Unconditional Positive Regard

[floppit]

*If you want a feel good read give this one a miss* I will write this unreferenced but am happy to reference in retrospect any part of the academic side, it just makes it quicker to type and read without.

Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR) is one of the 3 conditions Carl Rogers said were needed to create a healing relationship between two people. I have sat through lectures and talks on the subject more times than I care to remember and without fail each one has left me angry, this post is about why.

Carl Rogers set out 3 core conditions for a therapeutic relationship, UPR, empathy, and congruence. At it's most basic level he suggested a relationship between two people could not heal distress without at least one of them feeling with the other person, being honest and believing the other has intrinsic worth - I'm inclined to agree. While most students and tutors respond with enthusiasm to notions of utter honesty and empathy UPR is something which more often than not leads to debate. The first thing that irks me is the enthusiastic bandwagon of confidence surrounding empathy and honesty, that these are so easily done, that 'we' (whoever the group in attendance is) hold them as values anyway. For honesty to really exist I need to be honest with myself and from my motives to the reality of life that is not so easy - for me that's as near as I get, to say I'll work on it, imperfectly but with some care. For empathy to be real I need to understand what the other person feels - accurately; again I try, I want to, but never escape the flaws of my own errors. The old saying of 'Do to others as you would have them do to you' seemed so simple to me in my 20's and so ridiculous now, somewhere along the trip I got round to learning that not all people want to be treated as I would and that empathy meant having a stab at understanding that. It all got harder, less simple, less straightforward till a point where I would no longer be caught justifying anything by 'do to others....' I might explain that was how I'd tried and erred or even got it right but it's not enough, the buck doesn't stop once the magic words are uttered. This thing - empathy, it goes beyond compassion or care it requires a level of insight that even industrious effort only partly reaches. And these things matter, because once UPR is brought into the ring and the bell goes to begin all the assumptions come out to play and I get angry.

At this stage it's worth mentioning context as it's the context that leaves me feeling people are lazy, the context that messes with my empathy. When I've attended talks and studies regarding UPR it's been alongside people who charge (usually the tax payer) for their skills with people. I'm not talking about an audience that has never claimed to have studied and thought carefully but one that makes a deal of duty to care enough to learn, people that have sold their abilities in interview, claimed to have qualities, and profess self awareness, and they do, shit they do.

So on to UPR.

Unconditional - not dependent on 'good' behaviour, on what a person says, not dependent on appearance, ability, colour, beliefs, manners, smell, or circumstance, devoid of conditions.

Positive - not neutral, not just acceptance, not negative. It is explicit in requiring gain, something added, a value.

Regard - to see, hear, and attend, to place one's self openly waiting.

Positive regard in REAL terms may be hard enough but unconditional? Regardless of so many things to place one's self so open? I have never (rightfully) been in a group of people that believe THAT to be easy, and the doubt isn't what makes me angry, I respect the doubt just not where it's aimed.

If at this stage sex offenders and other evil doers have come to mind please remember I have only ever been angry BECAUSE of the context of groups where I've discussed UPR before. I lived far more than half my life caring but I'd have been the first to think of those people who I could so quickly and easily view below myself, and guess what? They'd be the same ones, the sex offenders etc.

So up pops the subject, the monsters, the evil doers, those who all in attendance agree cannot be viewed in a positive light - easy peasy lemon squeezy - the answer is don't work with them, don't charge money from the tax payer saying you have what you have not. It is that easy too. Is it fuck!

Who do we really disregard? We good people? Well, we take care to study who gets left behind, Social Exclusion Reports get written, carefully quantifying who gets left out, who does not get schooling, who doesn't get a GP, who is less likely to work, those who are not 'engaged', we say they are hard to engage. It isn't the kiddy fiddlers, they are sat pretty, often respected in communities, valued family members, even (as recent revelations highlight so plainly) revered. By default those successfully target the young are granted access rather than left behind. The people left behind, those we truly disregard are more often the inadequate, the awkward people, the ones who have committed the cardinal sin of getting it wrong socially.

And here is where I get angry. In these groups, these people, like me, who take your money on the basis we at least try to know ourselves - well they all claim they don't ignore the under dog, just the evil. THEY do not judge by appearance or social skills, by colour or smell and have no problem at all if a person wears the wrong clothes. So I have started to ask, roughly at that exact point, the most vocal point of how bloody accepting and frigging accurate all us good people are, how many friends they have with a learning disability and did their last dinner party or social event have them present? When did they last count someone without a home as a friend? Or disregard blatant bad manners in someone else? Us human beings are profoundly SHITE at valuing the right people, any confidence in our sense of equality being innate or even fully mastered is equally delusion. That isn't ok to just ignore for the small group of people who claim the opposite, asking to be paid at the same time.

