C.R. Rogers. "Be Who You Really Are." The Therapist's Perspective On Human Goals

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Man is just a drop …

but how arrogant!

L. Wei.

Away from the facades

At first, I observe that the client has a tendency with uncertainty and fear to move away from the self, which he really is not. In other words, although he may not be aware of where he is going, he leaves something, starting to define what he is, at least in the form of negation.

At first, it can be expressed simply in the fear of appearing in front of others for who you are. For example, one 18-year-old boy says, “I know I'm not that bad and I’m afraid it will be discovered. That’s why I do this … Someday they will find that I am not that bad. the day came as late as possible … If you know me as I know myself … (Pause.) I'm not going to tell you what I really think about what kind of person I am. … If you find out what I think of myself, it will not help your opinion of me."

It is clear that expressing this fear is part of becoming oneself. Instead of just being a facade, as if the facade is itself, it comes closer to being itself, namely, that it is scared and hides behind a mask because it considers itself too terrible to be seen by others.

Away from the "must"

Another tendency of this kind seems obvious when the client moves away from the subordinate image of who he "should be". Some individuals, with the "help" of their parents, have so deeply absorbed the concept of "I should be good" or "I should be good" that it is only due to a huge internal struggle that they leave this goal. Thus, one young woman, describing her unsatisfactory relationship with her father, first recounts how she longed for his love: “I think that of all the feelings associated with my father, I actually had a great desire to have a good relationship with him …

I so wanted him to take care of me, but it seems that I did not get what I wanted. "She always felt that she had to fulfill all his requirements and justify his hopes, and that was" too much. " as soon as I do one thing, another appears, and a third, and a fourth, and so on - and in fact I never do them. These are endless demands. "She feels like her mother, who was submissive and obsequious, always trying to satisfy his demands." But in fact, I did not want to be like that. I think there is nothing good in this, but nevertheless, I think I had the idea that this is what you need to be if you want to be loved and have a high opinion of you. But who would want to love such an expressionless person? "The consultant replied:" Who really will love the rug at the front door, about which they wipe their feet? "She continued:" At least I would not like to be liked by a person who would doors ".

Thus, although these words do not say anything about her "I" to which she may be moving, fatigue and contempt in her voice, her statement makes it clear to us that she is leaving the "I", which should be good, which should be submissive.

Curiously enough, many individuals find that they have been forced to consider themselves bad, and it is from this self-image, in their opinion, that they leave. This movement is very clearly seen in one young man: “I don’t know where I got this idea that being ashamed of myself means feeling the right way. I should have been ashamed of myself … There was a world where being ashamed of myself was the best way to feel yourself … If you are someone who is very disapproved, then, in my opinion, the only way to have any self-respect is to be ashamed of what is disapproved of in you …

But now I firmly refuse to do anything from the old point of view … As if I am convinced that someone said: "You must live ashamed of yourself - so be it!" And for a long time I agreed with this and said: "Yes, it's me!" And now I rebel against this someone and say, "I don't care what you say. I'm not going to be ashamed of myself." It is obvious that he is moving away from the idea of himself as something shameful and bad.

Away from meeting expectations

Many clients find themselves straying from meeting the culture's ideal. As White convincingly argued in his recent work, there is tremendous pressure on the individual to acquire the qualities of an "organizational person." That is, a person should be a full-fledged member of a group, subordinating his individuality to group needs, he should get rid of "sharp corners", learning to get along with the same people without "sharp corners".

In a recently completed study of the values of American students, Jacob summarizes his findings: “The main impact of higher education on student values is to ensure that the standards and qualities of American college graduates are generally accepted. polishing and shaping his values so that he can safely join the ranks of American college graduates."

Away from pleasing others

I find that many people shaped themselves by trying to please others, but once again becoming free, they moved away from their previous state. So, towards the end of the course of psychotherapy, one specialist writes, looking back at the process he went through: “Finally, I felt that I just had to start doing what I wanted to do, and not what I thought I should do, and not depending on what other people thought I should do. It completely changed my whole life. I always felt that I had to do something because it was expected of me or because it could make people love me. To hell with it! From now on, I think that I will only be myself - poor or rich, good or bad, rational or irrational, logical or illogical, known or unknown. Therefore, thank you for helping me to rediscover Shakespeare's: "Be true to yourself."

To control your life and behavior

But what positive qualities is experience associated with? I will try to describe the many directions in which they [clients] are moving.

First of all, these clients are moving towards being independent. By this I mean that gradually the client is getting closer to the goals that he wants to go. He begins to take responsibility for his actions. He decides which actions and behaviors are meaningful to him and which are not. I think that this drive for self-leadership is amply demonstrated in the earlier examples.

I would not want to create the impression that my clients were moving in this direction with confidence and joy. Of course not. The freedom to be yourself is freedom with a frightening responsibility, and a person moves towards it carefully, with fear, at first without any self-confidence.

And also I would not want to give the impression that a person always makes a wise choice. Responsible self-management means choosing and then learning from the consequences of your choice. Therefore, clients find this experience not only sobering but also exciting. As one client said: "I feel scared, vulnerable, cut off from any help, but I also feel that some kind of power, strength rises in me." This is a common reaction that occurs when a client takes control of his life and behavior.

