Approaches to Working: Person-Centered and Existential Emotions - Term Paper Example

Person-Centered and Existential Approaches to Understanding and Working with Fear and Sadness The person-centered approach claims that three conditions are essential for providing an individual with opportunities of growth and development. These conditions are opposite to those in which psychological tension, anxiety, and disturbance appear in a client: Unconditional positive attitude which means that the therapist has to accept positive and negative sides of the patient without any judgments. The client is thus able to examine his feelings, thoughts, and phobias without any risk of being rejected or accused of anything. The most important aspect here is that the client dos not have to do anything special to earn positive attitude from the therapist which contradict with his personal situation; Empathy presupposes that the therapist understands client`s thoughts and feelings from the client`s personal perspective which shows value of client`s thoughts and emotions. Congruence implies that the therapist behaves naturally and genuinely. There is no impression that the therapist is hiding something behind or showing his professional side only. Combined together these three core conditions allow the client to make the self-awareness stronger, to expand their identity and to build the concept of self that is not dependable on the thoughts and evaluations of the others. The person-centered or humanistic approach regards the client as the most effective authority and as the individual absolutely capable of growing. This assumption is made on the basis that every person has his own emotional resources. However, this approach presupposes that favorable surrounding is required for fulfilling the potential but under inappropriate conditions personal development may be limited. For instance, when a person does not receive acceptance, encouragement, and positive attitude he may find it difficult to reach self-actualization. If this positive attitude depends on certain conditions (the individual particular behavior) it may result in loss of touch with personal feelings, attitudes, and evaluations of experience. In this case an individual can suspend in development. Therapist is the person who can provide the client with the resources needed for growing underlining equality between him and the patient. Usually distress, depressions, and phobias appear in the people who cannot develop a congruent self-concept. In order to cope with expectations of the others an individual starts accepting attributions imposed by the others as his/her personal. For example, an individual may think like, “I am the person who never gets involved into conflicts” or “I am the person who does the dirty part of the work”. Crucial need in approval from the others pushes the person to actually becoming the type of person other see him, and in a short period of time the attributions imposed by others become real due to psychological and emotional pressure from others. Therefore, an individual alternates personal assumptions, judgments, and evaluations and substitutes them with those of others. The conflict of “self-concept” and experience is inevitable under such circumstances as personal perception clashes with “ought to be” expectations. Disturbance and depression arise naturally in this case. However, anxiety and depression progress as long as an individual is dependent on the positive or negative judgments of the others. Distortion and denial of the immediate experiences are used to support self-concept. People who are healthy from psychological point of view are those who were surrounded by people providing them with positive attitude and acceptance which allowed them to develop strong self-concept. It guarantees connection to their feelings and thoughts. They are not cut off from the ground of their being and they are well placed to move towards becoming what Rogers has described as “fully functioning” persons. According to the person-centered approach developed by Rogers, experiencing fear and sadness is natural in human beings. Fear serves as emotional response to personal and sometimes subjective threat and danger while sadness accompanies grief of loss in everyday life with its transformations and disappointments. Rogers in his person-centered approach does not use terms “anxiety and “depression” in order to evaluate whether fear and sadness have passed the level of normality. This would underline the fact that a therapist is more knowledgeable than the patient. On the contrary, any deviation Rogers explains by “incongruence”. In personal –centered approach distress is described as a clash between what a client feels and what he should feel (organismic self and self-concept). Any feeling, such as anger or fear can put under risk self-concept and people usually react in three different ways in order to cope with this threat: repression, distortion or denial. The first way presupposes hiding disturbing emotion, second means substituting it with another anger with guilt, for instance), while third mechanism is built on the undesirable emotion rejection. In any case the state of incongruence will occur in the patient who constantly avoids his organic self. This experience of acting out of our usual perception of self-concept is traumatizing and exhausting and is usually defined as “being out of control”. If the person has long history of rejection and distortion of his personal experience he may find his ego to be rigid. Thus, sadness and fears are most commonly are the signs of the emotions that were not expressed or accepted. Free energy flow in this case is interrupted and blocked which results in feeling of distress and anxiety. Person-centered approach offers a patient relationship full of empathy, acceptance, and congruence which pull the patient to expressing those feeling that were denied. It is interesting that the person-centered approach may not necessarily presuppose therapist-patient relationships. If a person has a caring and loving significant other who may provide a depressed person with all the mentioned above, this can serve as an impetus to overcoming these harmful feelings. But if the counselor applies this approach in treatment he must be sure that the relationships are built on equality. In the example described in Chapter 5 titled as Rita a counselor applies the person-centered approach working with the patient who is suffering from depression. Providing Rita with empathy, explaining her that even ambivalent feelings are normal (congruency) the counselor helps the client to release repressed anger ad dissatisfaction and let go grief about the late mother. Existential therapy in its turn is based on the works of numerous existential philosophers such as Heidegger, Sartre, Nietzsche and others. Existential method emphasizes the necessity of treating person`s experience seriously without applying external theoretical frameworks. Existential psychotherapy is basically built around phenomenological method. It stems from the concept that people should always view things as they are. Bracketing, description, horizontalisation, and verification are the methods that are used practically. Bracketing means seeing the world with the eyes