Sense of worth

My psychology professor, while teaching Rogers, mentioned a line that stayed with me. Over the years it has shaped my work with my clients. This post is a way of thanking my professor for saying that and touching my life in a significant way.

The strange thing is that I still remember the day when she mentioned the line and how it kept echoing for a very long time.Carl Rogers was a therapist who believed in the human potential. He believed that people have the capacity to find their own answers. My professor said —

'The fact that you are a human being makes you worthy'.

I consider this as something sacred, which has touched the lives of so many students who I taught psychology and the clients I worked with. It helps reinforce the idea of being and I have seen people's faces light up as soon as they hear it. It's been healing in a beautiful way.

Thanks for sharing that line with us and touching so many lives.

Reflections

As a therapist,I'm quite used to asking my clients, about their wellbeing but I'm not used to clients asking about mine. The other day a client asked me, "How are you doing?" and without exaggerating I was surprised, almost missed the question.

I shared with him how I'm not used to answering this question and suddenly it felt funny. The reality is when I'm working with clients, it's almost as if I wear the garb of a therapist and that's my identity, with a focus on how to help the client make most of it and as a result somewhere I do forget about myself.

The other day I just realized that listening comes to me so naturally and somewhere I'm not even conscious of it now. It's may be one skill, I cannot remember how I developed it, it just happened. However the training on paraphrasing, summarization and empathy did sharpen it.

My journey as a therapist has been interesting one and full of surprises. It has made me admire the human spirit and trust people's innate ability to heal.As a therapist, I would like to thank every client who gave me a chance to work with them and God.