EMPATHY is a CORE CONDITION that involves the counsellor striving to understand what it's like for the client to experience their reality from moment to moment. The clients internal world is unique and subjective and the internal cognitive landscape that is the focus of the EMPATHIC work is known as the clients FRAME OF REFERENCE. The counsellor is able to surmise the client's experiencing not simply through their words but through the communication of their whole physicality, which can include aspects like vocal tonality, volume and pacing, facial expression, affect, body movements and posture.

UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD (UPR) is the second CORE CONDITION and entails the counsellor accepting the client as a unique and valuable individual regardless of their presentation, dysfunction, behaviour, affiliations or history. This counsellors valuing of the client is transmitted in the ways that they behave in the relationship, giving the client the time and space to direct their journey, being attentive and listening carefully to their articulations and striving to make them feel safe to express their deepest thoughts and feelings without being judged, redirected, edited or devalued. 

CONGRUENCE is the third CORE CONDITION and involves the counsellor being genuine within the therapeutic relationship. Having the ability to be genuine and authentic when practising UPR and EMPATHY involves the counsellor developing a deep and responsive awareness of their own process and an understanding of where they could be influenced by their own conditions of worth and biases so that if they are negatively triggered in response to a client, they have an understanding of the potential roots of it, and if not, at least a capacity to be aware of and control their uncomfortable and potentially misappropriated feelings. Counsellor's also need to foster the wisdom to balance their congruence with the needs of the client, which for instance involves being careful not to monopolize the session to explore their own authentic responses to the client and thereby stifle the client's connection with their own FRAME OF REFERENCE.