Wednesday 31 October 2018

Carl Rogers on Person-Centered Approach to Counselling


Carl Rogers on Person-Centered Approach to Counselling

His ideas originated in 1940. His work popularly called Rogerian, was personally disliked by the author. He would prefer Person-Centered Approachinstead. 

Roger’s posited that his experience in childhood came from a reaction to his upbringing of being unheard and being judged. He wanted to create an environment where the client felt heard, listened to and cared.
During his childhood, being exposed to his father’s farm, he began to appreciate the need for scientific enquiry and research. 

Paradoxically, his person-centered approach is the exact opposite to science. Initially, he began with Clinical Psychology. As he began to get into treatment interviews, he discovered a few new things: 

For one, he discovered that there were no ‘problem child, just problem parents’, there was a great problem with parents. He discovered working with the mother that she was ‘rejecting’ the child all the time. On deeper enquiry, the mother poured out a case history, quite different to what was shared earlier. He came to the insight that rather than show he had expertise, he should focus on deep listening and understanding the source of the pain. To continue to stay in the process with curiosity.

Soon, Carl Rogers began to articulate a few principles that were new and radical at that time.

Carl posits that the role of a counselor is to be a ‘midwife’ to the personality. He advocated the need for ‘unconditional positive regard’If one can be genuinely understanding, be oneself, listening deeply and well, that’s a deep commitment that the Coach brings to the conversation. if that situation can emerge, not forced, but deeply authentic. This is quite different than say, friendship, where the focus is on the friend. Counselling is a far more intense relationship than friendship: while friendship is valuable it is different to the sharp focus of psychotherapy.  

In group therapy, other members become facilitative as well. 

The process is somewhat the same: individuals revealing data about themselves. Instead of feeling ‘awful’ about revealing, it feels accepted. Groups tend to, given the time that they have, to bring ‘closure’. They try and commit to whatever they can do, in the time available. This social support is hugely helpful. It is to be remembered that age, backgrounds, gender make no difference to effectiveness of groups. Groups have a ‘wisdom’ that emerge naturally. Selection of group is overrated, says Roger.


A goal that most people seek to attain, the good life as described by Rogers is achieved by the person fulfilling certain principles. In his studies Rogers found that there are commonalities among those people who are fully functional. These are:
An acceptance of all experiences including those that are new.
An existential lifestyle, in which each moment is appreciated and lived to its fullest.
A trust level with one’s own decisions.
Increasing freedom of choice
Creativity and adaptability without necessarily conforming.
Reliability and constructiveness in their dealings with others.
A preference for living a rich, full life.


These traits are fluid in their expression with the person being capable of self-actualizing them.

Monday 15 October 2018

Mere awareness is not enough


Now in my second innings as an Executive Coach working with a recent client, I interrogated the question: Can people really Change? What creates permanent Change?
Here are my reflections:
Mere awareness is not enough, awakening is necessary, followed with cognitive and emotional integration. Now this awareness could come from personal evocation (as in internally located) or it could be on account of an external provocation. Either way, an awareness which seeks greater human connect is what sets off this process.
Mere awareness is not enough.
Mere awareness is not enough. Awareness (cognitive) is not enough. There needs to be an awakening! An awakening in the inner self, that once ignited, has its own movement, its own momentum to growth, with its resultant pulls and pushes. Often the awareness is held in abeyance, suppressed. Not available to the Conscious memory. When confronted with an uncomfortable situation, the protagonist with draws, tightens up, and is even absent to her feelings. She appears confused, lost, immobilised, and unable to make any movement forward. Even a simple task appears frightening, difficult to achieve, and one's confidence is at low ebb. Action is frozen.
Often the ‘Body remembers what the mind forgets’ – JL Moreno. The limbic memory may be a storehouse to repressed memories outside the access of the cortex mind. Using a spectrogram, the facilitator may encourage participant to choose location of how warmed up they might be to one theme or another. How depressed they are: High, Medium or Low, etc. It is to be understood that all emotions which are real are present in the body: it is located. It may be a pain in the chest, a constriction in the throat, etc, but the emotion is present in the body. The split off /withheld pain needs to be articulated. Locating the source of the emotion in the body is the first step.
Accessing the limbic memory
Ask, "If the pain had a voice, what would it say?" This allows bringing awareness to the body. It is necessary to support client complete the interrupted pattern between feeling and thinking and allowing for integration. Through this process Inner dialogue is encouraged, and client is encouraged and empowered to own his internal truth. One should be careful that clients ‘own words’ should be picked: no additional nor interpreted context added. Stay curious to the ‘feeling world’, what comes up, price being paid: intended and unintended. Is there are cyclical pattern to what is coming up – over and over again. A repetitive cycle, clockwork and devoid of any new alternatives. Use of doubling, and auxiliary may be introduced to aid bringing awareness. This would mean client sharing her story, the whole story, the unsaid story, the also said. The interrupted pattern needs to be completed and thought and feeling integrated wholesomely. The event must go beyond the phenomenological to traverse the interpersonal and intra psychic. At some levels, at an intra existential level universal issues such as Death, Freedom, Isolation, and Meaning may need to be dealt with.
Integration
Now this awareness would continue to remain static, dry, if it is merely contained within intellectualism. No wonder self help books, motivational speeches, are not sustainable: it is food fo the mind, intellectually stimulating, but that's all there is. Unless one is able to connect to the emotive level, true awakening is not possible. Again, awakening itself is not enough: it may remain transient and the benefits short-lived. The catharsis, that may follow, may be welcome, but it should be followed by insight and integration.  
Preventing regards, Steve -occurance
Through helping understand anticipatory feelings at the onset, managing the symptoms in the episodic event, and through cognitive re-structuring (from a negative, self-limiting belief to a more self-authoring stance) is change possible. One needs to change the personal narrative of the self. 

