The Safety To Hear Yourself Clearly

Therapist Allison talks about Person-Centered Therapies philosophy which highlights the belief that healing naturally unfolds when there's a safe environment. Give this audio permission to soften our tendency to fix and bring forth our faith and trust in the human capacity to heal. This is part two of a series.

Transcript

We're back with a little more about person-centered therapy, And today it's about how it can look deceptingly simple from the outside. A session may look like the client talking, The therapist reflecting, Slowing things down, Asking open-ended questions, Tracking emotions, Noticing patterns gently, Staying curious, Staying present, And all that sounds really standard, But internally, Something bigger is happening. The therapist is trying to deeply understand the client's internal world as the client experiences it, Not as the therapist interprets it. And the distinction matters, And I want to say right here that this approach, I thought, Isn't that what all therapists are doing? Isn't that what the whole therapeutic process is about? So I was really surprised to learn that every therapist isn't just doing this anyways. There's not always this, Okay, I'm the therapist and I'm trying to put myself literally inside the client's world and inside of their mind and imagine how they feel according to their experience, And I thought every therapist was laying down their own way of seeing things. So that was big for me. And even kind of thinking about this, I'm still taken aback of like, Oh my gosh, It's like the whole practice of therapy, Other therapists are analyzers, Sort of from this perspective of like expert and client or, You know, You think of like a doctor and a patient. It's kind of that vibe, And to me that feels very sterile. So listening to the verbiage to describe this approach, Which I have come to realize that's just to me always been a very intuitively clear way to healing, But it's given me the verbiage to really be able to think and talk about how healing is often less about being told who you are, Told what your problem is, Told how to heal, And more about finally having enough safety to hear yourself clearly. You know, Being in the presence with another being in your nervous system feels okay enough to work through whatever you're working through in a calm way. You know, There's so many of us, Especially neurodiverse individuals whose nervous system is just already in this heightened, Overstimulated state. So you're already in some sort of emotional pain. Then you bring another person in who you don't trust because why should you? That's kind of poking and prodding and saying, You know, Standing from their kind of pedestal and saying this is what's wrong with you when you know, When you've had this lived in experience of nobody ever really understands or very rarely does someone understand how I'm feeling. Very rarely can someone reflect back to me and sort of actually reflect back something where I can say, Oh yeah, That, No, That is, That, Yes, That's right. You know, With neurodiverse individuals, There's, With the exception of, You know, Neurodiverse like TikTok, Where now we're being very affirmed and we feel very seen and heard through ways like that. That's a newer thing that's not always been around. So, And it's different than having that person to person connection where we're, Where we're feeling very seen and heard and, And believed. Carl Rogers talked about how incongruence is the gap between the true self and the self we think we're supposed to be. Oof. Oof. Incongruence is the gap between the true self and the self we think we are supposed to be. And when we hear that, We might be like, Well, Kind of, Duh, Right? That's sort of the definition of the word incongruence. It's incongruent, But using that word to describe the specific phenomenon of how we see ourselves, It highlights a phenomenon that we often don't bring verbiage to. That people feel we, A lot of us people, You, Me, Humans, Ahem, Are trying to become who they think will be the person who will maybe finally earn love, Or people have this disconnection from their bodies, From their intuition. Maybe they have this disconnection, This incongruency with rest or truth. And so having this presence of another person who feels safe opens the door to people being able to come home to themselves, To come home to the congruency. We feel safe enough to just be that true self because the love, The unconditional positive regard is already there. It's not in me five percent better. It's not in me with a doctorate. It's not in me if I keep my mouth shut about something. It's not in me if I'm not crying. The love is there regardless of how I'm showing up, How I'm describing a problem. Another thing I deeply appreciate about this theory is it doesn't assume symptoms are random, And this isn't a major thing in the world of therapy theories. A lot of theories don't assume that, But it highlights how anxiety and hypervigilance, Perfectionism, Emotional shutdown, These are adaptations that we develop to help us get back to a sense of safety. And it makes sense they develop for a reason. When clients begin feeling emotionally safe enough, Sometimes the nervous system naturally begins softening because it no longer feels like it has to defend itself constantly. And that's another magic moment. When someone who has spent years performing strength suddenly lets themselves be seen honestly because they feel safe enough. Oh, That's a magic moment. When someone says, I've never said this out loud before. Beautiful moment. And it honestly shows up probably even more outside of the therapy room than someone might expect. Like I said, I got my first hints of this in the hour of countless yoga classes where the teacher is kind of repeating these very like purpose or person-centered aligned phrases of there's no judgment here, You're exactly where you need to be, You don't have to change anything. It's very yogic, It's very aligned with this more flowy, Mindfulness-based of compassion and non-judgment philosophy. When you sort of dive into that world outside of therapy and into the just normal life, It makes you start asking questions like, What would happen if more relationships were built on curiosity instead of control? Or what if people listened to understand instead of listening to correct? What would happen if we trusted that underneath many defenses is actually a human being trying very hard to survive? It's such a hopeful, Beautiful perspective on humans, One that I very much so believe deeply and keep coming back to over and over again throughout my life, Because humanity needs that kind of hope. Not naive hope, Not a pretending life is easy hope, But a hopeful sense that it believes people are capable of growth when they experience genuine connection. It's this power of genuine connection, And maybe life really is about connecting with each other, With our guards down. In a world that constantly asks people to perform and compete and prove and harden. It hardens me, Honestly. It hardens us. It hardens anyone who sees it and feels that energy of putting us against each other and putting us against ourselves. But knowing that that is very much a part of the world we live in, It makes this theory feel even more radically about healing through being deeply and authentically known by another person, And not needing to earn your place in the room, You're just there, You're seen, Nothing to prove. And that is energy this world certainly, Certainly needs, And I can say that's an energy I certainly, Certainly need. Thanks for listening, Friends. We'll catch you in the next one.