"Unconditional Positive Regard" for Ourselves

Thoughts on a Carl Rogers Idea

I have a particular weakness for lox. Most people are content to eat a little on a bagel with cream cheese. You can buy it in the grocery store ribbed to a bronze sheet of cardboard and vacuum sealed in plastic – in the case of my favorite, Nova lox, it’s been cured in brine with herbs and cold smoked. If I spot some, I turn part bear, and can tear through a $19 package in one sitting. On one particularly horrific recent occasion I found myself decimating a heap of lox at someone else’s house. It wasn’t until after the salmon was down my gullet that I looked up and realized what I was doing. Seriously? I felt embarrassment, and remorse.

Now here’s the thing: while remorse may be an appropriate response, if I want to stand a chance of changing this habit, negative self-talk is not going to help. Whenever we’re after a transformative result, it is crucial that we start with unconditional positive regard for ourselves. Anything else just doesn’t get results.

Humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers started writing about the importance of unconditional positive regard in client-centered therapeutic practice, in the mid 1950’s. Though the phrase was first introduced by Stanley Standal, Rogers brought it into popularity, defining a cornerstone of the humanistic psychology movement, setting it apart from other psychology schools of the time.

Our world has developed in wild and wonderful ways since the mid-1950’s but this contribution from humanistic psychology is just as relevant today as it was back then.

“We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

So back to me and the lox… if I want to change that pattern, that behavior, that ongoing experience, I have to start with unconditional positive regard, for myself.

While it has become popular to talk about ‘self-love,’ I like ‘unconditional positive regard’ for its specificity. It’s a mini instruction manual inside a phrase. I know that if I want to conquer my indiscriminate smashing of the squishy ‘n salty orange-pink fish, I have to first unconditionally accept myself, with positivity and warmth, knowing I am a work in progress, not perfect, and regard this part of me with her tendency to pound the lox, as a whole system with a story to tell, a world to discover, secrets to share. I may become changed by what she (this part of me) shows me.

Entering into this kind of relationship with all the different parts of myself, I engage in the process of becoming more of who I truly am. If I try to approach my transformation strictly behaviorally, (set up rewards and punishments for inhaling fish,) then I have reduced this living, breathing, fluid system to a machine that will respond to inputs. But there is wisdom in allowing each part of myself to inform me… wisdom I don’t want to forego.

At the beginning of the new year when many of us try to change habits, we might find ourselves wading through a morass of glum, negative self-talk posing as remorse. Though it might get you to the gym a few times, that negative self-talk won’t work longterm. For lasting results, you’ll have to find your way into unconditional positive regard for yourself.

Good habits are very important, of course, to our overall health and happiness. Having unconditional positive regard does not let us off the hook from change. In fact, through adopting this kind of stance with ourselves we come to understand a foundational truth about living:

“To be what one is, is to enter fully into being a process. …
When I am thus able to be in process, it is clear that there can be no closed system of beliefs, no unchanging set of principles which I hold. Life is guided by a changing understanding of and interpretation of my experience. It is always in process of becoming.”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

The goal of evolution is not to become perfect. The goal of evolution is to continually discover more and more of who we truly are. Evolution is a process. And so are we.

Just, if I visit you in your home, you might want to hide the lox.