It’s been a tough week.
A week of study and learning.
My own MSc reading.
Supporting others with theirs.
Noticing how theory is learned… & then how it translates into real lives.
Later in the week, I read case studies, medical & session notes from across clinical professions — GPs, counsellors, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, students, to consultants.
I felt sadness.
Not because theory was absent — it wasn’t.
Carl Rogers was cited.
The person-centred approach was named.
The language of practice was present.
But something essential was often missing.
When all that is seen is behaviour & “presenting problems”, the human beneath can remain unseen & unheard.
Across different disciplines, I noticed patterns — adaptations being labelled, survival responses being pathologised, & meaning being assigned without fully understanding the lived experience beneath the behaviour.
I read how ambition in someone living in very difficult circumstances was described as delusional — even grandiose.
And I wondered… when did hope become pathology?
From a lived-experience & trauma-informed perspective, I see something different.
I see survival.
I see adaptation.
I see nervous systems shaped by what has happened, not who someone is.
As trauma research continues to show — including the work of Bessel van der Kolk — behaviour often reflects stored experience, not personal defect.
And I return, again and again, to Rogers’ core conditions:
• Congruence
• Unconditional Positive Regard
• Empathic Understanding
These are not simply concepts to reference.
They are ways of being with another human.
If we truly hold unconditional positive regard, we do not reduce a person to their current circumstances.
If we practice empathic understanding, we ask:
What has happened to you?
Not:
What is wrong with you?
Neuroplasticity tells us change is possible.
Trauma recovery research tells us safety, hope, & relational presence support healing.
Hope is not delusion — it is often the first sign that someone still believes life could be different.
It’s been a tough week for humanity.
And especially for victims & survivors of abuse.
Because when a survivor dares to imagine a different future & that hope is reframed as pathology, we risk repeating the silencing they have already lived through.
We can do better.
In our teaching.
In our supervision.
In our practice.
We must teach students & practitioners not only to recognise problems — but to see people.
To look beneath behaviour.
To understand adaptation.
To honour hope.
To remember that sometimes what appears “grandiose” is simply a human being who has survived — and still dares to dream.
The human must always come before the label.
Always.