Unconditional positive regard means offering compassion to people even if they have done something wrong. A therapist practicing unconditional positive regard would respond with compassion to a person in treatment who may have gambled away their savings, lied at work, or mistreated a friend. It is striving to respond with understanding rather than contempt for the individual.
Unconditional positive regard describes an essential attitude that person-centered therapists adopt toward their clients, promoting growth and personal change (Wilkins, 2000).
As mental health professionals, therapists recognize that they must deeply value their client’s humanity while being undeterred by any particular client’s behaviors for a successful outcome (Mearns & Thorne, 1988).
Typically, the client experiences this as ongoing acceptance, understanding, and warmth (Mearns & Thorne, 1988).
While recognized as an attitude, unconditional positive regard can be learned through practice and good technique, encouraging change in the client and a positive outcome from therapy.
This article introduces several worksheets, tools, and activities to build respect and empathy for the individual seeking help.
What Is Carl Rogers’s Unconditional Positive Regard?
Supporting only ‘positive’ aspects of a client while discouraging ‘negative’ aspects would suggest that therapists have an agenda different from their clients. Empathy and acceptance would be conditional (Wilkins, 2000).
Instead, effective client-centered therapy requires unconditional positive regard, where every aspect of the client’s experience is accepted while working toward a positive outcome (Bozarth, 2013).
According to Carl Rogers, one founder of the client-centered approach in psychology, individuals have a strong need for positive regard, particularly in therapy. Such “warm acceptance of each aspect of the client’s experience” occurs when the client believes they are making a difference in the therapist’s experiential field (Rogers, 1959, p. 209).
Crucially, for personality change to occur within the client, the therapist must experience and display unconditional positive regard and empathy toward them (Bozarth, 2013).
As a result, Rogers (1957) describes unconditional positive regard as one of several necessary and sufficient conditions required for a positive outcome in the therapeutic process.
Importantly, that acceptance must be equally present for negative and abnormal feelings (pain, fear, and defensiveness) and positive, social, and confident feelings (Rogers, 1957; Wilkins, 2000).
While psychologists from classical and post-classic person-centered approaches sometimes disagree on exactly what unconditional positive regard is and how it should be adopted, it is clear that consistency in therapy is vital. The therapist must, throughout treatment, care for the client while accepting and permitting their right to have and share their feelings and experiences (Bozarth, 2013).
Ultimately, “the communication of unconditional positive regard is a major curative factor in any approach to therapy; congruence and empathy merely provide the context in which it is credible” (Wilkins, 2000, p. 23).
Applying It in Counseling: 4 Techniques
As person-centered therapy and our understanding of unconditional positive regard develop, therapists are often recognized as agents promoting activities and processes that facilitate growth (Bozarth, 2013).
Such a view can be described as the therapist “valuing the deeper core of the person, what she potentially is and can become,” involving (Lietaer, 2001, pp. 92–93; Bozarth, 2013):
- Positive regard – is found in the therapist’s affective attitude toward the client
- Non-directivity – adopting an attitude of non-manipulation with the client
- Unconditionality – constancy, and persistence in accepting the client
Applying Rogers’s (classical) view of unconditional positive regard as part of his theory of therapy includes therapists engaging in the following (Bozarth, 2013):
- Being congruent in the therapeutic relationship
Acting in harmony with the client, strengthening their connection by maximizing the therapist’s unconditional positive self-regard. - Maximizing their unconditional positive regard through empathy
Experiencing empathy by focusing on the client’s frame of reference and considering what it might be like to be that person. - Encouraging unconditional positive self-regard in the client
When clients recognize and accept their best and worst, they are free; they can fully accept themselves and experience unconditional positive self-regard. - Trusting the client
Throwing away preconceptions of what must happen in each session and, instead, recognizing the client’s capacity and ability to set their direction and choose their own pace.
However, as a necessary and sufficient condition for successful treatment, “unconditional positive regard is perhaps the most challenging of all the conditions to meet and thus to offer” (Gillon, 2007, p. 50).
4 Helpful Worksheets for Your Sessions
Person-centered therapists must show empathy, understanding, and acceptance within the therapeutic relationship to encourage positive outcomes and change within the client.
The following worksheets help by promoting unconditional positive regard, including empathy and acceptance, within therapy sessions (modified from Nelson-Jones, 2005, 2014; Bozarth, 2013).
Assess Barriers to an Accepting Attitude
Respect and acceptance are crucial in developing a positive therapeutic alliance and unconditional positive regard.
Use the Assess Barriers to an Accepting Attitude worksheet after individual therapy sessions or at the end of the day to reflect on what thoughts and beliefs may hold you back from a more accepting attitude.
