Self-Discovery: Understanding and Knowing Yourself Better
Introduction
The definition of self-awareness is a correct illustration of a given facet of one’s situation, functioning, performing or the resulting associations. Becoming conscious of one's own personality, feelings, motives, and desires can be a painful experience but essential for anyone entering the counselling profession.
In this how do you know yourself essay I will discuss why knowing yourself is critical for a counsellor, how some theorists talk about the importance of knowing yourself and how the role of the counsellor and the client/counsellor therapeutic relationship may be affected by the counsellor’s own sense of self. I will link theory to my own discovery of self-awareness and development over the last thirty years.
Main Body
Before commencing this how do I understand the self essay, I have reflected much not only the last few years that I have been studying counselling but right back to my childhood. Did I have a sense of self as a child, when did I become aware of it and how has it changed? I think I did have a strong sense of self as a child which was often born out in my clashes with my parents throughout childhood.
Rogers believed that when a child is born, the concept of ‘self’ is already present with an internal biological force to grow our own competences to the fullest. 'The organism has one basic tendency and striving - to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing organism.”
We only become destructive when we have a poor self-image or concept of self. This leads me to reflect on myself while I was writing what is understanding the self essay, am I essentially good, do I know what’s right for me? This is an on-going topic of reflection as I develop as a counsellor. To some degree I do agree there is an element of self-actualisation in all of us, however I believe we do have innate instincts that have been biologically inherited and that go back generations, maybe this is what Rogers is referring to? So, in reflecting on our present we must also reflect on our past. This isn’t always easy to do and does take a huge personal commitment to look back and research our roots and further. Not everyone is willing to do this, we have to be in the right place emotionally to commence on a path that may prove to be painful and difficult to travel. After ending why is it essential to understand the self essay, I understand that I personally find the proposition of this exploration very exciting.
In essay about knowing yourself I want to mention Maslow. He illustrates in his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ how we need to have certain core conditions met before we can be fulfilled. However, in many cases this is not accurate; it can be seen that even some cultures have overcome adversity and achieved fulfilment without some of the basic needs being met. Thus, giving weight to my argument that nature and past generational experiences have a place in our development of self. Becoming aware of these potential past experiences alongside our current environment can only be advantageous in the exploration of ‘Self’.
Also, in how do you understand the self essay I want to mention about Klein. His theoretic contributions, particularly the ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ and the ‘depressive position', showed how these primitive mental states throughout developmental childhood impact on us as adults. It can be argued that as counsellors we need to be aware of how we experience our clients and which position we are being put in. By having this awareness, we can safeguard against colluding with our clients. Uncovering the meanings of our early relationships and having an understanding of how they affect us can provide an effective therapeutic use of self in the client/counsellor relationship.
Conclusion
To conclude how do you understand yourself essay, can we ever truly know ourselves? Freud states that our lives are shaped by influences we are totally oblivious to. We may believe we're in control of our own destiny, if so, then why do we keep repeating the same mistakes without realising it? We repeat patterns and behaviours that we don’t like over and over again. Until we take note of what is happening to us emotionally and physically, we have no chance of breaking those patterns and behaviours we dislike in ourselves. According to Freud this is the unconscious at work.