My brother is 40, one of the kindest and certainly the most honest people you could meet, warm, loving - almost worshipping the people he counts as friends, the uncle who was the first person to make his niece laugh out loud. He, in 40 years, has acquired one friend outside my own friendship group - all these social worker types, the teachers in this world, the charity workers, the joe blogs have lived alongside him in our country and town and yet he has one single friend, a gay female forklift truck driver who has never charged for her wisdom. Don't think I let myself off the hook by virtue of a relative - I don't, that was chance not my wisdom, nor my ability. I love him very much but not because I learned to see, it was because I had longer to look. Still, he stands alone in my friendship group, the lone salve to my stinking conscience which tells me how much of a joke it is to trawl out the well worn examples when UPR gets discussed.

I haven't found some holy grail, with all the above the only thing I can claim with any honesty is to still apply the discipline I was taught more than 20 years ago. Horses, at least the ones I worked with, are worth a fortune, that, the £..K price tag provides the positive regard, the sort that's real, the sort which will bypass any individual awkwardness and drive a culture to see them as valuable, truly without regard to what they do. My boss would say 'No-one will pay a groom to get off a horse and say it's crazy.' He was wrong, what he should have said is no RATIONAL person will pay a groom to slate the horse - what did they get for their money? I learned the discipline of saying 'I can't manage X' not 'X cannot be managed'. If I was getting paid, if money changed hands and a deal is struck then I look to get a tune each and every time. So now I work with people, of course sometimes I think THEY are bloody awkward but I stop short of saying it, in every note, every case discussion, every phone call I keep a discipline that 'I' struggle to 'get on' not that they are awkward. I try to see if someone else managed, ring them, ask them how - just like years ago I would seek to learn from whoever could ride the horse I could not. Not much is it? What scares me is the notion of that being a new culture would be truly firebrand stuff - it is not the culture. The culture, as it stands, often professes UPR but in practice works fast for new labels 'Hard to Reach' 'Challenging' which quickly and absolutely become blame.

I don't believe we have even begun and I think it's because it's too hard to accept that I, me, not some other less caring person but me, I have and do have conditions for positive regard that I could never truly justify. I'm angry because that's what is never discussed.

[charlou]

hayeahhh .. I'm going to have to tackle this read after work ...

*bookmarked*

[Feck]

I have a few friends who are meant to show this UPR mostly they seem to be Very judgemental (they certainly are in private)jaded and sick of the "clients " they work with .

Mind you they have days full of meetings that do little to help anyone and this seems to get one their nerves more than the real work .

[Xamonas Chegwé]

People that judge other people are just stupid - and they smell!



I take your point, Floppit. It is not easy to cope with people that fall through society's cracks and it certainly isn't easy to view them without prejudgment. I can't say that I have made any friends from among the groups that you mention but I did have two friends that became challenging.

One, a friend from the age of 16, gradually, over many decades, evolved into a serial stalker, a racist and a devious, though woefully inept, manipulator. Him, I finally had enough of. I point-blank refused to stand for any more of his bullshit and finally, when I called him on a racist remark, he threatened to glass me in a pub and stomped off out of my life. I have only met him once since then and he studiously avoided me. I don't miss him - but I do regret the years that I stood by him, standing up for him and trying to get him to see the folly of his behaviour. Eventually though, I had to admit, as you say, that I couldn't help him and couldn't cope with him.

The second was a chap that I met at college in the 90s. He was a great bloke and we had a lot in common - shared interests in maths and beer mainly! A few years after I first met him, he had a mid-life crisis and a breakdown. He locked himself in his flat, drank whatever booze and smoked whatever weed he could get his hands on, paid no bills, stopped shaving, washing, eating properly, answering his phone, etc. He was clinically depressed and in very real danger of drinking himself to death. Him, I stood by. I helped him as much as I could - visiting him, lending him money when he was desperate to keep his gas connected, doing everything I could to bring him back to his old self. After a few years, he pretty much managed it and is once again able to go out for a few beers without having to buy a bottle of whiskey on the way home and turning it into a week-long binge. He also looks after his appearance and his finances responsibly again. Sadly, his physical health is going through the mill now. C'est la vie.

