Person Centered Counsellor Training

What Does It Really Mean to Be a Person-Centered Counsellor?

When I scroll through counsellor profiles on Psychology Today, I notice that countless practitioners describe themselves as “person-centered.” But what does that actually mean? And more importantly—how does someone become a person-centered counsellor?

After seeing hundreds of people make this claim, I got curious. I searched for Canadian training programs in Person-Centered Counselling and, to my surprise, found virtually nothing.

Here’s the reality: in most provinces across Canada, anyone can call themselves a counsellor or psychotherapist—even without a single hour of formal training. That’s why it’s so important to check the credentials of any counsellor you’re considering working with. By contrast, the UK takes a very different approach. Terms like “person-centered counsellor” are protected there, and professionals have to prove they’ve had the training and supervision to earn that title.

In Canada, before we can talk about protecting specialized titles like “person-centered counsellor,” we first need to protect the broader professional titles of “counsellor” and “psychotherapist.”

A Legacy Without a Roadmap

Person-Centered Counselling was developed by Carl Rogers. Unfortunately, Rogers never left us with a clear training pathway for becoming a person-centered counsellor. What we do know, however, is that his approach is considered one of the most challenging to truly master—even for those who have completed training.

Rogers outlined what he called the “necessary and sufficient conditions for constructive personality change”:

Two persons are in psychological contact.
The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable and anxious.
The second person, whom we shall term the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the relationship.
The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.
The therapist experiences an empathetic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and endeavours to communicate this experience to the client.
The communication to the client of the therapist’s empathetic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved.

More Than Just Words

On paper, these conditions sound simple enough. But for person-centered counsellors, the depth of each idea—“psychological contact,” “unconditional positive regard,” “empathy”—goes far beyond nodding in agreement with them.

I can hardly imagine a good counsellor who wouldn’t believe in these principles. Yet belief alone isn’t the point. The real challenge lies in embodying them. It’s like when a partner says, “I don’t want you to tell me that you love me. I want you to show me that you love me.”

In the same way, unconditional positive regard and empathy must be shown and experienced—not just talked about. And the best way for counsellors to grasp this depth is often through their own personal counselling and clinical supervision. Without proper training—or trained supervisors in person-centered work—how can a counsellor truly know what these concepts mean?

Where I Stand

My own background is in existential therapy, which often overlaps with person-centered ideas. For clarity’s sake, I usually describe myself as person-centered because most people do not know what existential therapy is and it can be a confusing term for clients. After all, if pages upon pages of counsellors in Canada are claiming that title, I feel comfortable identifying with it too—while also recognizing the importance of deep training and lived experience in making it more than just a label. I also see that counsellors say they are an existential therapist but when I speak with them, I only find out that they read a book on existential therapy when I know that there needs to be much more of an experience to understand what that means. Through my 15 years of training, clinical supervision and experience, I am truly an existential therapist.