Person-Centered And Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: A Critical Evaluation

You have studied various modalities in this module: Person Centered, Existential, Gestalt, Psychodynamic, Cognitive-Behavioural, etc.

Please select two modalities studied so far that you believe align with your personality and counselling style. You are required to identify and critically evaluate your choices in terms of their concepts and interventions.

You essay must include:

• Presentation of the chosen therapies - explanation of how problems are understood and change occurs within each therapy;

• Overview of the reasons behind your choices – explanation why the chosen therapies resonate with you;

Overview of the strengths and weaknesses of each therapy.

This paper will contain a formal introduction and conclusion and the main points will be presented with subheadings. The entire paper will be referenced according to the JNI academic guidelines. A reference list must be provided. A minimum of 10 reference sources will be drawn on.

Overview of Counselling Theories

Counselling is recognised as a proficient and principled utilisation of relationships to successfully facilitate self-awareness, emotional acceptance, development as well as the optimal enhancement of individual resources. The generalized purpose of counselling is to efficiently provide an opportunity to put efforts towards attaining a contented and resourceful life. Mental health conditions theories aim to provide methods to comprehend clients and guide them with the challenges (Feltham, Hanley & Winter, 2017). Counselling comprises of four vital theories such as behaviourism, cognitive, psychodynamic and humanistic theoretical aspects (Abramowitz, 2013). The following paper highlights the way two of the most important modalities Person-centred care and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) serve contributory role in facilitating clients to surpass stressful situations and develop immense potentiality to circumvent any types of mental health challenges in life.

Person-centred therapy is also famously called the person-centred counselling or the client centred counselling. This can be described as the humanistic procedure. This mainly deals with the different types of ways by which individuals perceive themselves consciously rather than how a therapist or the counsellor can interpret the unconscious thoughts and ideas of the clients (Chan & Thomas, 2015). This had been developed by American psychologist namely Carl Rogers in the year 1950. It follows an interesting principle. Researchers are of the opinion that that every individual has their innate tendency of developing towards their full potential. However, in many of the cases, it is seen that such ability might get blocked as well as distorted by different types of the life experiences that such individuals face like those experiences that affect their values (Capuzzi & Stuaffer, 2016). In such a situation, the counsellor is mainly seen to proceed by first trying to understand the experiences of the individuals from their point of the view.  While doing so, it is extremely important for the professionals to aim to be open and genuine in their approach and thereby value the individual in all aspects of humanity without being judgmental. Studies have shown that such approaches help the individual feel accepted thereby helping them to understand themselves in a better way. This modality of counselling is mainly seen to help the service users to connect with their inner values and thereby help them to develop a sense of self worth. This approach ensures that this reconnection with their inner resources enable the clients in finding their own way for moving forward in lives.

Person-Centered Therapy

There are six important conditions which are extremely important for enabling real changes within the individuals. The first one is the development of a psychological contact between the therapist and the service user. Researchers have supported this principle as present day studies suggest that until any healthcare professional is able to develop an emotional connect with their clients, positive outcomes of a therapy session cannot be ensured (Zoffman et al., 2016). The second condition states that the client would be emotionally upset and would be in a state of incongruence. The third condition states that the counsellor need to be in a state of congruence and needs to be genuine and aware of their feelings. Studies suggest that counsellors who have low level of self-awareness would never be able to handle this form of therapy as they might be blown away by the condition of the patient that would affect the counselling session. The fourth point states that the counsellor should have unconditional positive regards for the service users. The fifth point is that the counsellor should be having an empathetic understanding of not only about the client but as well as their internal frame of reference (Bosworth et al., 2017). Thereby the counsellor would be communicating the experience with the client. The last point would be that the client need to recognize that the counsellor has unconditional positive regards for them. They need to feel that their difficulties are understood.  

