The Episode About Rogers: All The Positive Regard You Will Need

In this episode of Licensure Lifeline, we take a deep dive into the work of Carl Rogers — one of the most influential figures in the history of psychotherapy and a foundational theorist for counselors and social workers preparing for licensure exams.

You’ll learn how Rogers’ core conditions of change — empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence — form the basis of the therapeutic relationship and continue to shape modern mental health practice. We explore how concepts like conditions of worth, self-concept, and incongruence appear in both clinical work and exam scenarios such as the NCE and NCMHCE.

This episode also includes licensure-focused practice questions, a case vignette breakdown, and practical strategies for recognizing person-centered therapy on exams and in the therapy room.

In the professional development segment, we highlight recent developments in the counseling field, including workforce trends and the evolving mental health landscape, with links to current research and reporting.

If you’re preparing for licensure or strengthening your theoretical foundation as a clinician, this episode provides a clear and clinically grounded understanding of Rogers that goes beyond memorization into application.

Transcript

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In 1965, a psychotherapy session is filmed for the first time as a teaching tool. A woman named Gloria has agreed to speak with several therapists on camera so students can observe therapy in real time. One of those therapists is Carl Rogers. Gloria sits across from him, visibly anxious, talking about guilt and fear in her relationship with her daughter. At one point, she asks him directly, Do you think I'm a bad person? Rogers does not interpret her unconscious conflict. He does not analyze her past. He does not offer advice. He pauses, then responds quietly. He pauses, then responds quietly. You're really worried that something inside you might be unacceptable. As the session continues, something striking happens. Gloria relaxes. Her voice steadies. She begins exploring her feelings more openly, without direction or correction. Students watched these recordings and saw something new. Therapeutic change emerging not from interpretation or technique, but from being deeply understood. Rogers used these sessions to demonstrate his essential claim that people naturally move toward growth when they experience empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard. At a time when therapy emphasized pathology and expert authority, Rogers shifted the field toward relationship, acceptance, and human potential. Principles that remain foundational in the counts in counseling and are still tested across Licensure exams today. Hey everyone, welcome back to Licensure Lifeline Podcast. If you're new here, my name is Matt Lawson. I'm a licensed professional counselor, educator, and coach. And this podcast exists to help you move from confusion to clarity as you prepare for Licensure and grow into your professional identity as a clinician. In today's episode, we are continuing our exploration of the major theorist who shaped modern psychotherapy. In the last episode, we looked at Sigmund Freud and the foundations of psychodynamic theory. Today we turn to one of the most influential figures in the humanistic psychology movement, Carl Rogers. Rogers fundamentally changed how we understand the therapeutic relationship. His work moved the field away from therapist as an expert, interpreter, and toward therapist as present, empathic, and accepting partner a person's change. Concepts like unconditional positive regard, one of my favorites, congruence and empathy remain central not only to counseling theory, but to how therapy is practiced across modalities today. They also appear consistently across licensure exams, particularly in questions about therapeutic alliance, um counselor stance, and the relational conditions that facilitate client growth, not to mention just knowing, needing to know about Rogers in general. You'll see lots of questions just about Rogers. So before we dive into Rogers, however, um I want to briefly orient listeners to how this podcast is gonna is gonna be evolving. I talked a little bit about this in the last episode, but you know, we we really are gonna be doing much deeper dives with these episodes. Um so they are gonna be longer. Um, you know, I think before I was averaging probably between 15 and 20 minutes. Um so we're talking more 30 minutes-ish for these episodes. So just adding more content for you, more knowledge, um, more information to hopefully um help you translate to better understandings of the test. Um, you know, I have also talked about licensure concierge. Um, it's the app I created. Um, it's actually due for a little bit of an update. And I so appreciate all of those of you who have already looked into it and purchased. It that's it's just been so great to see. Um, so that is uh still still going and going strong. Um also, I'm in the works of uh building a community around the podcast. Um, so what this is gonna look like is it's going to utilize uh circle circle groups. Um basically it's kind of like having a private Facebook page where it'll be specific to licensure lifeline