I’ve mentioned the benefits of meditation on this blog before, but now it appears that the folks at NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) have also recognised the benefits that mindfulness can have in combating stress and depression. If only there were enough people to teach the techniques!
Thankfully, a new self help site has been set up, which includes tips on mindfulness and how to reduce your stress levels, including a stress test which you can use as a rough measure of how stressed you may be feeling.
This new site was launched in January 2011 and can be found at:
Although this is a blog about self help, there are always times when we do need to look for others for help. For mental health, this often means counselling or therapy, a much misunderstood field. So I have decided to write a series of articles exploring different types of counselling and therapy, what they mean, how they work, and some of the pros and cons, together with some links to titles to read further about the different kinds of counselling.
First up, I decided to look at Person Centred, or Client Centred, therapy, from the humanistic school of thought. I am going with this first, because I have personally benefited from this type of counselling, and am indeed training to become a person-centred counsellor!
Person-centred counselling originated in the thinking of Carl Rogers, an eminent American psychologist. He believed that each individual human being had more knowledge and resources to promote their healing and growth than any therapist could ever have – so that the therapist’s job was to create conditions whereby the client could begin to explore and uncover these resources in themselves, rather than directly influence the client from a position of “expertise” or “greater knowledge”.
These conditions, often referred to as the “core conditions” for therapeutic change, are Congruence, Empathy, and Unconditional Positive Regard.
Congruence refers to a quality of “realness” or “genuiness” on the part of the therapist within the therapeutic relationship. In a world where people wear masks, the congruent therapist is not an actor, but a real person, someone who is self aware, has knowledge of their own person and individual issues, but who is not confused or anxious about being and expressing their true self as it is in that moment. In a world of facades, it is vital for the client to see the therapist as someone who will be true, who will be real, who will have the courage to honestly be and express who they are.
Empathy refers to the quality of the therapist being able to move around in the client’s frame of reference, to understand the client’s unique position and perspective. Not simply on a “I know how you feel” level, but by sharing the client’s feelings, by identifying what is going on for the client, by communicating this understanding to the client. Rogers considered it vital that this understanding was communicated to the client, so that the client knew they were being understood. This part of the therapeutic relationship is, like congruence, something that the client may rarely have experienced before.
Unconditional Positive Regard refers to the therapist’s ability to “prize” the client as a uniquely valuable person in their own right, without applying conditions of worth. Conditions of worth refer to the unfortunate tendency in society, and when growin up, to feel that one is only valuable when certain conditions are met. For example, “If I am a good boy, I have value; if get into a fight, I am bad and have less value.” or “If I like blue and everyone else likes red, I have less value than everyone else, because I am different.” or “If you are calm, that is more valuable than if you get angry.” In the therapeutic relationship, unconditional positive regard allows the client to start moving away from these conditions of worth, to start becoming a person in their own right, and stop being the person others want them to be. At some stage in the therapeutic process, they will learn that the therapist prizes them in spite of what they reveal about themselves, and this often leads to greater courage in expressing and exploring who they really are.
Combined, these conditions help the client to begin to trust themselves more, to move from a state of incongruence, towards congruence, and become more fully functioning.
Person-centred counselling is not without criticisms, one of which is that it might not be as effective for serious mental illness and is therefore a bit of a luxury for the “worried well”. Carl Rogers would disagree. To an extent, the outcomes of Person centred counselling are difficult to measure, whereas something like CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) are favoured by, for example, the Uk NHS as proving a more measureable outcome. Client Centred therapy can take longer, but I am not convinced measurability is always key.
Personally, I have benefited hugely from person centred Counselling. I have moved from rigidity to fluidity, from anxiety to calm, from shyness to confidence. All thanks to experiencing the core conditions with my therapist. My next few years of studying Rogerian counselling/therapy are going to be a fantastic journey.
A selection of UK Person Centred Counselling Books:
A Selection of US Based Client Centred Counselling Books:
Susan Jeffers’s Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway was pretty much the first self help book I ever read, and the reasons that brought me to it are quite embarrassing in many ways! I will be open with you and tell you that although I am an intelligent, capable, resourceful and at times wise individual, these qualities have not always enabled me to be as relaxed and happy about my life as I should be. Listen to this – I am academically gifted (I have a first class honours degree and a Masters degree), I am a published writer and have performed my work on stage, I have had a number of successful jobs and am now making a living from an Internet business which I started from scratch. I also enjoy the friendship of some pretty amazing people. But for a long time there was one thing which had been completely lacking in my life.
CONFIDENCE.
