acceptance
October 2008 
When have you felt unconditionally accepted?
Posted on Jun 2nd, 2008
by 
Shameslaya
Shameslaya
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for June 02, 2008:
In the embrace of my therapist....and within the eyes of my son and partner Tam...and in a few folk I have known, notably Tam and Ruari (Goatfish here on site)..... and in the moments of deepest solitude, whether in meditation or out in the wilds...certainly not in my childhood...
Most folk think Carl Rogers begat the term "Unconditional positive regard" but actually he cribbed it off Stanley Standal who wrote a book on positive regard in 1954...good name Stanley Standal...would fit as a Speed Racer sidekick name....full of Bowiesque future nostalgia...
Anyway, Rogers defined UPR as "an acceptance, and a caring for the client as a separate person with permission for him to have his own feelings and experiences, and to find meaning in them" ....italics are his...
Given that we exist in a sea of transference...that is to say that every conversation we have (including those with ourselves) is filtered through our personal history....then this kind of unconditionality is never really achieved through shooting the breeze....certainly facile comments like "I accept you utterly" have me running for cover since they are feebly aimed at the transmitter's inner critic rather than me as recipient and are often underpinned by a potential for serious projective aggression....
My unconditional acceptance of another....honouring the "good bits" of the other as well as the "bad 'uns" usually lies in silence....I have clients who feel safe enough with me to tell me that they want to utterly fucking destroy and annihilate me....my response is to metabolise the fear in them which they give to me....and metabolise, or digest it....which means that I sit silently and accept my own fear and their rage and not smile defensively and in so doing throw the hot potato of rage / fear back in their lap...but to sit with that fear and move into the heart of it....to really feel the power core through the veils of tremulousness in the fear-feel....it's like being a teenager and feeling your partners genitals through the soft underwear fabric for the first time...fear is okay to sit with and fear is not feaful at all when you start to penetrate it....anyways, I sit with this and my whole being will show this to the client and then the client will have a different experience of their rage in this unconditional acceptance of myself and the other in the moment and there is real healing in that......in my experience, cognitively-disposed reassurances, affirmations and strategies do not reach this place down at the bottom of the well where the carp get sleek and fat on slabs of shame....it is silence which heals most fully, in my opinion...
Fujio Tomoda, a Japanese psychotherapist responsible for translating Rogers into Japanese, thinks similarly. He writes that true growth occurs in solitude..."The true meaning of Rogerian techniques is that these techniques help a client be in the state of being utterly alone."
All the work I have done on myself has enabled me to enjoy healthier relationships and move on in my professional life full steam ahead.....both of these are underpinned by an unconditional positive regard for myself almost completely free of self-loathing projected out into competativeness with others...and I fully recognise this when throwing my arms wide out on top of the beloved hills I walk..and in the arms of my friends...and clients...and lover...and son...and therapist....
Life's just fab.
A combination of therapy and meditation will take a pipecleaner to the barnacles on the inner lumen of one's worldview.....tweedledee and tweedledum...can't do one properly without t'other....
J x
Most folk think Carl Rogers begat the term "Unconditional positive regard" but actually he cribbed it off Stanley Standal who wrote a book on positive regard in 1954...good name Stanley Standal...would fit as a Speed Racer sidekick name....full of Bowiesque future nostalgia...
Anyway, Rogers defined UPR as "an acceptance, and a caring for the client as a separate person with permission for him to have his own feelings and experiences, and to find meaning in them" ....italics are his...
Given that we exist in a sea of transference...that is to say that every conversation we have (including those with ourselves) is filtered through our personal history....then this kind of unconditionality is never really achieved through shooting the breeze....certainly facile comments like "I accept you utterly" have me running for cover since they are feebly aimed at the transmitter's inner critic rather than me as recipient and are often underpinned by a potential for serious projective aggression....
My unconditional acceptance of another....honouring the "good bits" of the other as well as the "bad 'uns" usually lies in silence....I have clients who feel safe enough with me to tell me that they want to utterly fucking destroy and annihilate me....my response is to metabolise the fear in them which they give to me....and metabolise, or digest it....which means that I sit silently and accept my own fear and their rage and not smile defensively and in so doing throw the hot potato of rage / fear back in their lap...but to sit with that fear and move into the heart of it....to really feel the power core through the veils of tremulousness in the fear-feel....it's like being a teenager and feeling your partners genitals through the soft underwear fabric for the first time...fear is okay to sit with and fear is not feaful at all when you start to penetrate it....anyways, I sit with this and my whole being will show this to the client and then the client will have a different experience of their rage in this unconditional acceptance of myself and the other in the moment and there is real healing in that......in my experience, cognitively-disposed reassurances, affirmations and strategies do not reach this place down at the bottom of the well where the carp get sleek and fat on slabs of shame....it is silence which heals most fully, in my opinion...
Fujio Tomoda, a Japanese psychotherapist responsible for translating Rogers into Japanese, thinks similarly. He writes that true growth occurs in solitude..."The true meaning of Rogerian techniques is that these techniques help a client be in the state of being utterly alone."
All the work I have done on myself has enabled me to enjoy healthier relationships and move on in my professional life full steam ahead.....both of these are underpinned by an unconditional positive regard for myself almost completely free of self-loathing projected out into competativeness with others...and I fully recognise this when throwing my arms wide out on top of the beloved hills I walk..and in the arms of my friends...and clients...and lover...and son...and therapist....
Life's just fab.
A combination of therapy and meditation will take a pipecleaner to the barnacles on the inner lumen of one's worldview.....tweedledee and tweedledum...can't do one properly without t'other....
J x
Access: Public
there's nothing like true unconditional acceptance, the giving and receiving. blessings today xx
I agree, silence can be very accepting, it is giving another space to be themselves and work things out for themselves. When I was nursing i learned the value of silence - and reflection.