and people studying to become clinicians and even have some stuff around like starting getting into the the professional world of uh mental health. Um, so it's gonna be this really neat thing. I've had people ask so many times, like if I had any, if I knew about any like online study groups and things like that. And that's what this is gonna be, you know, I'm gonna have things like study groups, I'm gonna have things like book clubs, um, I'm gonna have areas of where you can just complain about the things that you're seeing as you study and hopefully just get some support there. But you know, I I think community is a really important piece, especially um in mental health. So that's exciting as well. Um, but you know, other than that, you're not gonna see much of a change in the podcast. We're still gonna be doing the news, we're still gonna be doing the questions, we're still gonna be doing um things that will hopefully uh just add to what you have going on. So um, having said that, let's go ahead and get into the news. All right, in the news this week. First off, workforce data continues to show the demand for mental health services is still outpacing the supply for clinicians, um, especially in youth services and rural communities. So, despite growth in the field, access gaps remain significant. This is unfortunately something I have seen since I've been a clinician. Um, it's something I've recently experienced with me trying to get my daughter into some counseling. Um, we've we did find a place that didn't have a wait list, but a lot of these places that we were looking for had wait lists. One of them told us nine months. Um, she's seven years old. And to get her into somebody, it was going to take nine months. Um, you know, in in rural communities, even worse. I mean, again, like we saw this like when I started my practice or when I started to be a therapist, um, there were therapy deserts all over the United States where they just didn't have people in those places. Is actually one of the really nice things about doing online therapy is we're able to provide access for mental health to places that just don't have any therapists nearby that they can go to in person. So, you know, it's it's something to really keep in mind. If you're kicking around, you know, taking your practice to a nice small town, um, you know, it it might actually be a real, a real boon for you. Um, so, you know, keep that in mind. We're also seeing an increase in concerns among therapists about reimbursement pressure and administrative burden in behavioral health care, which is influencing how clinicians are choosing to structure their careers, um, including shifting a little bit more toward private practice where they don't accept insurance. Um, you know, anybody that works in medicine knows the push-pull between getting medical care for people that need it and the red tape that you have to deal with with insurance companies. But even beyond that, you know, there are some pieces around mental health that just could be so much easier. And sometimes the insurance companies um, you know, make it pretty difficult for us to just do our jobs. And the best thing with things like this is we need to keep advocating, advocating for the people that we work with, advocating for ourselves, um, you know, making sure that the representatives that we have that are going um to to to government places are letting them know that, hey, we need we need better, better ways to do our our jobs, better ways to help people. So next up, on the licensure front, counseling compact continues to expand across states. Such a great thing to hear. Um, again, this is something that ever since I was a little bitty therapist, um, you know, it they have been trying to pretty much just get rid of um the state lines. Um, you know, the fact that you have to get a license in one state and to practice in another license in another state to practice, it's just it's kind of ridiculous. I mean, there's no difference in the licensures or like maybe a state will make you take a course um coming from a different state, but it's it's it's negligible. A lot of the times it's courses people should be taking anyway. Um, so you know, being able to have a curriculum that says like you have courses that allow you to practice anywhere in the United States without needing separate license is just gonna help everyone. So, all right, folks, that is gonna do it for the news. I will include links to articles I talked about in the show notes so you can take a look. All right, let's move into the heart of today's episode, Carl Rogers and the Foundations of Person-centered therapy. So, when most people first learn of Rogers in graduate school, they hear something like be empathic, reflect feelings, offer unconditional positive regard. And while that's true, it's also a massive oversimplification. There was a moment in grad school where Rogers was presented to me, and it came across as more of like a way of being in therapy. Um, it didn't really come across to me as much of a as much of a like modality. Um, you know, and to be fair, like things like CBT, they almost like have it's almost like a guidebook when it's presented to you. It's like you do this, then you do this, and then you do this. And Rogers, I think, was presented in a in in you could