The non-negotiable foundation of the approach is built upon the central idea of the Actualising Tendency. At its simplest, it is the idea that inherent to life is a directional movement towards maintenance and growth. What can happen (but isn’t limited to) is that one may grow up in environments that are conditional, where we learn that to maintain connection, safety and positive regard, we must be a certain way, and over time this can lead us to deny or distort aspects of ourselves as we move towards whatever helps us maintain connection in these environments. Often, this comes at a great cost to our mental well-being.
Because of this, the approach calls upon the therapist to show up and embody a set of attributes, which are commonly referred to as the core conditions of acceptance and understanding; these should not be seen as tools but as deeply embodied aspects of the person who is the therapist, reflecting genuineness, the third core condition.
By doing this, we make room for and trust the client’s actualising tendency, their directional movement, and the client’s own inherent capacity to find their way forward. It makes the need to lead and direct the client, at least at the level of what they feel is important or meaningful (at a content level), not necessary.
What I have often observed as a consequence of this non-negotiable foundation is a movement away from the position of the “all-knowing authority figure.” The therapist shifts from the assumption that they know what the direction, content or substance of the client’s experience should be, and instead places greater trust in the client’s autonomy and their own internal capacity.
This means resisting the urge to wrestle with, correct or direct what the client finds important or meaningful. I may have my own understanding of what is happening, but that understanding does not need to become the client’s. The question becomes less about how I can get the client to see something, and more about whether I can remain alongside them closely enough for them to discover what their experience means for themselves.
In this sense, this approach involves the therapist getting out of the way. Not getting out of the relationship, but getting their own agenda, expertise and desire to produce an outcome out of the way. For many people, this may be an unfamiliar experience: to be met in a space that is safe, open, welcoming and accepting, without having to perform, defend or become something for someone else.
Within this space, there is room for the client’s own experiencing to become clearer and for their own directional movement to become central. This does not mean that no structure, methods or techniques can ever be used, particularly when working with children, adolescents or neurodivergent clients. Rather, these should remain subordinate to the relationship, the client’s experience and their actualising tendency, rather than becoming a means through which the therapist directs the client towards a predetermined outcome.
I share this not because I have mastered this way of being. I often fall short. I become directive. I have assumptions. I try to help too quickly, and sometimes I lose contact with the client’s experience while trying to find the “right” or “correct” response.
But there are moments when something feels different. Moments when I come close to embodying this way of being, where I am not trying to make something happen and yet something happens anyway. There can be a kind of magic in these moments: the client seems to encounter something in themselves. Something shifts within the relationship, within their experiencing, and sometimes within both of us.
These moments are part of what keeps drawing me towards this approach. Not the belief that I can become a perfect therapist, but the possibility that, when I can genuinely meet another person without needing to determine who they should be or where they should go, something profoundly human can emerge between us.
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