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Therapy Heads © offers a range of therapies, not just counselling, across the North West. Chris Rudyard MNCS provides coaching, counselling, hypnotherapy & psychotherapy. He works with anxiety, relationships, trauma, PTSD and addictions. Over the last decade brain scientists have discovered so much about the brain. There is still lots that is unknown, and possible never be 'known' as the part of the brain that is used for understanding (the Neocortex) is limited. The Neocortex and subcortical regions of the brain are very different, one uses language and understands it, while the subcortical regions do not use or understand language.
Therapists work with trauma...a lot, whether they know it or not. I think it is so important that we are able to understand the brain and modern theories such as Polyvagal theory, so we are able to understand where our clients are at. In many ways neuroscience is much more easy to fit into psychotherapy than, all these complex and conflicting theories of personality. This is why I am thinking more and more about my clients from a neuroscience perspective.
This condition is simply implying there is a problem perceived by the 'client'. The difficulty though that is people can be so incongruent with their 'selves' that they are detached from themselves, unaware or dissociated. Maybe they are so unaware that there is indeed no 'problem' to them, as they are not aware. This lack of awareness can be a real problem as the organism may not sense a way of living healthily. They may not sense danger or hunger for example. If a client is incongruent they probably would not enter therapy anyway, but they may be referred by professionals such as social workers or psychiatrists. I believe that a client needs to be in a state of congruence to some degree for therapy to be helpful. The incongruence can create feelings of depression, anxiety, anger, stress call it what you will, but the client needs to have some awareness that there is a problem, otherwise what's the point? Rogers hypothesized that the two people Therapist and Client must be in Psychological Contact. Psychological contact is when both parties are fully aware of the other. There may be moments for the client when they are unaware of the other, so it is important for the the therapist to be in the relationship, by way of communicating empathy. Sometime therapists seem to be keen on eye contact possibly for this reason, but when deep internal processing is happening then eye contact may lack. Eye positions may be at the floor or another direction, and I believe that therapists should provide unconditional positive regard for this , and 'allow' it to happen without distraction - although this may conflict with the idea of a need for psychological contact.
I will expand on the idea of Unconditional Positive Regard in another of my posts. I think think UPR is the most interesting of the core conditions, so look forwards to writing about that. Carl Rogers (1957) believed that 6 core conditions were necessary and sufficient for therapeutic change to occur. Thus by default he also believed that there is no need for fancy techniques, or ways of working. So, so long as the 6 conditions exist in whatever model of therapy then, he believed that over time 'therapeutic change' would occur.
I believe that these conditions seem to be taken for granted by other more cognitive models. Some therapists may not even be aware of the existence, let alone importance of the conditions, as technique or 'case formulation' takes over the therapy. |
Chris Rudyard MNCPS Accredited
Professional, experienced counsellor & psychotherapist in Liverpool & Online Archives
December 2025
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