Hi all
Firstly, apologies for the length of this post, I hadn't intended it to be, I just had so much to say!
I have been chatting in a couple of forums and have mentioned a form of therapy (and in fact an entire philosophy on life, health, education, society and politics) that I have received over the last twenty years and that I am currently studying. It is called person-centred therapy and was originally developed by an American psychologist called Carl Rogers. He believed that we are all born with a innate drive to grow, develop and reach our full potential. He called this 'the actualising tendency'.
Rogers theorised that in an ideal environment a child's actualising tendency will work positively for the child's development and enable them to develop their personality in healthy and fulfilling ways. However, many of us do not receive such childhoods and instead we are subjected to our parents' (or caregivers) 'conditional regard' - we only receive love, attention, nurture, acceptance etc. if we do or say the things our parents want us to (e.g. 'Be a good boy and stop crying', 'Good girls don't get angry'). Our behaviour, thoughts and feelings become determined by these 'conditions of worth' and we grow into adulthood losing touch with who we truly are, living our lives for others, with a growing sense of dis-ease or discomfort which Rogers called 'incongruence' (a mis-match between what we think and believe about ourselves and the reality of the way we act or behave). Incongruence exhibits in any number of psychological imbalances such as anxiety and depression.
[Note. person-centred theory is based on a 'growthful model' of mental health and well-being i.e. that in the right conditions people will grow and develop towards their true potential, not on the 'medical model' based on a person's 'deficiency'.]
The good news is, he developed a form of therapy to redress this lack of 'congruence' between who we truly are and what we present to the outside world, in which the therapist aims to provide these missing early childhood conditions, in a therapeutic environment where the person is accepted without judgement and with genuineness and empathy. Person-centred therapists and practitioners aspire to embody these conditions as part of their 'way of being', rather than as a set of skills that are manipulated or used. Having one's own therapy is therefore an integral part of person-centred training and considered beneficial for the therapist's own self-care and personal development.
I have had such an incredible experience of this therapy over the last two decades that a couple of years I decided to start training as a person-centred therapist. It has been a very long, hard but immensely rewarding journey and I'm not quite there yet, but this is something I feel passionately about and want to share with the world. After interest was expressed in this I decided I would share it here.
Obviously I am sharing my own personal experiences here and want to be careful not to suggest that this is a panacea for all people and all mental health problems.
Anyway, here are a few links, over and above searching for Carl Rogers and 'person-centred therapy' (also sometimes know as 'client-centred therapy' because it places the client (us!) at the centre of our therapy and as being the expert in our own process and experience!):
Therapy, events and conferences obviously all cost money, but often due to the inclusive nature of the approach, therapists and organisers often offer fees on a sliding scale, bursaries to those who could not afford to pay full cost and payment plans to help spread the costs. Anyway, at least visiting the websites is free!
Wishing you all well on your journeys,
Phx