like almost immediately see a lot of just some abstract concepts that just didn't seem to match like a very formulaic way of doing therapy. And so, you know, I kind of I kind of originally like like looked at it as like, oh, this is more of a like a philosophy or just a way of being with with someone um that I'm working with. Because Rogers wasn't just teaching therapists how to be nice, he was he was really proposing something that was just a bit more radical. Um, that psychology, that psychological healing does not come from interpretation, advice, or authority. It comes from a specific kind of relationship. And if you remember with Freud, like that was his big thing. Like Freud really believed that you set yours as a therapist, you set yourself up as the authority in the room. Um, and that this this person is coming for you, coming to you to analyze them and tell them what is wrong with them. Um, and you know, Rogers took a step back from that, and he really didn't that just wasn't that's not where his angle was coming from when working with people. To really understand Rogers, we have to take a view of just human nature. Um, Rogers believed that human beings are fundamentally oriented toward growth. He called this the actualizing tendency. This is one of the most important of Rogers' concepts for both exams and practice. Um, the actualizing tendency is the innate drive in all organisms to develop their um capabilities and capacities, maintain themselves, and move toward fulfillment in their lives. In simple terms, people naturally move toward health when conditions allow. This is very different from Freud, Freud, right? He believed that people were driven primarily by primarily by unconscious conflict and instinctual tension. Um, so Rogers beliefs that um psych psychological distress does not come from pathology inside the person, it comes from the environments that block or distort growth. That shift from pathology to environment is foundational to person-centered therapy. So the next big one with Rogers is going to be um self-concept. So for him, self-concept is the organized conscious perception we have of who we are. And that includes things like beliefs about ourselves, perceptions of our ability, our sense of worth, our identities. For Rogers, psychological health depended on the alignment between who we actually experienced ourselves to be and who we believe we are allowed to be. He called this the alignment of congruence. So congruence versus incongruence in a person. Um, congruence means that the self-concept matches the lived experience. I cannot tell you how often this comes up in therapy. Um, so many times when I work with somebody that you know is struggling with alcohol use or porn addiction or something else that you know that that they've brought into their lives, um, you know, that to escape, to, to numb, um, you know, they're often not living in congruence with the person that they want to be or the lives they want to live. And, you know, in in the face of not knowing what that congruence is or not knowing like where they should be going, um, it's really easy for them to fill it in with something else. Um, something else that doesn't necessarily get them to where they want to go, um, but at least numbs that feeling or it lets them allows them to escape the discomfort of not living in congruence with their life. Um, so incongruence means that the gap between experience and incongruence is the gap between self-experience and belief and self-belief. And this gap is the core to psychological distress in Roger's theory. So, for example, a child naturally feels anger toward a parent, but the parent communicates good children don't feel anger. So now you have this child that learns, I must feel this. In order to be a good kid, um, I don't, I can't feel angry. Um, the feeling still exists, but it becomes denied or distorted. And over time, the person loses contact with the their authentic experience. That disconnection is incongruence. And Rogers believed most psychological suffering comes from that misalignment. And this is such a fascinating place to go with somebody, such a fascinating thing to really explore like the congruence and incongruencies in their lives. Um, and you'll see it, you'll see it in relationships, you'll see it in professional choices, um, you'll see it in hobby choices, um, like whether or not things are congruent or incongruent in their lives. And you'll see like how much they perk up when things are congruent and how much of a struggle it is for them when they're talking about the incongruencies. Okay, I think we're good there. So how about conditions of worth? So conditions of worth are messages often from caregivers that communicate you are acceptable only if dot dot dot. Example, you are obedient, you succeed, you don't show negative emotions, you meet expectations. When acceptance becomes conditional, the person learns to value themselves only under certain conditions. They begin to evaluate themselves through external approval rather than internal experience. This pulls them away from the actualizing tendency. So instead of growing authentically, they grow defensively. How many people can can relate to this? And I I've said this before when we study these things. Um, you you're going to see yourself, you're gonna