Healing Through Therapy: Embracing Your Journey of Becoming
Nurturing the Path of Becoming
There is a process in becoming. It hurts, feels joyous, scary, hopeful, and daunting—all at once. If we align this process closer to our ideas around endings, hopes, beginnings, and new starting points, we may just find that there is comfort in trust. In knowing that, while not everyone shows it, everyone feels insecurity, fear, wonder, and joy.
Perhaps it's within these vivid places—within lines, dreams, and tuning out—that we realise it's not about what matters most. It's not that joy doesn't matter; it's that there is space for all feelings. For certainty, for hope, for becoming, and for wonder.
There is joy. There is trust. There is play in an effortless way of enduring these progressions. We must know our confidence is there. We must find ways to go about trying ourselves—to make decisions and find confidence. Even though confidence is not always honest, it's there. And it helps us. It supports us.
Carl Rogers, a pioneer in humanistic psychology, introduced the concept of the "fully functioning person." This individual is open to experiences, lives fully in the moment, and trusts their own feelings and instincts. Rogers emphasised that the journey of becoming is not a fixed destination but a dynamic direction toward self-actualisation. Central to this journey is the "organismic valuing process," an innate ability to evaluate experiences based on their intrinsic value, guiding individuals toward personal growth and fulfilment.
For further reading into the humanistic approach to psychology, emphasising the journey of personal growth, self-actualisation, and the importance of embracing all facets of our emotional experiences, consider reading Carl R. Rogers' On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (1961). Perhaps too, his therapeutic work will remind you—as it does me—that we're all human, and we're always becoming a newer, wiser version of ourselves.
Reference:
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.