Rogers conditional and unconditional positive regards

Unconditional Positive Regard: According to Carl Rogers, unconditional positive regard is when one person is completely accepting toward another person. This is not just a show of acceptance, but is an attitude that is then demonstrated through behaviour. Rogers indicated that for humanistic type of therapy to work, the therapist had to have this for the client

I think my parents showed my unconditional positive regard when I was a baby but as I grew older I stopped feeling like they loved me. I believe that they do they just don't know how to express that, they do not demonstrate their love and acceptance through their behaviour. I have a need to be loved yet because I don't feel that from my parents I feel deprived. I get jealous of other people's relationship with their parents, wanting to have that realtionship with mine.

Getting positive regard on "on conditions". Rogers calls conditional positive regard. Because we do indeed need positive regard, these conditions are very powerful, and we bend ourselves into a shape determined, not by our organismic valuing or our actualizing tendency, but by a society that may or may not truly have our best interests at heart. A "good little boy or girl" may not be a healthy or happy boy or girl!
Over time, this "conditioning" leads us to have conditional positive self-regard as well. We begin to like ourselves only if we meet up with the standards others have applied to us, rather than if we are truly actualizing our potentials. And since these standards were created without keeping each individual in mind, more often than not we find ourselves unable to meet them, and therefore unable to maintain any sense of self-esteem.

I think the was I think has been determined by the fact that a lot of the time I was given conditional positive regard not unconditional positive regard. I wasn't always rewarded for being good but I was always punished for doing something wrong. I often feel like I can't meet the standards that other people have told me I should meet and that makes me feel like a failure in a lot of ways.

Bibliography

"The psychology students best friend." Alleydog.com. 6 Apr 2008 http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.cfm?term=Unconditional%20Positive%20Regard.

Boeree, George. "Carl Rogers." 5 Apr 2008 http://www.crystalinks.com/rogers.html.