see some of the things that you do, you're gonna see friends and family members and like have some aha moments around them some things. And you know, just keep in mind, like the reason that you're seeing this is because this like this is people, like this is this is who we are, this is how we do. And you know, we really only evaluate these things as to how they're caught how they're negatively or impact negatively or positively impacting our lives. Um, so you know, you the these conditions of worth, um, you know, having these stipulations on your worth, um, you can see how it can kind of mess with your sense of being, your sense of self. All right, my favorite, unconditional positive regard. Um, I just I just love the way this sounds. Like this is just the phrase unconditional positive regard. It just it's one of those things that's just a feel-good phrase for me. And you know, we're not talking like this Pollyannish view of the world, or you know, that we're not saying that we just, you know, that you look through this lens and you just approve of all behavior. But what we really mean here is complete acceptance of a person's worth independence of their independent of their actions or feelings. So that person right in front of you that you're working with, you know, we we accept them for for just who they are, who they are as a person. Um, you know, not what they've done, not what they say, um, but just that they have worth and that they have independence. Um, the therapeutic messages become you are fundamentally acceptable even when struggling. Um, and you know, just that sense there restores a lot of psychological safety. And psychological safe safety really allows for the just the authentic experience to emerge. And you know, I think this is actually one of the areas that I kind of got that sense of, you know, um, this approach being more of just a way of being, right? Because this idea that you're with somebody and you just there's no judgment. Like that's what that's what we're saying here, right? Like you're in front of me and you know, without any judgment, we we can talk, and I'm going to create this space for you that is safe that we can speak in. Okay, next up. The core conditions of therapy. Rogers believed that healing occurs when three relational conditions are present empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard. These are known as the core conditions. And here's the crucial Rogerian belief. The therapist does not cause the change. The therapist creates the conditions in which the change naturally occurs. Love that, right? And this is again a trap that so many therapists fall into, and I need you to check yourself when you find yourself trying to solve problems for people. Um and it this is a practice that you know even today, like 20 years of experience of doing this, and I still catch my brain going to how am I gonna help? How am I gonna fix this? How am I gonna help? How am I gonna fix this? And yeah, like I I come back to this idea um all the time where it's this therapist does not cause change. We create the conditions in which the change naturally occurs. So it's not a matter of how do I fix this person, it's how do I what conditions will this situation require for the change to occur naturally with this individual? Okay, so let's kind of break some of these down. So empathy, um, Rogers defined empathy as entering the client's internal world and perceiving it as they do without losing the as if quality. So empathy is not I understand. It is I am attempting to experience the world as you experience. And in practice, this often looks like reflective listening. Um, but you know, that's just one tool, right? Many of us that are going into this field naturally are empathetic people, naturally tend toward putting ourselves in other people's shoes. Um, you know, and it's one of the more attractive pieces to be able to have something that we've been developing since we're potentially children. Um and we're able to use it in a profession that helps people because we're able to channel in on that empathy so well. So this is actually, you know, part of the therapist toolbox of superpowers that a lot of us have, um, or a lot of us develop. Therapist congruence is the next one here. Congruence is the therapist um means of genuineness. The therapist is psychologically present and authentic rather than role-bound or artificial. This does not mean sharing everything, it means that therapist is real, the therapist is real rather than clinical or detached. Rogers believed clients detect inauthentic inauthenticity really quickly. This is very true. Um, you know, this this is a this is definitely one that a lot of us grow into. Um, some of us have it pretty naturally, and you know, that we can just be in a room with somebody and you know, we're just really good at um doing that first impression thing and putting people at ease immediately. Like, have you ever been that individual that you know people are always like, you know, I feel like I can tell I can t like total strangers are like, I feel like I can tell you anything. And you know, that's that's what we're talking about here. Um, you know, is Is people creating that space, be having that that sense of self for others that really just puts them at ease, that really shows the shows them that