Lori G, LPC
Therapy
What Is Person-Centered Therapy?
Person-centered therapy is built on the belief that people are more than their symptoms, diagnoses, mistakes, or difficult experiences.
Rather than positioning the therapist as the expert on your life, this approach emphasizes collaboration, respect, and the idea that you bring important knowledge about yourself, your experiences, and what matters to you.
The therapist’s role is to create a relationship where you can feel heard, understood, challenged when needed, and supported in making sense of what you want to change.
The Core of the Approach
Empathy means trying to understand your experience from your perspective rather than assuming I already know what something means to you.
Genuineness means showing up as a real person in the room rather than hiding behind a clinical role. Therapy can still have boundaries and professionalism while also feeling human.
Unconditional positive regard means approaching you with respect and without reducing you to a diagnosis, behavior, relapse, mistake, or difficult moment.
You do not need to earn respect in therapy before you can
begin working toward change.
What Person-Centered Therapy Is Not
Person-centered therapy does not mean that I simply sit quietly and agree with everything you say.
I ask questions, offer observations, provide clinical feedback, challenge patterns when appropriate, and bring in strategies from other approaches.
The difference is that those interventions happen within a relationship that respects your autonomy and recognizes that change is more meaningful when it makes sense to you.
Related Concerns
Person-centered therapy may be used in work related to anxiety, depression and mood disorders, trauma and PTSD, addiction and recovery, problem gambling, relationship concerns, life transitions, grief and loss, burnout and stress, emotional regulation, and co-occurring disorders.
Therapy should adapt to you—not the other way around.
Some people need more structure. Others need more space to process.
Some benefit from worksheets, skills, or concrete goals. Others may need time to understand what they are feeling before deciding what they want to do about it.
My job is not to force every client into the same style of therapy.
Person-Centered Does Not Mean One-Size-Fits-All
What It May Look
Like in Session
A person-centered session may involve exploring what has been happening, slowing down a pattern that keeps repeating, looking at a situation from another perspective, identifying what you are feeling, or simply having space to say something honestly without immediately being told what to do.
Some sessions may feel reflective. Others may be more practical and skills-focused.
There is room for difficult conversations, humor, disagreement, uncertainty, and figuring things out together.
How I Use
Person-Centered Therapy
Person-centered therapy is the foundation of how I work, but it is not the only approach I use.
Depending on what you need, I may also incorporate
-
Gestalt techniques
The person-centered foundation helps guide how those interventions are used.
Rather than choosing a technique simply because it belongs to a particular model, I try to consider what feels clinically useful, where you are in the process, and what is most likely to help in that moment.
Who May Benefit From a Person-Centered Approach?
Person-centered therapy can be helpful for people who want a collaborative relationship and space to better understand themselves rather than feeling directed through a predetermined treatment script.
It may be particularly helpful if you have had previous experiences where you felt judged, misunderstood, pressured, or reduced to a diagnosis.
It can also work well alongside more structured approaches when practical skills, behavior change, or symptom-focused treatment are needed.
Ready to Get Started?
Ready to schedule therapy?
Visit Healthstead Psychiatry for scheduling, availability, and insurance information.
Not sure yet?
Contact me for a complimentary 15-minute phone consultation to see whether we may be a good fit.