Consider each of the following:
- Anxiety-evoking feelings, clients, and situations
- Trigger words, phrases, and attitudes that caused you upset or a reaction
- Prejudices that you found uncomfortable or annoying
- A business that remains unfinished or issues not addressed
- Emotional exhaustion, stress, and burnout
Which of these did you experience? How could they have prevented you from adopting an attitude of respect, empathy, and acceptance toward your client?
Using Small Rewards
Richard Nelson-Jones (2005, p. 99) defines small rewards as “brief verbal and non-verbal expressions of interest designed to encourage clients to continue speaking.”
These subtle but powerful tools can encourage clients, friends, colleagues, and family members to share their thoughts and feelings and, equally importantly, communicate their internal frame of reference.
Try out the Using Small Rewards worksheet to learn what small reward phrases look like and consider whether you are using them in sessions.
Examples include (modified from Nelson-Jones, 2005):
- Uh-hmm
- Please continue
- Sure
- Tell me more
- Go on
- Oh?
- I hear you
- Yes
- Right
- So…
- Really
- Repeating the last word can also be effective.
[Client] I am feeling sad. [Therapist] Sad?
Ask yourself:
- Were you using small rewards enough?
- Could you use them more?
- What effect did they have when you used them?
- When did you not use them?
Reflect on how and when small rewards can keep clients talking, helping them feel respected and understood.
Understanding Context and Differences
Without realizing it, therapists can let contextual and client-therapist differences cloud their judgment, preventing empathy and understanding from growing and being communicated.
Use the Understanding Context and Differences worksheet to review a session and interaction with a client to see if context and personal differences are standing in the way of the therapeutic alliance (modified from Nelson-Jones, 2014).
Reflect on the following factors:
- Race
- Culture
- Social class
- Family
- Medical and health conditions
- Gender
- Sexual orientation
- Religion
- Finances
- Any other important context or factors
Reflect that some of your biases may be harming the therapeutic alliance you are forming with your clients and hindering positive treatment outcomes.
How could you form stronger bonds, show more understanding, and develop empathy?
Visualizing to Improve Positive Regard
Visualization can be a powerful technique for walking in another’s shoes and understanding their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Use the Visualizing to Improve Positive Regard worksheet to help you gain empathy and grow unconditional positive regard in situations where you were previously unable to do so.
- Describe a situation during a therapy session when you found you were less able to show empathy and understanding.
- How did you react?
- Visualize the experience described by the client. What feelings do you experience as the client? Fear, sadness, loneliness? Imagine how it must have felt for the client to talk through the situation and how they felt.
- Visualize how you could have reacted. Experience that (new) reaction from the client’s perspective. How might you feel? Accepted, understood, and ready to move forward?
HOW UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD WORKS IN THERAPY
The demonstration of UPR from a therapist can encourage people to share their thoughts, feelings, and actions without fear of offending the therapist. A therapist might simply ask a client to expand on why he or she behaved in a particular manner, rather than condemning the person’s action or inquiring as to how the other person might have felt.
Some therapists believe that UPR can serve as a temporary substitute for parental love that may help clients gain confidence to explore their issues. This belief is heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud and is not popular among contemporary mental health professionals.
DRAWBACKS OF UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD
UPR can be especially problematic in couples counseling, where couples often desire a referee who will tell them when they are doing something detrimental to the relationship. When clients feel that UPR in therapy is contrived, it may backfire. For example, some people want a therapist to tell them when they are doing something wrong, to bring awareness to the behavior.
UPR can be difficult for a therapist to sustain, particularly when a person is making negative or unhealthy choices regularly. Consequently, many therapists attempt to strike a balance by remaining positive, upbeat, and nonjudgmental while at the same time pointing out when a person’s actions are harmful to himself or herself or others.
Fostering It in Your Sessions: 4 Activities
Several skills and activities can be used to foster unconditional positive regard inside therapy sessions (Nelson-Jones, 2005, 2014).
Walking in Their Shoes
It is helpful in therapy to become aware of, empathize, and understand the client’s internal frame of reference more deeply. To fully empathize with clients, it is necessary to learn how to get inside their skin and ‘feel’ their experiences.
Experiencing the world through the client’s eyes can lead to a more profound, internal frame of reference response and offer to understand. For example:
You are frightened by the news that you are being laid off.
You are fed up with your family and their petty squabbles.
You love having that person in your life.
Use the Walking in Their Shoe worksheet to reflect on how sessions went and consider whether you were adopting an internal or external frame of reference.
Capture some of the key points you made as a therapist. Reflect on your frame of reference and how changing it could improve the therapeutic alliance in the future.
