CONGRUENCE

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

William Faulkner

In the 1960s Carl Rogers introduced the term ‘congruence’ to indicate a person’s harmony with themselves. Roughly it means honesty, transparency – authenticity. To be in-congruent is to dissemble or to hide under a false appearance. A sign of incongruence would be, for example, smiling when one is annoyed or depressed.

For me, the greatest enemy of congruence is my strength of will to overcome my past. The one thing I don’t want to be is congruent with my frailty and dependence. This is who I still am, but it is not who I want to be.

I learned early on to protect my ego, my sense of self, by rejecting and disowning my weaknesses. As I grew up I also learned to be independent of those I needed. When they hurt me I was eventually strong enough to say ‘I don’t need them’ and to make it true. This ability became so entrenched that it developed into an automatic mechanism, so that my emotions are instantly cut off whenever I am reminded of my weakness and dependency. Then, I believe I really don’t care – but it’s a lie.

What really kicks in is fear and anxiety; and this goes back to my birth. Birth is a time when one is closest to death. Birth is a massive trauma. But now, when it is emotionally restimulated my feelings shut off. What I cannot shut off are the physical effects. I cannot remember the original circumstance of my terrors – but any slight reminder in present-time and my feelings automatically switch off; but not the physical effects: heartache, emptiness, fear and anxiety. These I do suffer, without knowing why.

 The event in present time that triggers the restimulation might only be that my partner shows a disinterest or contradicts something I was saying – that’s all.

But it’s enough. Instantly, before I am even aware of it, the shutting-off mechanism goes into effect. I don’t even know it’s happened.  All I feel is perhaps a slight irritation; nothing more – she often does that kind of thing – but that’s all right!

 Underneath, however, it isn’t all right. It goes deep; but I do not suffer it. My wall protects me from the threat of dying. The only effect I get is that hours later I feel depressed, my chest hurts – and I don’t know why. That night I can’t sleep.

My incongruence is not consciously purposeful. If you were to ask me if my wife has upset me I would answer in some general sort of way – without much feeling. No!  Not really upset – annoyed perhaps. As for my chest pains, maybe I should see a doctor; but I often get it and it goes away. I disparage its importance.

Since my wife is the most important person in my life, the one I most look to for reassurance, this situation happens quite often.  It is an aspect of my unconscious incongruence that I am unaware how much I am dependant on her. And any sharp reminder of it restimulates fear – which, paradoxically I cannot feel. In fact, throughout my life there have been hundreds of times when the same sort of event has happened – with kids at school, girlfriends, teachers and the like.

You may ask why I have such a wall up against the feeling of dependency. The answer is that like most people, I don’t want to know   my early childhood; how utterly dependant I was. I don’t want to deal with my fears of death and extinction again. But later in life, each reminder of it, each time someone disowns or misunderstands me, the ground opens up and it’s as though I’m there again.

So, even in my early days there grew a chain of events where I perceive myself as facing abandonment and death.

Eventually I developed an ego strong enough to be able to say, ‘I don’t care’ – and a will strong enough to make it true. My automatic cut-off clears me of my past. It’s all behind me now – except I have these queer psychosomatic problems.

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This is how it was. But things have changed – I have changed. I have learned to be more honest with myself, to be more in tune with my felt-sense of how things are with me; to admit when something hurts, that it hurts; to admit to myself and to others my weaknesses and sensitivity. My therapist helped me, but thankfully she let me do all the work myself. With total acceptance from her I found it easier and easier to be myself.  It took quite a while, gradually learning to be authentic; but every step in taking down the wall was a step in the right direction.

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ps. I trust the reader will be aware that the above is not autobiographical. I dramatise a fictional first person because stories tell truths better that abstract descriptions. And I wanted to tell a common theme without revealing anyone’s private story.