Potatoes, and being yourself
I went to see comedian/writer type person Robin Ince last night. I’ve been going to his shows for years and it’s always a good time. This show was both what I expected but also different. This show was The Universe and The Neurodiverse, and was about being neurodiverse, empathetic, curious, and entirely yourself. It was a wonderful show, and while I’ve not yet read Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, (the book that the show is sort-of about) I’ve read enough of Robin’s stuff to feel comfortable recommending it anyway.
It made me think about person centred counselling (as most things do these days), and a story that Carl Rogers wrote about in A Way Of Being. He describes how his family would keep potatoes in the basement to preserve them during winter. He observed that, even though the basement was almost entirely dark, there was a tiny window at the top of the room, and the potatoes would send out shoots towards the light:
The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish
Carl Rogers – A Way of Being (1980) p.118
The underlying basis of person centred counselling is the idea that all humans innately want to grown and develop (the actualising tendency). When a person’s actions look to outside eye to be destructive, self-sabotaging, or incomprehensible, it’s because we can’t see the entirety of the person’s environment, beliefs, and history and how that is effecting their growth. There’s a core belief that, as humans we fundamentally want to develop and grow, even if that feels futile, and we can tap into that tendency. This idea is where all of pcc comes from.
The core conditions of person centred counselling (which are the core conditions that a counsellor have to embody in a person centred counselling relationship), are empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard. The idea is that, when a client can receive and accept these from the counsellor, the relationship will start to deepen and the client will be able to be safe enough to explore their world.
Roger’s believed that one of the reasons people struggled was because they were working towards values and conditions of worth that they didn’t themselves believe, but had instead been placed on them by others. They were pushing their own values and evaluation of their actions in order to please others and keep themselves safe. It’s about trusting first in the counsellor to be congruent, non-judgemental, and safe for the client to be those things in return, and then learning to trust their own valuing process in order to grow the life they want.
This is what I’ve seen in my own life, that person centred counselling allowed me to say the things I’d not said to others, to contemplate what I wanted, and how I wanted to be. It led to some drastic life choices, but more fundamentally than that, I got to know and love myself.
I went from being hypervigilent, dissociative, and never having a great relationship with alcohol, to sober, feeling my feelings, and maybe learning to feel safe (small shout out to sertraline for helping this process massively, as well as a big shout out to my loved ones and friends for their support).
Sometimes, when i sit in a session with someone, I feel woefully inadequate, naturally. in those times, I remind myself to start with the core conditions, and then the theory will follow. Last night’s show was a masterclass in someone being unapologetically themselves, sharing the art they’d created since starting to unmask, and the joy that comes from that. It was inspiring and hilarious and reminded me the power of being in a room with someone who is fiercely and freely themselves, and how it can help you get back in contact with that in you.
Carl Rogers also talked about how we’re always in the process of becoming. There’s no ‘end goal’, or finish to this work. We grow and change, as does our environment, and so we’re constantly learning about who we are and how we are. It’s a joyful, difficult process and as a counsellor, I am honoured and humbled to be a part of this process with others, just as I am humbled to have peers that I can process my own becoming with.
I’ve been struggling with writing a bit recently, partly because I have less time, and partly some general anxiety about the changes happening in my life (isn’t it weird how sometimes you can get what you want and struggle with it? Something else I'm processing and learning about in myself). Last night felt soothing in a way that I’ve not felt in a while, and I’m so happy to be back feeling creative again.