In the Counseling and Helping Relationships core area, CACREP emphasizes the importance of Rogers’ core conditions: empathy, genuineness (congruence), and unconditional positive regard.

Unconditional positive regard is the counselor’s nonjudgmental acceptance of the client as a person, without placing conditions on their worth or requiring them to think, feel, or behave in specific ways in order to be accepted.

In this scenario, the counselor continues to work with the client without insisting that they confess, change their choice, or think differently, which directly reflects unconditional positive regard.

Empathy (B) is understanding and feeling with the client; congruence (C) is the counselor being genuine; fidelity (D) is about loyalty and keeping commitments as an ethical principle. The description most clearly matches A. Unconditional positive regard.