[FBM]

I'm not sure how much I have to say fits in with the OP. I used to believe strongly in concepts and values like UPR (though I've never heard of that one in particular), unconditional love and whatnot.

Over the years and decades, I've been fucked over by family and friends so callously, casually and often that I finally identified the problem thus: My idealistic belief in unconditional love, untrammeled loyalty, etc, made me an easy mark for all those around me who were looking for someone to feed upon. I was willing to give, keep giving and endure abuse to ridiculous levels. On the day that I identified the problem as such, I started dropping 'friends'.

Now, I can drop a 'friend' in a heartbeat if s/he exhibits selfish, manipulative behavior towards me. Screw unconditional love, UPR and such idealistic, romantic whatnot. If the sentiment is not reciprocated, fuck 'em. Every relationship I have is contingent upon the other person not trying to use me in a covert, underhanded manner. I don't treat others like that, and will not consent to being treated like that. Screw hyperbolic, emotion-laden ideals; this is the real world, inhabited by real people, many of whom would gladly send your soul to eternal torture for your spot in the checkout line. Of course, there are also those who deal with others in a genuine manner. When I meet that type of person, we do become friends.

[floppit]

I'm not trying to suggest that good decisions can't be made, or even that UPR should be the default setting (if ever). UPR as an ideal seems to make some sense if a person is attempting to form a bond which in and of itself will help another person, but beyond that - I don't know.

What I'm saying is that we as human beings don't appear to be that good at judgement, but we all do it. It seems a bit like the placebo effect, confirmation bias and the power of advertising - always someone else less accurate.

The part that has hacked me off for many years isn't that people in general aren't the world's best at judging, or even that we tend to be a little over confident in our ability (or maybe a lot!), it's the strength of the certainty, it's how each and every group I've watched discuss UPR honestly, hand on heart believes, they would only struggle with 'bad' people. BUT more than that, it's the lecturers, the teachers, the course runners, staff development consultants blah blah blah see this day in day out and NO-ONE, NOBODY starts the whole thing from scratch in real terms.

I think UPR might be a crock of cack, or might be brilliant but until lousy human judgement isn't an out there thing but an in here thing I truly doubt there's a snowball in hells chance of figuring it out.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

My ex-wife was a Rogerian counsellor.....'nuff said.

[floppit]

What follows is utterly baseless opinion - well, at least not based on much beyond what I think!

A bit of Roger's thrown in to think about I reckon is a good thing but 'pure' Rogerian counsellors are batshit bonkers! His theories of self actualisation, especially in reference to teaching get a bit wibblish - we are not pea plants!

"Pea plants..." said the counsellor.

I said we are NOT pea plants!

"Not pea plants...different to pea plants..." said the counsellor.

*silence*

[Cunt]

I have never heard of this UPR thing, but I try to use something like it when meeting someone new, until they earn something different (which is where I DON'T keep the 'U' part)

do carry on...


EDIT because apparently I can't spell with my mobile

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I had "unconditional" burned out of me in the '60s.

[Ronja]

floppit, I'm really glad I happened over this thread. A subject worth thinking about also in the long run, this is.

What you write about sounds quite familiar. The not-very-hidden demand for UPR as one's "basic professional attitude", which I was subjected to during nursing school, might explain why I often feel some self-blame about how I choose my PhD candidate clients today. It's as if a part of me has been conditioned to think that I *should* be equally willing to work with anyone and with a thesis about any topic. But this is simply not true in reality.

I use negotiations and presenting my skills in the beginning (in practice from the first emails/telephone calls to at most two meetings, which I do not bill for) very much to assess whether the candidate is a person I am going to like working with. To be rewarding for me to work with, a candidate needs to seem likely to learn and willing and able to do their part of the work, because I do not edit a client's thesis - I only comment (proofreader's marks etc. on paper), teach and guide, to be sure to stay on the right side of the the rules of authorship etc. in academia.

