The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
Carl RogersRead
True empathy is always free of any evaluative or diagnostic quality. This comes across to the recipient with some surprise. "If I am not being judged, perhaps I am not so evil or abnormal as I have thought".
Interpretation
True empathy allows individuals to feel accepted without judgment, fostering self-acceptance.
Carl Rogers highlights the essence of empathy, emphasizing that when someone experiences true understanding without judgment, it can lead to profound changes in their self-perception. When individuals realize they are not being evaluated, they may begin to see themselves in a new light, feeling more normal and acceptable.
In practice
During a therapy session, I reflected on Carl Rogers' idea about empathy.
The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
The kind of caring that the client-centered therapist desires to achieve is a gullible caring, in which clients are accepted as they say they are, not with a lurking suspicion in the therapist's mind that they may, in fact, be otherwise. This attitude is not stupidity on the therapist's part; it is the kind of attitude that is most likely to lead to trust.
I prize the privilege of being alone.
Though modern Marriage is a tremendous laboratory, its members are often without preparation for the partnership function. How much agony and remorse and failure could have been avoided if there had been at least some rudimentary learning before they entered the partnership.
I have come to think that one of the most satisfying experiences I know — and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person — is just fully to appreciate this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset.
In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Our marriage works because we each carry clubs of equal weight and size.
The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
If I body-shame a woman, it is more a reflection of me being critical of my body, me not being able to keep up to certain standards I have, and so making sure that the women around me feel the same way.
In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
I was married to the ANC. It was the best marriage I ever had.
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