just often that you're an authentic being that is honestly there to help them. And it is like I remember initially you have all these things in your head when you're in front of those first, I don't know, hundred people. Um it's not not it's not a hundred people, but you know what I mean. Um, and you are just nervous. You're trying to remember Rogers, you're trying to remember Freud, you're trying to remember CBT, you're trying to remember DBT, you're like trying to figure out like what's, you know, what what's the thing that this person's really, really getting to? And all that's running through your head, and you forget that that you're a person sitting in front of another person. And that's what this this sense of therapist congruence is, is always coming back to that place of we're just we're two people talking. Like, yeah, there's some things that I know, there's some things that you know. But at the end of the day, we're just we're two people just talking here. All right, next up, therapeutic relationship as a mechanism of change. One of Rogers' most radical ideas was that the relationship itself is the intervention. There is no technical more powerful than there's nothing more powerful than being deeply understood without judgment. This directly challenged the medical model of therapy, and today's research still supports Rogers. The therapeutic alliance is one of the strongest predictors of outcome across modalities. Not a huge surprise there, right? Um, that the stronger the relationship that you have with the individual that you're working with, um, the the better the outcome. And this is one of the stranger aspects of this field that you're going into is you're going to develop best friends. I mean, if you think about what's going on here, um, you are sharing some of the most heartfelt, intimate moments with a another human being that has all the makings of that's how you would develop a really heartfelt deep friendship. And you are like there's absolutely boundaries that are in place there. Um there's absolutely professionalism that is in place here, but you're going to be operating within that the very same realm that you would be operating for some of the best friends in your life because of the relationships that you're building with these individuals. And I know there's a there's a lot of kind of like back and forth in in the therapy world, I think, with like how much we share as individuals, how much we share of ourselves as individuals. And that's a very that's a very personal question to answer when as you as you start to work into this field. Um, I share a lot of my life with the people I work with. Um, most of them know that um, you know, I'm a father, I'm a husband, um, they know a lot of my hobbies, um, they they know I like to play video games. Um, so you know, it's not just I I do like I open up to them. There's there's little things that we share because it's interesting when you connect with people around some of these little things in our lives. Um, it's a little bit easier to talk about the bigger things in a person's life. So as far as the exam goes around Rogers, um, you know, you're gonna see a lot of questions around non-directive therapy with him, um, reflection of feelings, unconditional positive regards gonna come up, you're gonna see that. Um, conditions of worth could be could be around there, self-concept and incongruence, and client-centered just approach in general. But a key tip here if the answer choice emphasizes interpretation, advice, or therapist authority, it's not Rogers. And I've said this in other podcasts before. You'd be amazed by how well you will do on the exam just by the information that you know that lets you know that the multiple choices that you're given do not are not part of that person, like that are obviously Freud, and there's no way it could be Rogers, or it's you know, obvious obviously um Beck and it's not Rogers. Um, your ability to take your answer choices down to just two to a 50-50 chance of things is it is a huge it's a huge boon. Um, it's it's one of the things that's going to help you out on the exam. Speaking of multiple choice, let's go ahead and get into some questions. So, a therapist consistently communicates warmth, acceptance, and respect toward a client, regardless of the client's behaviors or emotions. According to Carl Rogers, this therapist is demonstrating a accurate empathy, B congruence, c unconditional positive regard, or D reflection of feelings. Answer here is C, unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard refers to the acceptance and valuing the client without conditions. Um, it is not dependent on behaviors or emotional presentation. So empathy equals understanding internal experience, congruence equals therapist authenticity, reflection equals is a technique that we use to show that we're listening, to show that we're there. Question number two According to Rogers, psych um psychological distress most often results from a unresolved unresolved unconscious conflict, b maladaptive cognition, c incongruence between self-concept and experience, or d reinforced avoidance behavior. Answer here is gonna be C incongruence between self-concept and experience. Rogers believed distress occurred when lived experience conflicts with self-concept. This often develops