Journey to self-awareness.

What do we learn during our development

The journey towards self-awareness as a therapist and as a person, is a process of lifelong designed reflection, how to be a human being. It is the art of life. It is an old experience which is the actual asset for life. This experience is a part of us, the part which will always belong to us till the end of life, perhaps after as well.

Many of us counsellors or psychotherapists are dealing with the question. Why do I want to be a therapist? Many of us answer, to help others but after the time passes, we discover that we want to know more about ourselves and our existences.

I agree some of you do not accept my opinion but you can share in comments what you think about it.

As long as we know more about our own self and we are aware deeply about our straights and weaknesses then we can help the client to understand his self adequately to his position.

For the new practitioner in counselling and psychotherapy, the beginning is challenging for both the inner soul and the heart. We achieve the points where reality and imagination collide with each other. The own expectation is different at the beginning of the therapist’s inner journey than after the time when we were gaining more experience.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung

The self-awareness shows the evidence that we cannot avoid our own feelings and emotions, we have to learn in many ways to be good enough for the client but unique for our own self as a person, not only as a therapist.

In other words, when the therapist doesn’t know or does not recognize own susceptibilities, is not able to be a help for others. To evolve as a practitioner we have to ask ourselves a few important questions: Who am I? Where am I? Sometimes the questions can be more emotional and deep and personal.

Personal growth and own development as a therapist is a process, and we need time to adapt and understand many estrangements.

Just for instance in early education stages, the personal psychotherapy reminds me about the human’s imperfection in both personal and emotional aspects of life. Again, we see the working process, that what we don’t know about us does not hurt us, in any way, but slows down academic education in that profession, and what is most important for future therapists will have counterproductive effects for the therapeutic relationship.

The self-awareness is a process of personal development, where we see our own experiences such as chapters of life. I am the chapter of life in my personal growth. The development is supported by my compassion. As humans, we find great compassion for us and for others. However, some of our compassion seems to be a weakness and imperfections, but we have to remember that self-compassion and self-kindness are more vigorous and helpful than we think. Because compassion is a healing process, of course, if we do not reject it.

In the simplest way, compassion is what I missed in my developing process. The beautiful part of our soul, the part which i never could expect to have that important influence for personal growth and improvement of self-acceptance.

We try to live faster and better in our “harry-harry” life but that is wrong. That way of living just builds more stress and less resilience in life. Everything has a meaning in life that could be self-control, self-determination or self-development but all of them have to be going through self-awareness to discover our existence.