It dawned on me recently that I am trying too hard to be perfect. It really shouldn't have dawned on me recently because this is no new behavior for me. For whatever reason, or likely reasons, I bust my butt trying to be perfect.
Recently I have been brushing up on person-centered therapy. I overlooked this theory initially when learning different counseling approaches, thinking like many other therapists, I would settle for cognitive behavioral psych or even rational emotive behavioral therapy. Reflecting on the basic assumptions of person- centered theory, I was struck at just how accurate many of them are to me.
For those unfamiliar, the basic premise of person-centered therapy is congruence vs. incongruence. Simply put, the incongruent self, which is sadly most people, tries too hard to satisfy others' expectations and social norms rather than being true to their own capabilities and accepting themselves and their lives as they are. This creates a cognitive and emotional dissonance which leads to basically most psychological and many physiological conditions. The congruent self, the end goal of person-centered therapy, has shed the expectations of society and others as a means of dictating their worth, instead learning to appreciate themselves as unique and special as whom they are.
In the trauma counseling that I am currently doing, I often look at it this way:
A client comes into my office having survived a trauma. They have all types of feelings of guilt, shame, worthlessness, etc. In a way, these feelings have prevented them from incorporating the trauma experience into their life story. Rather than accept the painful feelings and memories to normalize and stabilize what they went through, they shut them out preventing healing which precipitates the negative feelings over and again. It is too painful to accept that it has happened; therefore I will not accept it and thus continue to relive it. The rejection or suppression of the experience is keeping them from realizing congruence and leading to a slew of problems magnifying perfectly normal reactions of shame, guilt, etc following such an incident.
I might tell them that everyone has a life story and knowing yourself depends on knowing your story. For traumatized people, however, their story was hijacked. Someone else took control, took power, and took their story. Going back and taking control of that experience as the author of their story plays a crucial step in the survival chapter. Ignoring the hijacked part of the story is essentially leaving it out and crumbling the present and future chapters with incongruence. If you ignore where the pain comes from, it won't just go away. You have to accept the experience for what it was and allow it to become a part of your story in order to truly heal and become congruent.
Today I had a new client come in to my office. Maybe it was because it was my first day in a new office, maybe this office has a better vibe, or maybe after taking a break, something settled or clicked in my brain. However, unlike many sessions where I feel a slight surge of panic as my client arrives, or that overwhelming feeling when someone has so many problems I don't know how I, a little graduate student, could POSSIBLY help them, I was calm. I was confident. Nothing was inherently different in this client than the others I have seen. The same age, cultural, and circumstantial barriers were there as well as the plethora of problems and complicated stories the client brought in.
Maybe it was something Mary Pipher said in one of her books. She talked about counseling as a conversation; to sit and visit. It was a relaxed exchange, an empathic listening and reflecting time for one human being to just be an objective ear for another human being.
That's what happened today. I was confident. I listened. Without feeling worried about being perfect or about what I was going to say all the time, I was true to myself. I had some moments of congruence. Oh what an amazing difference that made. Instead of being draining, I was energized after the session. I found new hope in myself as a counselor. I began to remember why I had decided to do this, whereas always trying to be so perfect, I had neglected the beauty of it all instead swamping myself with stress and worries.
Maybe I should give person-centered therapy another chance.
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