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"Very early In my work As a therapist I Discovered that Simply listening to my Client very attentively Was an important Way of being Helpful So when I was in doubt As to what I should do In some Active way I simply listened And it seemed surprising to me that such a passive kind of interaction could be so useful. And a little later, a social worker whom I hired who had had a background of Ronkean training was really most helpful to me. She helped me to learn that the most effective response, the most effective listening, was where you listened for the feelings and emotions that were behind the words, that were just a little bit concealed. And where you could discern a pattern of feeling behind what was being said. And I think she's the one who first suggested that the best response was to reflect these feelings to the client." - Carl Rogers

Peer support as a person-centered experience. 

Our peer support groups demonstrate Carl Rogers' three core attributes. The attributes are necessary and sufficient for the helping professions. Those attributes are empathy, I know you, I understand you because I heard you tell me a really similar story. We are one. I'm not here to fix you, but together we share a lot on the same journey. Unconditional positive regard. I accept you with all your faults and challenges and I'll tell you mine. Unconditional positive regard is seated in deep values around the humanity of our peers. It's non-judgmental and it separates the being from the behaviour. Carl Rogers asked the question, how can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own growth? And that's something for us to reflect on in how our groups run. These three attributes need to be carefully guarded and preserved to provide a safety net for the parents that are using our services. For Carl Rogers, these attributes allow for people to talk about their life story in a real and honest way with the group facilitator, being non-directive. Carl Rogers' person-centred experience was originally founded in the humanistic school of psychology, which were that people are basically good. That clients know how to heal themselves or self-heal. That the core conditions are necessary and sufficient. That non-directive focus allows the client to bring what they want to any discussion. It relies on quality of support. It relies on the relationship. And it works with a here and now emotion approach. So what's happening in the here and now? Meaning the past is gone but the future is yet to be written. And it's also based on a growth model of personal development.

Peer support as a person-centered experience.

To create a person-centered experience, the peer support group needs to be experienced as an accepting and trusting environment where all the members of the group can show aspects of themselves that they usually conceal and move into adopting new behaviours. For example, in effective support groups, group members can Change from playing roles, from being victim or angry to expressing themselves more directly Can change from being relatively closed to becoming more open to the outside reality and the changes in their family relationship Can change from being out of awareness of what they are experiencing in their body to becoming more aware of it and how they are actually coping with the change Can change from looking for answers outside of themselves, focusing on lawyers and the other parent and family courts, to being more in control of themselves and how they best respond to the changes in their life And can change from lacking trust and being somewhat closed and fearful to being more open and expressive to others

"In such a Context of learning It became Quite natural That we Focused upon The content Of The therapist response Rather than Upon the Empathic Quality of the listening I no longer Particularly Apologise For that It probably was a necessary Step In our learning To this extent, we became very much conscious of the techniques that the counselor or therapist was using. We became really expert in analyzing in minute detail. I can remember sitting around with students and picking apart sentences and particular phrases and words. And we profited a great deal from that very microscopic study of the interview process. I think we gained a great deal from it. But this tendency to focus on the therapist's responses had consequences which appalled me. I was meeting considerable hostility as to my point of view, and that really didn't seem to bother me. But this kind of thing did bother me, because the whole approach came in a few years to be known as a technique. Non-directive therapy, it was said, is a technique of reflecting the client's feelings, period. So then you've taken care of non-directive therapy. Or even worse, caricature was simply that in non-directive therapy you just say back the last words that the client said. And really I was so shocked and appalled by that complete distortion of our approach, that for a number of years I said almost nothing about empathic listening. And when I did, it was to stress an empathic attitude with very little comment as to how that attitude might be implemented in the relationship. I just became frightened of the distortion. I preferred to discuss the qualities of positive regard and therapist congruence, which I'd come to hypothesize as being two other conditions that were growth-promoting in a relationship. And those concepts were often misunderstood, too, but they never came to be caricatured in the same way that the empathic listening was caricatured." - Carl Rogers

"Willingness On the part of Many to Take another look At ways Of being With people Which evokes Self directed Change And locate Power In the person Not in the Therapist And this brings me Again To examine carefully What we mean by By empathy And what we’ve come to know about it To formulate a current description, I would want to draw on the concept of experiencing as formulated by Gene Gendlin. Briefly, it's his view that at all times there is going on in the human organism a flow of experience things to which the individual can turn again and again as a referent in order to discover the meaning of what he is experiencing. He sees empathy as pointing sensitively to the felt meaning which the client is experiencing in this particular moment. In order to help him focus on that meaning and to carry it further to its full and uninhibited experiencing. An example may make more clear both the concept and its relation to empathy. A man in an encounter group is making some vaguely negative statements about his father. And the facilitator says, it sounds though you might be angry at your father. No, I don't think so. Dissatisfied with him? Perhaps. Disappointed in him? Yeah, yeah, that's it. I am disappointed in him. I've been disappointed in him ever since I was a child because he is not a strong person. I think that kind of an example, well, does illuminate Gendlin's concept in this way. Against what is the man checking these various terms? Angry? No, isn't it? Dissatisfied? Well, that's closer. Disappointed? Ah, that matches the flow of, I think, visceral experiencing that's going on within. And a person has a very sure knowledge of that flow and can really tell when you're speaking to it. In other words, the right word taps the right label or the right phrase, often taps the exact meaning of the flow that is going on within him that he hasn't been able to label or understand himself. It enables him to bring into awareness the real meaning of what's going on within." - Carl Rogers

"With that Conceptual Background I’d like to attempt A description Of empathy That would seem satisfactory To me today I would no Longer be Terming it a state Of empathy which was in my Earlier Definition Because I believe It to be a process Rather than a state. And perhaps I Capture that Quality The way of being with another person, which is termed empathic, has several facets. It means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves having sensitive, being sensitive moment to moment to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person, to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion or whatever that he or she is experiencing. It means temporarily living in his life, moving about in it delicately, without making judgments, sensing meanings of which he is scarcely aware, but not trying to uncover feelings of which he is totally unaware, since this would be too threatening. It includes communicating your sensings of his world as you look, with fresh and unfrightened eyes, at elements of which he is fearful. It means frequently checking with him as to the accuracy of your sensings and being guided by his responses. You are a confident companion to him in his world. By pointing to the possible meanings in the flow of his or her experiencing, you help him to focus on this useful type of referent, to experience his meanings more fully and to move forward in his or her experience." - Carl Rogers

In summary, our peer support groups demonstrate Carl Rogers' three core attributes that were considered to be necessary and sufficient for helping other people. Those attributes are empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard. This all comes together in our program logic, which shows exactly where we fit in the support cycle and how we differ from other support services.