Our Approach
My core belief is that we all have basic needs; to feel seen, loved and accepted.
We have an innate drive within us to receive positive regard, (to be accepted and loved), to such an extent that we will adapt our behaviours and ways of being in any way needed, in order to receive positive regard.
Throughout life, our experiencing, be that life altering traumatic events, too many conditions of worth placed upon us by caregivers or society at large, or abuse (and many more experiences ), can leave us feeling disconnected or disassociated with who we are because of how much we have adapted in order to have our needs met.
In many cases when treating mental suffering, it is often the symptom that is addressed (ie "fixing" the addiction, eating disorder, anxiety or depression) with no focus on the root cause of these coping strategies.
I believe that so much of mental distress is rooted in feelings of inadequacy, shame and incongruence in who we are. I believe that experiencing and receiving true acceptance, compassion and empathy allows and supports self healing.
Person-centred theory suggests that it is in human nature to grow, as it is for a plant. A plant does not need to be made to grow, it is innate. Given the right conditions the plant will thrive to be the best that it can be. As with people, if they are given the right conditions they will thrive to reach their potential and become the best person they can be (Embleton Tudor et al 2004).
"I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter’s supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavourable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout — pale, white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. 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 fulfil 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. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals,
I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavourable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behaviour is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life’s desperate attempt to become itself.
Carl Rogers Potato Analogy
In just 244 words Rogers reaches into the heart of what humanism is all about – the ability to peer through the grime, the outer labels and see the potential for growth that lies within all of us. I think this story also holds a powerful message about our own struggles, when our critical voices are telling us we should have tried harder, and begin chorusing “if only...”
Wherever we are, wherever we find ourselves, this is just us doing the best we can with what we have, trying to get where we need to go.
Read Carl Rogers' Potato analogy here