Receiving Verbal Communication Accurately
Verbal and nonverbal communication can strengthen, weaken, and even confuse a client’s communication (Nelson-Jones, 2005).
Using the acronym VAPER (volume, articulation, pitch, emphasis, rate) with the client to consider five aspects of voice messages can help communication inside and outside treatment and ultimately increase the chance of empathizing and understanding the client and their experiences.
Use the Receiving Verbal Communication Accurately worksheet in sessions with clients to explore the voice messaging techniques using the five dimensions:
- Volume – Does the client speak loudly, softly, or somewhere in between?
- Articulation – Is their speech clear and distinct?
- Pitch – Is their tone harsh (too high or too low) or even threatening?
- Emphasis – Does the client use emphasis in the wrong place (too much, or too little) so that their conversation is difficult to listen to?
- Rate – Is the client anxious and speaking too quickly? Slowing down speech may help them calm themselves and experience less stress.
Work with the client to consider and reflect on their verbal communication in terms of the above factors. Reflect on how they could communicate more clearly in future sessions.
Use of paraphrasing
“A good paraphrase can provide mirror comments that may be even clearer and more succinct than the original comments” (Nelson-Jones, 2005, p. 103).
It can be helpful to start each paraphrase with the pronoun ‘you’ to signal that you intend to mirror the other person’s internal frame of reference.
Paraphrasing can be difficult, especially when the client is talking quickly or nearing the end of the session, yet it is valuable in strengthening the therapeutic relationship.
Goal-setting self-talk
At times, therapists may interrupt too often, eager to clarify a point or offer advice. Goal-setting self-talk can help focus on listening and showing respect to the client (Nelson-Jones, 2005).
Before or during sessions, come up with a set of self-talk statements to act as in-session reminders; for example:
- Stop and think …
- Calm down and listen carefully …
- Let’s work hard to understand their perspective …
- Let the client own their problems …
- Remember to hear the client out …
- Don’t judge …
Practice using helpful self-talk until using it becomes a habit.
Using It in Education: 5 Tips
According to Carl Rogers (1957), unconditional positive regard is vital to the client’s development and positive change.
This is also true in education (Swara, Mokosińska, Sawicki, & Sęktas, 2017).
Psychologists agree that teachers’ attitudes – positive and negative – influence the development of students’ potential (Swarra et al., 2017).
Several tips and techniques can help educators exhibit positive regard for their students and encourage a learning mindset (Mississippi College, 2018):
- Don’t see students as test scores, but instead as humans wishing to connect and interact with others. They want to be accepted and understood, despite any flaws they or others perceive.
- Using students’ names when possible during and outside class shows that the teacher or lecturer knows they exist and are important.
- Become aware of the student’s choices and why they made them. For example, why did they select the subject of a paper or a piece of research, especially when you are aware it was a difficult decision?
- Be sure that the student knows if you are in contact with parents or guardians and show that you wish to work together as a team.
- Be seen as an authentic person, acknowledging your mistakes and letting others see you are not so different from them.
It is vital as an educator to be comfortable letting people see who you are and accepting yourself and the students you are teaching.
How does unconditional positive regard facilitate self-actualization?
How does unconditional positive regard breed self-confidence?
When reporters asked Boyle about the audience’s initial criticism, she replied: “I know what they were thinking, but why should it matter as long as I can sing? It’s not a beauty contest.” In other words, Boyle didn’t accept their criticism.
In the end, Boyle didn’t win the competition, but she signed with Columbia records. At 47, she turned her hobby into a profession. None of this would have happened if rejection had ruined her confidence.
Sharp words and judgment can shrink our confidence, but unconditional positive regard, for ourselves as well as others, can bring it back. After the audition, one of Boyle’s favorite singers, Elaine Paige, called her a role model and praised Boyle for pursuing her dream.
How does unconditional positive regard bolster motivation?
While Rogers considered unconditional positive regard necessary for successful therapy, research suggests it’s beneficial in the workplace as well by increasing motivation.
A 2018 study, published in the British Journal of Management found that employees who received unconditional positive regard from their colleagues felt valued, which enhanced their motivation, job performance, and job satisfaction. These collaborative relationships also cultivated a sense of inclusion, which heightened workplace morale.
When it comes to goal-setting, mindset matters. Let’s say we set out to exercise more, be less distracted, or go to bed on time. At the outset, if we call ourselves “lazy,” or “lacking self-control,” our internal narrative can evoke false beliefs that influence our behaviors by reducing our motivation to change.
When we strive to make changes or meet new goals, research suggests positive self-regard can unleash intrinsic motivation, which is the “desire to do something for its own sake.” Taking on challenges that interest us can make us more motivated and more self-determined.