I am being serious – in spite of all my achievements, my success and my abilities, I was spending a large amount of my life being held back because I did not have the confidence to do certain things (speak to that person, apply for that job, leave that job, do something different that day) and I think it’s fair to say I have long been the victim of a terrible shyness at times over the years! Those who have seen me present to a room full of people would probably find this fascinating, but the truth is I have often done this through sheer will (although at times have felt totally comfortable – what I would later discover was a state of “flow” or being “in the zone”) – they should have seen how I felt inside when a complete stranger talked to me, or when I was sitting around a table hearing the buzz of conversation, terrified of speaking myself unless I said the wrong thing or made a fool of myself (and how many opportunities have I lost because it was far safer to hang on to my pride and my security by not taking a risk, not going outside my comfort zone, just plodding on thinking I was doing the best thing for myself by protecting myself from rejection and trouble.)
And I repeat, I run a successful business and people like me! And I could entertain such negative thoughts on a daily basis, and even find plenty of negativity in my situations – that person should have talked to me, it’s their fault, things didn’t happen quite right, it would have been better if, I should have done that. Even after working for 12 hours on my business I often berated myself for not having done enough, not putting enough effort in, and at the end of the day tried to find something extra I could do – because I felt that if I could only do a little more, everything would be all right, and then I meticulously planned the next day, then something happened to spoil my plans, and I experienced such a deep rage that all my plans had been wiped out. Even though not carrying my routine plans through that day would do me no significant harm (rationally I knew this), I felt enraged that my balance had been upset. I kicked things. I hit things. Yes, an educated and quiet, shy retiring person getting wound up in the privacy of my own home and office because the smallest things didn’t go as I needed them to go to feel secure in my routine…
Things came to a head one day when some particulararly bad (but in the end insignificant!) thing happened with my business – I got really mad and slipped into a really negative state of mind. Even though the worst outcome of it all was not really all that bad (I might use a few dollars), the fear and anxiety in my mind made it ten times worse!
I was pretty lost at that point in time. Something snapped in me and I knew if I carried on in this way it was never going to be satisfactory. I decided I would shut the computer off and get some books, as reading has always soothed me and helped me escape. I thought I could now use it to perhaps learn something. I got a pile of books, whose contents I will share with you over the weeks and months (and years – I am still developing and learning to help myself!), and also some audiobook self hypnosis recordings.
I had read such books and tried such recordings in the past, but I sensed one major difference in myself. This time, I wanted to change, and was willing to put in some effort. I think the major mistake some people make is that they think they will read the book or listen to the tape and there will be a magical transformation and it will be easy! There can be magic – but believe me it won’t work if you are thinking, “This is utter rubbish, it will never work…” Or “This is a con!” or even “I will read this and everything will magically change!” The last time I tried these were my thoughts, I thought I would give it a go, and if the book or tape changed me, fair enough. The difference this time was, I was determined that I would change myself, and needed help, which I think is a key to the self help principles I promote on this blog (self help is a tool – not a last resort or a magic cure – but a resource to help yourself!).
In any case, I am glad I shut off the computer that day and started my real work, the work of self-development, for from that day I have been growing from being an inhibited, shy, controlling, restricted and frustrated person into something I still haven’t found words to describe. The few days I have thus far spent working on my own development is worth all the twelve hour days I have or ever will put into my business!
I began with Susan Jeffers’s Feel The Fear And Do it Anyway. The title rather appealed to me as I realized there things I wanted to do and ways I wanted to be, but was afraid of getting there. My biggest fears included: Spending the rest of my life alone, spending the rest of my life with someone (fearing both equally – get that!), fear of my business failing, fear of not putting in enough time, fear of putting in too much time, fear of letting go and relaxing, fear of, fear of, fear of – I probably couldn’t finish listing all the things I feared if I sat here and typed all night long! So that was the first title I read, I suspended my disbelief, told myself I should take off my “Yes, but that’s stupid, if it was that easy why doesn’t everyone do it” head, and read it through, and couldn’t stop reading.
The book is not perfect, it is not a cure all, it may not be for everyone. I personally disliked the references to a higher power, although admittedly Susan does not let her religious beliefs become intrusive. Even as something of an agnostic and a humanist, even a cynic, perhaps, I was able to get enough tips and insights out of the book to feel a change begin to take place, with the author’s maddeningly simple commonsense solutions received gratefully by my commonsense radar. I am now eagerly reading and working through the companion book, as well as other titles, and all I can suggest is that if you are struggling with something, if you have fears, insecurities, and are not living the life you want to live, reading Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers will be of interest to you, and if you get even a quarter of what I got out of it, you will be amazed.
I honestly used to think popular psychology and self help books like this were utter rubbish. Humbly, I admit I was wrong, at least in this case, as I smilingly join the ranks of people whose lives Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway has helped to change
If you are in the US, the following iTunes link will enable you to purchase the anabridged audiobook of Feal The Fear and Do It Anyway: or on iTunes Uk with 12,000 audiobooks available HERE
