thus and so.” It means a “prizing” of the person, as Dewey has used that term. It is at the opposite pole from a selective evaluating attitude—“You are bad in these ways, good in those.” It involves as much feeling of acceptance for the client's expression of negative, “bad,” painful, fearful, defensive, abnormal feelings as for his expression of “good,” positive, mature, confident, social feelings, as much acceptance of ways in which he is inconsistent as of ways in which he is consistent.
It means a caring for the client, but not in a possessive way or in such a way as simply to satisfy the therapist's own needs. It means a caring for the client as a separate person, with permission to have his own feelings, his own experiences.
Such items might include statements of this order: “I feel no revulsion at anything the client says”: “I feel neither approval nor disapproval of the client and his statements—simply acceptance”; “I feel warmly toward the client—toward his weaknesses and problems as well as his potentialities”; “I am not inclined to pass judgment on what the client tells me”; “I like the client.”
What I want to know is: what do you tell yourself in order to foster unconditional positive regard towards your clients? Here are a few things I tell myself:
I bet there are a lot of things I don’t know about this person.
This person has been through hard things that I’ll never experience or understand.
This person is deserving of my care and respect and undivided attention.
My job is to listen and understand.
What else can you think of? I look forward to learning with you.