through conditions of worth. Um next up. Question number three Which therapeutic condition did Rogers believe was essential for client change to occur? Is it a interpretation? B advice, C, therapist neutrality, or D empathic understanding? Answer's gonna be D. Empathic understanding. Empathy is one of Rogers' three core conditions empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard. Rogers believed change emerges when clients feel deeply understood. Question number four. A client states, I feel angry at my parents, but I know I shouldn't feel that way. From a person-centered perspective, this conflict most reflects resistance, A. B. incongruence, C, projection, or D displacement. Answer is incongruence. You see how you can knock those other ones out pretty quickly. Um I mean, I know you probably zeroed right in on incongruence, um, but you know, it's you'll see a lot of answers like this, where it's you know for absolute sure like incongruence is Rogers. Um and everything else is just like, yeah, that's those aren't those aren't um connected with Rogers. So the explanation with this, the client's authentic feeling, anger conflicts with his learned self-belief. I shouldn't feel this way. Question number five Which statement best reflects Rogers' view of human nature? Is it a behavior is shaped primarily by reinforcement um the reinforcement of history? B humans are driven by unconscious instinct, C, humans possess an innate tendency toward growth, or D, humans are motivated by cognitive schemes. Answer is gonna be C. That's cause cognitive schemas, sorry. Um humans possess an innate tendency toward growth. Um so this refers to Roger's actualizing tendency, the natural drive toward development and fulfillment. Question number six. A counselor intentionally avoids directing sessions and instead follows the client's lead, trusting the client's capacity for self-understanding. This approach reflects a psychoanalytic therapy, b behavioral therapy, c person-centered therapy, or D Gestalt therapy. Yeah, um, it's gonna be C. Person-centered therapy, uh, you know, non-directive stance, trust, all those things that we just got done describing. Um, not a tough one there. So, all right. How about a vignette? You are counseling Maria, a 28-year-old graduate student who presents with anxiety and self-doubt related to academic performance. She reports feeling that she's never good, and she's just never good enough, despite consistently high grades. During sessions, Maria frequently seeks reassurance from you and asks whether you think she's is succeeding. When discussing her upbringing, Maria describes parents who praised achievement but were critical of mistakes. She states, I feel like I fail, I'm and that I'm worthless. During one session, Maria says, I got an A on my last paper, and I keep thinking I should have done better. I feel disappointed in myself. Which of the following counsel counsel responses is the most consistent with person-centered therapy? Um, is it A, you're setting unrealistic high standards for yourself and which is contributing to your anxiety? B, it sounds like your sense of worth has become tied to achievement. Or C, you're feeling uh you're you're feeling disappointed, and maybe questioning your value because you didn't meet meet your expectations. And finally, D, what evidence do you have that an A means failed? What do you guys think? Correct your answer here is gonna be C. So with this vignette, you first are gonna identify a theoretical orientation being tested, right? Um so you kind of suspect um Rajarian themes here, um, just to kind of talk into the person, self-worth, incongruency, things like that. Um and then you know, once you kind of like figure this out, the you like the question becomes which response best matches person-centered therapy? Um, not which answer matches the person, right? Um, so kind of bringing it back, and this is because of the test. Like that's not what you of course that's not what you would do in the office, and you'd be able to eliminate the other ones. Um, you know, it's like A is interpretation of standards. Um, this is evaluative and slightly directive, like that's not Rogers. Um, B insight and interpretation about worth, um, like that's more psychodynamic. Um, and with D, it's a cognitive evidence a cognitive evidence challenge, which is what you see a lot of the times in CBT. So C best reflects um this mirrors like the emotion. Um, there's no interpretation, no correction, no direction. So, you know, this is how you would look at this through a Rogerian lens. And that is going to bring us to the end of the episode. If there was one core takeaway from Rogers, it's that psychological change doesn't begin with technique, it begins with relationship. And when clients experience genuine understanding, acceptance, and authenticity, they begin to reorganize how they see themselves. And that idea continues to shape modern psychotherapy, um, trauma-informed care, and the therapeutic alliance that we uh looked at today. So if you're studying for the NCE and NCMHCE, studying to become a social worker, um, remember when you see empathy, unconditional, positive regard, congruent, and non-directive stances, you're almost always looking at Rogers. Thank you everybody for listening. And until next time, keep studying.