I believe to possess a number of traits that makes me eligible to conduct person-centred care with service users. One of the most important skills that I have which is very important for such therapy is congruence. By being congruent, I can stay connected not only with my own self but also with the space, time and client. Being congruent, it means to share a persistent thought or feeling. It is very important for the client cantered therapist to be comfortable in sharing different of his or her own feelings with the service users (von-Schilppe, 2018).  I am also quite comfortable and I also contribute to the healthy and open relationship development between the therapist and the service users. Therefore, this trait of mine will help in providing the client with a model of good communication and this show the client that it is entirely alright to be vulnerable. Another of the very important trait that I possess is unconditional positive regard for the client. I have the capability of accepting people as they are and behave politely and gently with all people irrespective of their actions, behaviours, backgrounds and any actions. This will also help me to provide support to the patient and care for him or her no matter whatever situation he or she is going through (Scmid, 2015). One of the most important traits that makes me suitable for applying their therapy is my empathetic understanding skills. I believe that I have this skill which will help me in being empathetic towards my patient but will also help me to form positive therapeutic relationship and also to act as mirror. This mirror would be reflecting the thoughts and feelings of the patient back to him or her and this will also allow the client for better understanding of him or her.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Person-Centered Therapy

Some of the strengths of this approach is that it offer every individuals the scope for counteracting past experiences which were responsible for affected condition of worth. It also ensures closer agreement between the actual as well as idealized selves of individual. It also ensures that individual is developing better awareness and self-understanding. It also helps in decreasing feelings of guilt, insecurity and defensiveness (Knutson & Koch, 2018). The clients can successfully develop greater ability for trusting herself or himself and also helps in healthier relationships. It helps the individuals in improvement of self-expression and overall development of the sense of change.

Certain negative aspect occurs from the side of the client as the client is not challenged by the professionals or the others in engaging in a concept of contest for finding out their own ability. It is also seen that it deprives the professional for getting any opportunity for giving suggestions and opinion to the clients who are useful (Oleson et al., 2016) The therapist cannot question anything o the service user even if they are concerned. This Counselling procedure is also seen to fail to provide a structure procedure to the client even when the counsellor  is maintaining the ethical principles of their profession. No modern theory is present on it and there are no such techniques like that of clarifying or that of questioning. Researchers say that intervention is an approach for achieving effects and producing result but this therapy has no such interventions. Many of the researchers say that it lacks interactive communication and agreement intervention. Therapies like crisis intervention allow therapists to help service users but this therapy does not do so. Therefore, this therapy has both strengths and weaknesses.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is recognised as a transitory, goal-oriented psychotherapy care which exhibits a tendency to follow a practical approach towards problem solving (Ehde, Dillworth & Turner, 2014). The essential aim of CBT is to transform specific patterns of thought processes or behaviour styles and thus is utilised as a positive technique to aid a broad range of intricacies in an individual's life. These forms of issues can range from sleeping disorders, relationship complexities to severe drug and alcohol abuse as well as stress, anxiety and depression (Burns, Erickson & Brenner, 2014).

Two of the initial forms of CBT were known as Rational Emotive Behaviour The (REBT) that has been developed by Albert Ellis during 1950s and CBT that has been developed by Aaron T. Beck in the 1960s. The term is recognised as CBT as the therapy intends to employ certain behavioural patterns as well (Driessen et al., 2014). Furthermore the stability identified between the cognitive and certain behavioural models tend to vary among the diverse range of therapies originating from such a type but draw resemblance from CBT. This had been consequential for CBT to experience effective methodical trials in varied areas by several teams and associations and this has been proficiently applied to a broad array of challenges (Trauer et al., 2015). A fundamental cognitive concept functioning in the domain of CBT is 'guided discovery’ that is identified as a highly efficient therapeutic stance which primarily aims to comprehend perspectives of patients and develop the understanding related to those underlying assumptions. One of the primary facets of guided discovery is Socratic questioning that essentially purposes to shift away attention from a current focus (Abramowitz, 2013). Cognitive behavioural therapists generally construct their questions in order to explore the assumptions and conjectures of the patients and emphasize on other perspectives and investigate the inferences. Thus guided discovery is considered to be fundamental to the interventions aimed at each level of cognition (Baer, 2015).

