Empathy By Person-Centered Therapy

If you looked in the dictionary it would tell you empathy is being able to relate or understand the feelings of another person. Which is true but it’s also being able to stand in the other person’s shoes and seeing it from their viewpoint. Many people confuse empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is the feelings towards a person but unlike empathy you are not sharing the feelings. When you show empathy you would not be

According to Gerdes and Segal (2001), empathy is the ability to perceive, understand, experience, and respond to the emotional state of another person. They advocate that therapists should be able to pay attention to clients’ “behavior, facial expression, the tone of voice, choice of words, and so on, should be able to keep objectivity and regulate emotion (Gerdes and Segal, 2001). In Thelma’s case, Yalom shows highly empathy to Thelma. During the sessions, Yalom kept paying attention to Thelma’s tone of voice, behavior, and choice of words. For example, Yalom (1989) wrote that “Thelma’s tone of voice contained no invitation to come closer,” “Thelma turned away and looked out the window…she was speaking more deliberately, in a bitter, forlorn

Therapeutic relationship is defined as the collaboration and attachment between the client and therapist that focuses on meeting the health care needs of the client (Bordin, 1979). In this relationship, the therapist without prejudice shows Empathy, insight, understanding and acceptance of the client. Duan and Hill (1996) defined Empathy as “feeling into” the experience of the client. Over the years, the research evidence keeps piling up, and indicating a high degree of Empathy in a Therapeutic relationship is possibly one of the most potent factors in bringing about positive outcome in the therapy

“Existential therapy is a process of searching for the value and meaning in life” “(Corey, p. 131) with a focus on central concerns of the person’s existence; Such as death, freedom, existential isolation and meaningless. “Existential therapy can best be described as a philosophical approach that influences a counselor’s therapeutic practice” (Corey, p. 131). Founders of Existential Therapy include Soren Kagarra, Fredrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber. They employed the humanistic approach. The contributing

In the 1940s Carl Rogers was well on his way to revolutionizing the state of traditional, directive psychotherapy and pioneering what would soon become the person-centered approach. Although Rogers strayed from the psychological mainstream’s view that therapists drive their clients recovery through such mediums as advice, direction, teaching and interpretation he still believed that the therapist’s role was crucial, and it was their attributes that paved the way to increased awareness and self-directed change.

Empathy: Empathy is a skill I will use to show understanding of the Belle's emotions. Empathy is different to sympathy in that sympathy is often seen as feeling sorry for the client whereas empathy shows understanding and allows the client to further open up (Seligman, 2006). An example follow

Empathy, the word with many ideas and meanings. It is a word that has been tossed back and forth in what it truly means to us. Paul Bloom defines empathy as this, "Many believe that empathy — the capacity to experience the feelings of others, and particularly others’ suffering — is essential to all of these roles". A major confusion is the thought that empathy is the same as the word compassion. In my defense from reading Bloom's definition, I believe that Empathy is being able to relate with the person of suffering, as if you have been through what they have gone through. Although many people lump together the meaning of compassion and empathy. I understand that they are both ultimately different words with different meaning all together. Throughout what I learned about the two words I have concluded that indeed one of the words is better than the other, even to say that one is good and the other is bad. Both of these seemingly complex words as it appears all have to do with human emotion and

Empathy is a two way process, its about trying to fully understand what your client is saying and feeling and also showing your understanding to your client.

As the terms "client-centered" and "person-centered" imply, the goals of therapy come from the client. The therapist often helps the client to articulate the goals. Goals typically are consistent with helping an individual become a fully functioning person.

Person-Centered Therapy (PCT) embodies a humanistic approach, which is intended to increase a person’s feelings of self-worth, and reduce the level of incongruence between the ideal self and the actual self (Gelso, Cepeda & Davenport, 2006). This critical analysis is meant to examine various approaches and skills counselors/therapists would use when applying a ‘person-centered’ type of therapy. This analysis briefly outlines what PCT is, but focuses more heavily on the various approaches used by social workers throughout the therapeutic relationship. More specifically, PCT approaches such as, counselor/client congruence, empathic understanding, and unconditional positive regard are the main approaches highlighted in this analysis as they play an integral role in the counseling relationship.

When someone has empathy if gives them the ability to look at the situation from the perspective of the client. According to Martin (2014), “empathy in a counseling relationship, involves the ability and willingness to experience a client’s beliefs, thoughts, and feelings through the client’s personal lens” (63). Consequently, by having empathy it will allow you to properly evaluate the whole situation, and provide sustainable help. An empathic heart will promote active listening skills. Being empathic will give you an engaging mindset. Martin states (2014), “Active listening counseling relationship also includes behaviors such as maintaining direct eye contact and observing the client’s body language. This will make for better

Person-centered therapy provides a pathway to self-actualization through the creation of an empathetic, trusting relationship between client and counselor. In the case scenario described, a woman struggles with anger and depression, which negatively impacts her relationship with her husband. This case study presents an overview of person-centered therapy and an explanation of how it could be used in the therapeutic environment to help this client successfully cope with her issues.

It means that a therapist understands what the client is feeling at a particular moment. Empathy will help a therapist to communicate his ideas in such way that will make sense. It also helps the therapist to understand the clients when they are communicating. It is a building block of a great social interaction. By having empathic understanding, the therapist will have the ability to appreciate sympathetically and perfectly the client’s experiences and feeling. It will ensure that the client is not lost in his or her own feelings. By understanding how a client truly feels without analyzing or judging them, the therapist and the client will have a successful

From a counseling stand point empathy is more meaningful than sympathy. Empathy is when we have the ability to understand and then reflect that understanding and those feelings back to the client. Sympathy is when you feel sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. Some clients come to counseling to seek sympathy and not empathy those types of clients want the counselor to feel sorry for them. Another barrier to the development of empathy could be the pressure we put on ourselves to say the right things. Empathy is about listening and acknowledging feeling and/or understanding. We may overcome these barriers by simply just listening for understanding and remembering that the counseling sessions are not for the counselor but for the client, so we must not impose our emotions and feelings on the

Most definitions of empathy are based on the same core idea - empathy is the ability to understand and identify someone else’s thoughts and feelings, as if they were one’s own (wordreference online dictionary, 2016). Although it’s been said “there are probably nearly as many definitions of empathy as people working on the topic.” (de Vignemont & Singer, 2006, p.435) suggesting that there is no singular way to even define empathy, let alone explain its impact on our behaviour. Due to the sheer depth and complexity of empathy it’s understandable that each discipline within psychology presents it’s own explanation for why we experience it, and how it can affect our interaction with the world around us. Psychologists have been exploring empathy for decades, in hope of gaining a complete grasp of what it means and how it can vary between each person, therefore its important we look at different psychological perspectives to try to understand it’s many dimensions.