of the client, not applying personal experience. Description presupposes focusing on the very experience rather than evaluating it. Horizontalisation means assessing client`s experience without placing it in the hierarchy of values. Verifying implies checking understanding of client`s experience through such methods as questioning. However, the core in existential therapy is existential philosophy concepts usage. It means working through universal human challenges, struggles, and problems with the client in order to find his personal solution. Existential philosophy serves as the basis for the world with its crisis and absurdity understanding. By pondering over its main ideas the client with the help of psychotherapist finds the ways of dealing with his own problems. For example, the concept of amor fati developed by Nietzsche is based on the idea of loving one`s fate in past, present, and future unconditionally. This idea can help the person reevaluate his experiencing finding things they love. Among other most prominent existential ideas it is possible to mention the following: Uniqueness of existence; Active nature of existence; Free choice of existence; Limited nature of existence; Relative nature of existence; Embodiment of existence; Dimensionally structured nature of existence. Existential psychotherapy presupposes that the therapist has profound knowledge of existential philosophy and may propose relevant idea at the right moment; however, the whole treatment process is based on the dialogue. Thus, the relationships between the patient and the therapist must be subtle and ethical. Another important aspect of existential psychotherapy is denial of psychiatric diagnosis and acceptance of universal nature of such concepts as fear and sadness instead of depression and anxiety. In existential philosophy and psychiatry anxiety is regarded as inevitable and fundamental human attribute. Philosophers connect anxiety with our “thrownness” into the world, the necessity to make choices, and consciousness of death. As we experience the world with the help of certain mood, inevitability of death along with freedom awareness makes anxiety the basic mood of our life. Fear in this case is regarded as derivative and directed response to any physical or emotional challenge. According to Yalom, people try to fight with fear of death in two ways: by proclaiming themselves special and extraordinary or by referring to rescuer, which role in most cases performs God. Existential approach presupposes than anxiety can either overwhelm a person or give him driving force to live. It is also considered that embracing anxiety to the full extent will make a person fearless. Sadness appears when a person is limited in his freedom, for example when negative aspects of life prevent him from enjoying its unconditional beauty. Depression in this case is regarded as limited way of seeing life. In other perspective sadness arises as the result of “existential guilt” of the past, which in general means neglecting personal aspirations. When the person is unable to cope with this guilt he sees present as meaningless ad expects nothing from future. Experiencing prolonged existential guilt any person can formulate sediment beliefs which will make them pass the same cycles again and again. The task of the therapist is to help the client get rid of the myths which prevent them from seeing universal existential ideas. These two different approaches in fear and sadness treatment seem absolutely relevant and effective in the modern world. However, each of them has its advantages and disadvantages. Person-centered approach puts too much efforts and responsibility on the patient. In some cases distress can be provoked by external circumstances which the person cannot change and influence. For instance, any military conflicts or discrimination in society creates much anxiety in people, and it is hardly possible to release repressed emotions in a person that can help him to reduce the stress sufficiently. Returning to the same conditions may wake up the same emotions again. Whereas existential approach uses universal human values and understanding of the basic human struggles known to everyone as the platform from each it is possible to push off. This approach can be helpful in numerous situations evoked by historical circumstances where logic does not work. Nevertheless, the person-centered approach is absolutely genuine and natural and gives much credit to the person`s own efforts. Sometimes when the client is puzzled with ambiguity of his own feelings and is lost in the search of real self-concept, there is nothing more powerful than assurance that he can rely on his own resources. Even therapist`s acknowledgement of these resources serves as an effective impetus for the client. The person-centered approach seems to be perfect for the patients suffering from psychological, emotional or even physical abuse as in these cases they need empathy, acceptance, and example of congruency to change dissatisfying conditions and patterns of behavior. However, existential approach demands serious profound preparation from the therapist and sometimes regarded as snobbish. It is most effective when the client can get involved into the discussion of Nietzsche`s or Sartre`s ideas which does not appeal to a big number of clients. Existential therapy appeals to more profound understanding of life and accentuates patient`s attention on the fact that human experience is universal. It uses the ideas of the most prominent philosophers of the past century to prove that these problems were familiar to everyone. As soon as the person acknowledges his own finite nature he starts perceiving life as a logical way and accepts negative sides along with positive. Existential therapy considers disturbing emotions, such as fear and sadness, normal and finds them logical explanation. It states that as long as the person is aware of real existence and its undisputable logic he must experience this distress but it is his choice whether to use it as energy potential or get overwhelmed by it. Both approaches have an important common feature- they do not accept diagnosing “anxiety” and “depression” pointing to the fact that these problems are common and moreover universal. This fact makes the patient feel normal shifting his attention from regretting or feeling guilty to overcoming difficulties . It is possible to say that both methods of therapy accentuate patient`s attention on the present moment. Past events of the person that provoke incongruity or “existential guilt” are explained by universality of human experience and inability to avoid certain spiritual, psychological problems. I my understanding both approaches signify definite progress of psychotherapy. Focus was shifted from working with subconscious and revealing hidden motives to acknowledging common human nature of distresses. The idea that appeals to me is that the patient is no longer the one to be urgently fixed, he is normal as he is experiencing universal human emotions such as fear and sadness which give them chance to develop as a personality. Works Cited Barker, M., Vossler, A., & Langdridge, D. Understanding counselling and psychotherapy. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2010. Read More