I see step 5 as a very loving step and the significance of this goes back to our emotional diet and how we feed off “the stuff of life” that is affectionate , considerate and caring.  All human beings search for “unconditional positive regard”  This is a terms Carl Rogers used when talking about what we feed off to reach a point of self actualisation.  In simple terms we look to be accepted unconditionally and therefore this is loving in itself.  The trusted person who offers their “listening” to us while we share is offering this unconditional positive regard.  They are not saying the behaviours are okay but they are not judging, they are listening to us.  This process goes so deep to our early development and the need for “attunement”. Right back in time and our early experiences of facial expressions of caregivers as infants we had the instinct to see if the parent figure “got” what we needed or did.  This is a powerful process that relates to “mirroring” and “empathic Responsiveness”.  D Stern wrote about these in his book called The Interpersonal World of the Infant”.  that the “sharing of affective states is the most pervasive and clinically germaine feature of intersubjective relatedness”.  This in simple terms means to  be instinctually  part of and give understanding to another’s experience.  Ones subjective phenomena that are experienced connects in a similar fashion by others than oneself.  Stern also wrote about “hope” being an important part of development.    “The hope is that the earliest deviation in social and intellectual functioning” and this is formed by the related processes we are involved in when young.  The significance of this step is that it offers the power of being attuned to and accepted which is a loving gift.  Therefore it has the capacity to be restorative and attend to our inner child needs.  We did not come into the world and survive in isolation and we cannot therefore do this as adults.  This is because we carry our inner child with us throughout our lives.  It has no chronological age which is a cut off.  Therefore our basic primal needs can be similar as adults but in a different format.  If we feed the needs we had back then we have less chance of turning to dysfunctional process.