Student of Challenges & Student of Humanism
Psychologist Carl Rogers adopted a humanistic approach to his person-centered therapies, and included in his work a core condition: Offering toward clients an Unconditional Positive Regard. In practice, this is consciously suspending all judgments and meeting the feelings and experiences of clients with a warm overall acceptance.
“A caring which is not possessive, which demands no personal gratification … It involves an acceptance of and a caring for the client as a separate person, with permission for him to have his own feelings and experiences and to find his own meanings for them.” (Rogers, 1967)
Unconditional Positive Regard maintains that each human is inherently worthy and deserving of respect without valuation, rebuke, or condemnation. It’s a tenant that applies not only to psychotherapy but also to massage and bodywork therapies — and I believe it is just as important to our therapy (if not more?) than hands-on techniques we use; for a warm presence and existential respect take root into the heart when offered, and outward from the heart we, as humans, find healing. It seals our physicak and energetic massage spaces as safe and empowering.
Beyond therapies, Unconditional Positive Regard becomes a life philosophy. When we practice nonjudgmental listening and validation of others’ experiences and feelings, this philosophy envelopes us, turns us toward the other, and makes way for a kinder community.
In my professional realms of massage therapy and owning a clinic with multiple practitioners, I do come across interpersonal challenges. And when I say “challenges”, I don’t necessarily mean that in a negative regard: Being challenged simply means I’m meeting myself at a learning curve and a growth point. When I meet myself there at a challenge — whether it’s having an uncomfortable conversation with someone about boundaries or working with a client who has different sociopolitical views than I do — inwardly, I take a step back and consciously drop into a space of respecting the other person as a wholly autonomous being with their own internal world. Seeing them wholly with their own motives, dreams, fears, experiences, and feelings helps me assess my own internal world and form a professional and humanist approach without as much of my own emotional charge clouding the means to an end and the overall professional relationship. The end, in most cases, to which I carefully approach with the means, is to allow others to have their own meaning in a way where my own meaning is still respected (Unconditional Positive Regard is not a one way street — it is toward the self, as well). If that cannot be upheld, then I may need to take action, such as ending a therapeutic relationship or referring a client to another practice.
This is all an ongoing practice — I will always be a student of challenges.
When I first became licensed in massage, I thought I really knew the pillar of positive regard. I knew it as well as I could have as a new LMT, and I believed in the words. I know it now as well as I could know it at this point in my practice and in my life. I have lately learned that Unconditional Positive Regard is perhaps one of the most empowering (for each individual) component to a therapeutic relationship.
How this serves me: To know I am a student of challenges and a student of humanism. To reflect back and see how through massage and allowing others to BE in their own world, and for me to drop expectation, my heart has been opened in ways I could never have known if I hadn’t been walking this path. I find myself eager to be around different kinds of people and to think in ways that are new to me. I learn, and adapt, and change, and I can pour that back into the cup I offer to clients and the other practitioners who work around me.
And it repeats, over and over again in a circle, the heart opens more.