Then, based partly on the client's ability to pay (e.g. is their lab or project going to cough up a part of my bill or do they have to pay everything from their own purse) and very much based on whether the thesis topic is interesting for me personally and how easy the candidate appears to be to work with, and majorly depending on how good the language is in the version I am starting my work with, I make my offer. I have once intentionally made a quite high offer, to make sure that if the client accepted it, I would not grumble to myself (too much) about taking the project. The client did not call back, and I was actually relieved. The project would have been deadly boring for me (the topic was from an area of almost anti-interest for me). Another time I again gave a quite low price to a friend, whose research I had been discussing with her for three years on and off, so I knew the topic pretty well (and it was very interesting to me personally) - besides, she had to pay it all herself, so my offer divided the payments over almost a year. The gross difference between these two projects (the "lost" one and the friend's) was over twofold.

Also after writing down all the above and thinking about this for a while I feel like I *should* feel bad because I evaluate potential thesis clients like this. Like I am not supposed to do that. Or at least, if I am willing to cut a friend with an interesting topic and a tight budget some slack, I somehow *should* cut that slack for *everybody*. And weirdly enough - I do not feel *any* bad conscience when I evaluate a potential translation project for an offer. There the quality of language of the original, customer long-term value (big organization is good), reference value (e.g. free Internet publication of my work deserves a discount), and my personal interest play an important role, and also the contact person (easy to work with, communicative, and known to be on time are factors that lower the price I ask for).

I'll likely keep myself occupied for quite a while trying to figure out why UPR raises its unrealistic head when I am evaluating one type of project and not with the other. Any guesses, anyone?

[Feck]

I have more appointments with OT and shrinks soon ..shall we see how much UPR I get ?

[Girlysprite]

I get the UPR bit within the professional environment. I think most of us can agree that unconditional positive regard is a really bad idea on a personal level. Some people are better out of your life then in. Also, personal relationships rely on balance. When someone is only 'taking' and the other one only giving, that is not a good relationship and it should be ended.

Now, why do such professionals not have a load of 'awkward' friends? They should be the ones who should be able to understand such people. I think the reasons are as follow:
1: Don't take clients as friends. It's a simple professional truth, and I think it's a good one. You can like clients (that's really good if you do), but don't mix work with your private life, especially if your work consist of people with trouble.
2: People meet their new friends in the social circle they move in. Most people have social circles which consist of more people like them. My husband is a consultant and likes gaming. His social circle consists of other consultants and gamers. Not because he doesn't like 'socially handicapped' people, he just doesn't meet them.
3: You can't become friends with anyone. Actually, we only become friends with very few people. It's like falling in love, if there is no click, there is no friendship. I have run into people with social issues before, and also mentally handicapped people. I have no trouble being nice to them, but I don't feel like I want to be friends with most of them. There is no click. We have little to nothing in common.

Even socially handicapped people are responsible for obtaining and maintaining their own social circle. Yes, some people will end up with very few friends because of this, as they are introverts or generally 'odd'. But that's a sad fact of life. However, I do agree on the following social rules:
1: Be nice to people, even if they are odd at first glance.
2: Be nice to people, even if you don't like them.
3: You can stop being nice when people cross your boundaries and/or hurt you.

[Cunt]

1: Don't take clients as friends. It's a simple professional truth, and I think it's a good one. You can like clients (that's really good if you do), but don't mix work with your private life, especially if your work consist of people with trouble.

I am beginning to disagree quite strongly with this 'simple truth'. I have been told many times that this is the best way to operate (I work in a helping field) and I think it causes more problems than it solves.

Most everyone I know who has been helped, were helped most by people who cared and were personally involved with them.

Also, I think it's a bit insane. Detach your personal feelings from your involvement with people until 5:00pm, then switch them back on? Really? Does anyone do this?

I don't have too many friends from among my clients, but a couple of friends have become clients. This was a hell of a compliment to me, but should I stop caring deeply about someone because they present in my office instead of my kitchen?

I think they tell nurses to keep a 'professional distance', but honestly, when I go to my friend for help (who happens to be an RN), I expect to be treated caringly - AND professionally. If I didn't want personal help, I would walk into a clinic where I didn't know anyone.

[Girlysprite]

Cunt, with a username like that it sounds as if I disrespect you

Anyways - I think you misunderstood my point there. You see, it is possible for a professional to really care about people he helps, and be affected when something happens to them (either positive or negative). But think twice before you'll invite them to personal events, like birthday parties, your wedding, or barhopping.

My sister's therapist was gold; she really cared, and really helped. She could really understand my sister and managed to break down that wall that stopped many other therapists. But in the end, even though she cared greatly, she was a therapist, not a friend. When my sister passed away, she visited the funeral, she cried, she was upset. So yes, she really did care.