How does unconditional positive regard foster authenticity?
But frequently, our authentic self is shut down by shame, judgment, and criticism. Perhaps someone once told us we were “too sensitive,” “not talkative enough,” or “too nerdy.” Or maybe we were teased for not following the crowd in some way. These messages convey that it’s not okay to be who we want to be.
As a result, we’re forced to choose between living out our values and feeling rejected (usually by those we need and love most) or changing our views to fit in. Often, we’d rather ignore some aspect of ourselves than feel left out.
When we make choices that don’t line up with our values, we often look back in regret. For instance, we may forgo giving a speech or applying for a promotion because we’re afraid of embarrassment or not being able to live up to expectations on the job. But turning down opportunities that can help us become who we want to be because we’re scared of social rejection, stymies our growth and taints our self-perception.
Insecurity and self-doubt may hinder motivation, but unconditional positive regard can dismantle shame, which helps us stay true to ourselves, even when others doubt us.
Behavior change is identity change.
If we are to alter the way we act, we need to change the way we see ourselves. Extending ourselves towards unconditional positive regard and self-compassion invites us to live out our values without fear.
It can be easy to associate unconditional positive regard with “feel good” psychotherapy, but as studies show, the practice can bolster self-motivation, confidence, and foster authenticity.
Perhaps we want to run a marathon, write a book proposal, or develop our ability to be indestructible; whatever the aspiration, compassion, and acceptance can get us there. It’s all we need.
Unconditional Positive Regard and Self-Worth
Rogers believed that people need both self-worth and positive regard for other people.2 How people think about themselves and how they value themselves plays a major role in well-being.
People with a stronger sense of self-worth are also more confident and motivated to pursue their goals and to work toward self-actualization because they believe that they are capable of accomplishing their goals.
During the early years, children hopefully learn that they are loved and accepted by their parents and other family members, which contributes to feelings of confidence and self-worth. Unconditional positive regard from caregivers during the early years of life can help contribute to feelings of self-worth as people grow older.1
As people age, the regard for others plays more of a role in shaping a person’s self-image.
Rogers believed that when people experience conditional positive regard, where approval hinges solely on the individual’s actions, incongruence may occur. Incongruence happens when a person’s vision of their ideal self is out of step with what they experience in real-life.
Congruent individuals will have a lot of overlap between their self-image and their notion of their ideal self. An incongruent individual will have little overlap between their self-image and ideal self.
Rogers also believed that receiving unconditional positive regard could help people become congruent once more. By providing unconditional positive regard to their clients, Rogers believed that therapists could help people become more congruent and achieve better psychological well-being.
How It Works
Is it possible for therapists to offer unconditional positive regard to every client? Many suggest that the answer is no. However, as John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan note, therapists can try to feel such regard toward their clients.
They also note that such acceptance does not constitute permissiveness or an endorsement of all behaviors. Natalie Rogers, the daughter of Carl Rogers, later explained that her father believed that while any thoughts and feelings are OK, not all behaviors are acceptable.
While unconditional positive regard is a cornerstone of client-centered therapy, it isn’t always easy to put into practice. Imagine a situation in which a therapist is working with a sex offender. In their book, “Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice,” Sommers-Flanagan offers some advice to practitioners who encounter such difficult situations.
Rather than focusing on the behaviors themselves, the authors recommend seeking positive regard for the suffering and fears that such behaviors might represent.
“Rogers firmly believed every person was born with the potential to develop in positive, loving ways,” they suggest. “When doing person-centered therapy, you become their next chance, maybe their last chance, to be welcomed, understood, and accepted. Your acceptance may create the conditions needed for change.”
Conclusion
Therapists, counselors, and educators have a powerful tool available when adopting unconditional positive regard. Used well, it can strengthen the therapeutic alliance, increase the potential for personal change, and drive positive treatment outcomes.
It is not a given. Unconditional positive regard ultimately requires accepting another human being’s worth and recognizing and understanding their experiences without expectation or bias (Rogers, 1957).
However, we are all clouded by our own experiences, biases, and belief systems. We may need to park them to be nonjudgmental and accepting. Only when these are set aside can we genuinely adopt a position of unconditional positive regard and encourage self-acceptance and self-belief in the client.
We must also be able to show and communicate to the client our recognition and acceptance; otherwise, they will remain unaware and uncertain of our position.
Unconditional positive regard is powerful and requires self-awareness, learning, and a possible change of mindset. Use the tools and activities within this article to challenge your belief system and assess your position as a therapist. Learn to treat clients as equals with the respect they need and deserve for transformation and change.
Growth Mindset Activities
