Person Centred Approach and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Running head: PERSON CENTRED APPROACH AND COGNITIVE APPROACH
Person Centred Approach and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

2
Personal Centred Approach and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
. Person centred counselling approach theorizes that every person has an inherent
ability achieve psychological wellbeing (Meyer and Morin, 2016). If a psychological illness
occurs, the counsellor will focus on helping the client regain this ability. Therefore, if
counsellors using this approach assume that each person can achieve a state of mental
wellbeing if they are provided with an enabling environment. Clients suffer psychologically
if the external environment inhibits their ability to achieve the wellbeing explained. External
factors that may cause a state of mental instability may include people, situations or
circumstances. The counselling approach emphasizes the importance of empathy, congruence
and an unconditional positive view of the client. Cognitive behavioural therapists believe that
thought processes are most important factors in influencing behaviour. Cognitive
behavioural therapy assumes that human beings are emotional and reactive. Being emotional
and reactive, human beings respond to external stimuli in different ways. In cognitive
behavioural therapy, behaviour is thought to be a result of learning and conditioning (Leahy,
2015). Since the approach is founded on learning, counsellors guide the client in a process of
identifying any negative thought patterns that they may have. The negative thoughts are then
replaced by new ones According to cognitive behavioural therapists, any learned behaviour
can be replaced through learning a new one. Therefore, a client is guided to unlearn negative
behaviours and learn healthy ones. The behaviour change is usually brought about by new
way of thinking.
There are several similarities between the person-centered approach and cognitive
behavioural therapy. The two theories of counselling focus on the conscious mind. The
conscious mind is the one that is interested in what is happening at the moment. Therefore,
counsellors focus on what the client is suffering from currently and aim at correcting that.
These two theories do not focus on the issues that may have happened in the past that may

3
have influenced the condition of the client. The two theories are mainly concerned with the
current situation of the client. If the client is helped to overcome the problems they are
experiencing currently, they are better equipped to deal with future situations in a better way.
On the contrary, these two theories propose that solving the current situation of the client will
help to avoid similar psychological problems in the future. It is imperative to note that both
theories emphasize the importance of empathy and a positive view of the client. A counsellor
should not judge a client (Colledge, 2017). In addition, both theories attempt to help the client
overcome their psychological problems through a collaborative approach. A collaborative
approach is one in which the counsellor and the client work together in ensuring the
wellbeing of the client. In both theories, the client is left to lead the counselling process. They
take the leading role with the support of the counsellor. A collaborative approach has found
to be very effective in attainment psychological wellbeing.
Both theories focus on building trust and a good rapport with the client. There exists
evidence to show that these two aspects are important in contributing to the success of a
counselling process (Meichenbaum, 2017). When there are trust and a good rapport between
a counsellor and a client, it there is a high likelihood that the client will feel at home and will
not hesitate from sharing any information that may be important for the purposes of
counselling. It is also important to note that the two approaches emphasize the importance of
maintaining confidentiality. Both cognitive behavioural therapy and person centered
approach emphasize on the importance for counsellors to maintain confidentiality.
Maintenance of confidentiality increases the trust that the client has on a counsellor. Due to
this trust, the client is likely to be more open and share as much information as possible
(Linehan, 2018). The resulting effect is that the client is likely to share as much as possible
information pertinent to the counselling process. In situations where it may be necessary to
reveal information about a client to an outsider, the revelation can only be done with the