Our client goes on to discuss how hard it has been for her in the past to accept any help or positive feeling from others, and how this attidue is changing.
C: I have a feeling...that you have to do it pretty much yourself, but that somehow you ought to be able to do that with other people. (she mentions that there have been "countless" times when she might have accepted personal wartmh and kindliness from others) I get the feeling that I just was afraid I would be devastated. (She returns to talking about the counseling itself and her feeling toward it.) I mean there's been this tearing through the thing myself. Almost to--I mean, I felt it--I mean I tried to verbalize it on occasion--a kindo--at times almonst not wanting you to restate, not wanting you to reflect, the thing is mine. But that doesn't mean a damn thing to me now....The--I think in--the relationship to this particular thing, I mean, the--probably at times, the strongest feeling was, it's mine, it's mine. I've got to cut it down myself. See?
T: It's an experience that's awfully hard to put down accurately into words, and yet I get a sense of difference here in this relationship, that from the feeling that "this is mine," "I've got to do it," "I am doing it," and so on, to a somewhat different feeling that--"I could let you in"
C: Yeah. Now. I mean, that's--that's it--well, it's sortof, shall we say, volume two. It's a--well, sort of, well. I'm still in the thing alone, but I'm not--see--I'm--
T: M-hm. Yes, that paradox sort of sums it up, doesn't it?
C: Yeah.
T: In all of this, there is a feeling, it's still--every aspect of my experience is mine and that's kindof inevitable and necessary and so on. And yet that isn't the whole picture either. Somehow it can be shared or another's interest can come in and in some ways it is new.
C: Yea. And it's--it's as though, thats how it should be. I mean, that's how it--has to be. There's a --there's a feeling, "and this is good." I mean, it expresses, it clarifies it for me. There's a feeling--in this caring, as though--you were sort of standing back--standing off, and if I want to sort of cut through to the thing, it's a--a slashing of--oh, tall weeds, that I can do it, and you can--I mean you're not going to be disturbed by having to walk through it too. I don't know. And it doesn't makes sense. I mean--
T: Except theres a very real sense of rightness about this feeling that you have, hm?
C: M-hm
May it not be that this excerpt portrays the heart of the process of socialization? To discover that it is not devastating to accept the positive feeling from another, that it does not necessarily end in hurt, that is actually "feels good" to have another person with you in your struggles to meet life--this may be one of the most profound learnings encountered by the individual whether in therapy or not.
Rogers, Carl R.(1961). On Becoming A Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (pp.84-85). New York: Houghton Mifflin.