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive therapists in order to successfully contest certain forms of destructive perceptions and behaviours initiates by guiding patients to efficiently distinguish the areas of intricacies (Elvish et al., 2013). This stage however is recognised as functional analysis stage that has attained substantial value for developing understanding the way perceptions, scenarios, emotions serve a contributory role towards maladaptive behavioural patterns (Burns, Erickson & Brenner, 2014). Furthermore the second aspect of CBT primarily emphasize on definite behavioural patterns which contributes to the issues. For instance, an individual encountering severe level of drug addiction might initiate adapting enhanced coping abilities and developing understandings in order to circumvent or deal with social situations which might exhibit a tendency to potentially elicit a relapse (Ehde, Dillworth & Turner, 2014).

Similar to person-centred care, I believe to possess a number of competence and skills to fit myself in providing successful Cognitive behaviour therapy as well. In CBT a major role lies on being highly congruent. CBT further requires immense level of harmoniousness and a compatibility attitude to proficiently comprehend the perspective of the clients. Elvish et al., (2013) state that in CBT counsellors require to work with individuals encountering highly complex emotional challenges which often emerge as problematic and stressful. One of the most vital skills I possess is being compassionate towards the role I play. Thus, I believe my compassionate nature and empathic behaviour for my clients would play a crucial role in establishing an achievable therapeutic alliance. As CBT entails a diverse range of people with various types of disorders and anxiety my enhanced interpersonal skills will aid me to easily comprehend their perspectives and situate myself in their position. (Baer, 2015). As CBT often deals with people facing drug addiction, it is highly essential for me to improve my communication competence at a regular basis to develop rapport with clients and understand the sensitivity of their needs and intricacies. Furthermore, through my communication capacity I have also developed good relationship building ability. This ability I perceive as immensely vital since it would enable me to guide the clients in refurbishing their broken relationships and aim to revive those relations and the skill to efficiently navigate the confrontations of relations.

Some of the strengths of CBT lie on its effectiveness of being a proficient medication method in treating certain mental disorders and act as highly efficient in cases where other form of treatment or care has been incompetent to attain success. CBT further emphasizes on retraining the perspectives of clients and transforming those behavioral patterns to develop transitions in the approach they perceive themselves (Abramowitz, 2013).. One of the most vital strength of CBT lies on its transitory and short term treatment procedure in comparison to other conversing mental disorder therapeutic stances. Furthermore, skills developing while CBT sessions can be immensely constructive, functional for clients that they can implement in their daily lives in order to contest other forms of anxieties and challenges ever after the conclusion of therapeutic session (Elvish et al., 2013).

Strengths and Weaknesses of CBT

Certain limitations of CBT have also been observed whereby clients might encounter anxiousness or emotional insecurity to share their emotions and challenges to strangers thus leading to an unconstructive therapeutic session (Ehde, Dillworth & Turner, 2014). It has been claimed by few critics that CBT often tends to be incompetent in emphasising on the potential causal areas of concern related to mental health conditions such as issues faced in childhood or adolescent period as it primarily focus on currently encountered complexities (Burns, Erickson & Brenner, 2014).

Therefore, to conclude it can be stated that both the above discussed modalities have the competence to enhance the mental health conditions of individuals encountering various forms of mental disorders. Both person-centred care and CBT exhibit vital skills and abilities which believe I possess and will efficiently improve the areas where I require certain forms of developments. However though the two mentioned modalities have been highly competent in surpassing several therapeutic dilemmas while functioning they encounter certain limitations as well. The paper has provided an explicit understanding of the way person-centred therapy and CBT have been able to facilitate individuals suffering from diverse forms of disorders and the principles which have been employed for achievable therapeutic outcomes.

References:

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