Movement towards the process

The second observation is difficult to express because it is not easy to find suitable words to describe it. Clients seem to be moving towards making their being a process, fluidity, changeability more openly. They are not bothered if they find themselves changing every day, that they have different feelings about an experience or person; they are more satisfied with their stay in this current flow. The desire for completions and final states seems to disappear.

I cannot help remembering how Kierkegaard describes an individual who really exists: "An existing person is constantly. In the process of becoming … and his thinking operates in the language of the process … With [him] … it is like a writer with his style, since there is a style only for the one who has nothing frozen, but who "moves the waters of the tongue" every time he begins to write; so that the most common expression has for him the freshness of a newly born. " I think that these lines perfectly capture the direction in which customers are moving - more likely to be a process of nascent opportunities than to become some kind of frozen goal.

To the complexity of being

This is also due to the complexity of the process. Perhaps an example will help here. One of our counselors, who has been very helpful with psychotherapy, recently came to me to discuss his relationship with a very difficult client with a mental disorder. What interested me was that he only very little wanted to discuss the client. Most of all, he wanted to be sure that he was clearly aware of the complexity of his own feelings in the relationship with the client - his warm feelings for him, periodic frustration and irritation, his sympathetic attitude towards the client's well-being, some fear that the client might become psychopathic, his anxiety what others will think if things don't turn out well. I realized that, in general, his attitude was such that if he could be completely open and clear about all his complex, changing and sometimes conflicting feelings in the relationship with the client, then everything would be fine.

If, however, he was only partly showing these feelings, and partly a facade or defensive reaction, then he was sure that there would be no good relationship with the client. I find that this desire to be completely everything at the moment - all the wealth and complexity, not to hide anything from oneself and not to be afraid in oneself - is a common desire of those therapists who, it seems to me, have a lot of progress in psychotherapy. Needless to say, this is a difficult and unattainable goal. However, one of the clearest tendencies seen in clients is the movement to become the entire complexity of their changing self at every significant moment.

Openness to experience

“Being who you really are” is associated with other qualities. One, which may already have been implied, is that the individual moves towards an open, friendly, close relationship with his own experience. It can be difficult. Often, as soon as the client feels something new in himself, he initially rejects it. Only if he experiences this previously rejected side of himself in an atmosphere of acceptance, can he first accept it as a part of himself. As one client said, shocked after experiencing himself as an "addicted little boy": "It's a feeling I've never clearly felt before - I've never been like this!" He cannot bear this experience of his childhood feelings. But gradually he begins to accept and include them as part of his "I", that is, he begins to live next to the feelings and in them when he experiences them.

Gradually, clients will learn that the experience is a friend, not a terrible enemy. So, I remember, one client at the end of the course of psychotherapy, pondering a question, usually grabbed his head and said: "What do I feel now? I want to be closer to this. I want to know what it is." Then he usually calmly and patiently waited until he could clearly taste the feelings he had. I often understand that the client is trying to listen to himself, to hear what is transmitted by his own physiological reactions, to grasp their meaning. He is no longer afraid of his discoveries. He begins to understand that his internal reactions and experiences, the messages of his feelings and internal organs, are friendly. He already wants to be closer to the internal sources of information, rather than close them.

Maslow, in his study of the so-called self-actualizing person, notes the same quality. Discussing such people, he says: "Their easy entry into real feelings, similar to the acceptance that exists in animals or in a child, their immediacy, implies an important awareness of their own impulses, desires, views and in general all subjective reactions."

This greater openness to what is happening on the inside is associated with a similar openness in relation to the experience received from the outside world. Maslow seems to be talking about my clients when he writes: “Self-actualized people have a wonderful ability to relive the core values of life over and over again freshly and directly with a sense of awe, pleasure, surprise, and even ecstasy, despite the fact that for other people in in these cases, feelings have long since lost their freshness."

To the acceptance of others

Openness to internal and external experience is mostly closely related to openness and acceptance of other people. Once the client begins to move towards being able to accept their own experiences. he also begins to move towards accepting other people's experiences. He values and accepts his experience and the experience of others as he is. To quote again Maslow's words about self-actualizing individuals: “We do not complain about the water because it is wet, and the rocks because they are hard … Like a child looks at the world without criticism with wide and innocent eyes, just noticing and observing, what is the state of affairs, without objecting or demanding that it be different, in the same way a self-actualizing person looks at the nature of man in himself and others. I think that this accepting attitude towards everything that exists develops in clients in the course of psychotherapy.

To faith in your "I"

The next quality that I see in every client is that he increasingly appreciates and trusts the process that he is. By observing my clients, I have become much better at understanding creative people. El Greco, looking at one of his early works, must have realized that "good artists don't write like that." But he trusted enough in his own experience of life, the process of his feeling, to be able to continue to express his own unique perception of the world. Perhaps he could have said, "Good artists don't write like that, but I write like that." Or take an example from another area. Ernest Hemingway, of course, realized that "good writers don't write like that." Einstein, too, seems to have been unusually oblivious to the fact that good physicists do not think the way he does. Instead of leaving science due to insufficient education in the field of physics, he simply strove to become Einstein, to think in his own way, to be himself as deeply and sincerely as possible. This phenomenon took place not only among artists or geniuses. More than once I have observed how my clients, ordinary people, became more significant and creative in their activities as they more and more believed in the processes taking place within them, and dared to feel their own feelings, live by the values that they discovered in themselves. as well as expressing yourself in your own, unique way.