I decided to call my Psychotherapy practice Grow Your Own Potential, because I believe we all have an incredible inner drive to grow and develop ourselves.
For me this is the fundamental function of our work together in therapy to encourage and support this growth.
As a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, I am specifically looking for the qualities that make my clients their wonderful selves, I am a quality detective, if you like!
So often these go unrecognised and unnoticed in everyday life, as we strive to be our ‘best’ selves and change ourselves to fit in.
These qualities might be kindness, awareness of others, humour, vision, sensitivity or inner resolve to carry on, however hard things are.
Mostly when I mention the qualities that I see, my clients look slightly surprised and bewildered, often they squirm a bit, unused to positive feedback about something they might feel shame about like sensitivity.
This always makes me feel so sad. Good mirroring from parents in childhood makes us understand that our authentic selves are just great and we are always inherently special.
So often parents (who were brought up the same way, so no judgement here), are better at making children feel like they would be loveable…. but only if they behave, or stop being shy, stop stuttering or basically stop being who they truly are!
When things in our lives are challenging, we often lose sight of ourselves. It is my experience, that it is often then when these deeper qualities, that give us resilience and strength to overcome our challenges, emerge.
It is my role as your therapist to mirror these qualities to you to help you see yourself more clearly, vital in an endemic self improvement culture.
When we begin to see our complexities and qualities, we can be kinder and more compassionate to ourselves and even feel pride in our achievements.
In therapy we often hold the qualities of our clients close, my supervisor used to say it was like holding a candle in the dark. When our clients are ready to accept themselves fully, we hand the light back to them for them to light their own way and embrace all parts of themselves.
I believe we can all do this for those we love, telling them how special they are and how much we appreciate their intricacies and qualities. It never too late to love someone unconditionally, just tell them what you see and feel when you are with them.
As we enter the new year I would love it if we could all see some of our great qualities and stop judging ourselves.
This is why my resolution this year is to be kinder to myself and accept myself fully, to gently coax out my potential whenever I can. I call it living with ease and grace!
Have a great New Year!🙏