Thursday 11 October 2018

Anger - Just Become Aware




Anger is frustrated love. At times, anger grips us uncontrollably. What can we do about it? To begin with let's look at various thoughts offered on this.




1. Osho - managing Anger - If somebody creates anger in you, tell him that you will come back with response in 24 hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aT_sSY6swY

A Zen student came to Bankei and said: "Master, I have an ungovernable temper -- how can I cure it?"
"Show me this temper," said Bankei, "it sounds fascinating."
"I haven't got it right now," said the student, "so I can't show it to you."
"Well then" said Bankei, "bring it to me when you have it."
"But I can't bring it just when I happen to have it," protested the student. "It arises unexpectedly, and I would surely lose it before I got it to you."
"In that case," said Bankei, "it cannot be part of your true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you -- so it must come into you from the outside. I suggest that whenever it gets into you, you beat yourself with a stick until the temper can't stand it, and runs away.”



First thing: in controlling you repress, in transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else because the "somebody else" is just irrelevant. Next time you feel angry go and run around the house seven times, and after it sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else -- because if you throw it on somebody else a chain is created, because the other is as foolish as you, as unconscious as you. If you throw it on another, and if the other is an enlightened person, there will be no trouble; he will help you to throw and release it and go through a catharsis. But the other is as ignorant as you -- if you throw anger on him he will react. He will throw more anger on you, he is repressed as much as you are. Then there comes a chain: you throw on him, he throws on you, and you both become enemies.


Don't throw it on anybody. It is the same as when you feel like vomiting: you don't go and vomit on somebody. Anger needs a vomit. You go to the bathroom and vomit! It cleanses the whole body -- if you suppress the vomit it will be dangerous, and when you have vomited you will feel fresh, you will feel unburdened, unloaded, good, healthy. Something was wrong in the food that you took and the body rejects it. Don't go on forcing it inside.


Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in and your whole psychic being wants to throw it out, but there is no need to throw it out on somebody. Because people throw it on others, society tells them to control it.


There is no need to throw anger on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk -- it means that something is inside that needs fast activity so that it is released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow, and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. Within a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened, and once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.


2. Eckhart Tolle - on dealing with anger, resistance and pessimism

Anger is explosive - the ‘pain body’ just be there with it as a Witness.

Don’tChange, Don’t suppress. Just become aware! The awareness will change it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqX5IFKYFWk


3. Sadguru - On how to avoid Anger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAsJvKsd2Xk

Anger is poisoning yourself. Anger is because mind is not taking instructions from you. Anger is happening to you because you are not in command of your faculties. Human consciousness should create situations not the other way around.

4. Buddhism - View on Anger

Anger (including all forms of aversion) is one of the three poisons—the other two are greed (including clinging and attachment) and ignorance—that are the primary causes of the cycle of samsara and rebirth. Purifying ourselves of anger is essential to Buddhist practice. Furthermore, in ​Buddhism, there is no such thing as “righteous” or “justifiable” anger. All anger is a fetter to realization.
The Buddha said, “Conquer anger by non-anger. Conquer evil by good. Conquer miserliness by liberality. Conquer a liar by truthfulness.” (Dhammapada, v. 233)

5. Bhagwad Gita - On Anger

b. From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one is ruined. —Bhagavad Gita 2.63

There are three gates leading to hell—lust, anger and greed. Every sane man should give these up, for they lead to the degradation of the soul. —Bhagavad Gita 16.21

6. Others:
Seneca thought that anger is a temporary madness, and that even when justified, we should never act on the basis of it because, though "other vices affect our judgment, anger affects our sanity: Others come in mild attacks and grow unnoticed, but men's minds plunge abruptly into anger. … Its intensity is in no way regulated by its origin: For it rises to the greatest heights from the most trivial beginnings.”