Congruence

In choosing congruence as my subject for this essay I do realise that this word covers an enormous area. My research has taken me seemingly down one road after another.

It raises as many questions within me as it answers. The fact that this area raises so many questions for me, I believe is a good thing. For although it is sometimes uncomfortable to be bombarded with questions, in my experience the questioning stage always comes before a surge in growth and understanding. If we can withstand the heat of the forge we can mould ourselves into what ever we want to be. I know that in this essay all that I can hope to do is scratch the surface of such an immense area as congruence.

So why choose congruence as my topic for this essay? One of the reasons that congruence appeals to me is that it strikes me as the hardest of the three core conditions to achieve. This fact fascinates me, why is it so hard? I hope to go some way towards answering this question in my essay. At the very least the whole area of congruence offers one hell of a challenge, and I do like a challenge.

So what is congruence? Roger says, (Rogers 1967 pg.61) “It has been found that personal change is facilitative when the psychotherapist is what he is, when in the relationship with his client he is genuine and without front or façade, openly being the feelings and attitudes which are at that moment flowing in him. We have coined the term congruence to try to describe this condition.”


Note that even in this passage Rogers says, “To try to describe this condition”. Maybe this is such a complex subject that even Rogers himself struggled to find the words to define it. We can see from these words the great importance that Rogers attached to being congruent in the relationship between client and therapist.


He also went on to say (Rogers 1967 pg.61) “No one fully achieves this condition. Yet the more the therapist is able to listen acceptantly to what is going on within himself, and the more he is able to be the complexity of his feelings, without fear, the higher the degree of his congruence”. So not only does he seem to be saying that congruence is hard to define, it is also not fully achievable! At this stage being congruent with myself I am starting to appreciate just how vast the concept of congruence really is.

Rogers went on to define congruence as “ the term we have used to indicate an accurate matching of experience and awareness.” I believe the point that Rogers is making here is that, to be congruent we must be aware of what is going on within us, and accept what we are experiencing. He also mentions communicating these feelings to our clients.

Other words that fit around congruence are honesty and genuiness. Once again these small but significant words can have many meanings and uses. For example one of my previous tutors used the words promiscuous honesty. The example that he gave was of a Yorkshire man calling a spade a spade. Since hearing these words I have been intensely observant waiting to see this promiscuous honesty in action. I have been very surprised at just how often people use the guise of honesty to hurt other people’s feelings. An immediate example in my own life was from a friend I had not seen for a few weeks.

I was really happy to see her and went out of my way to say hello. She was very quick to tell me how grey my hair had become since our last meeting and how much older I was looking. She must have noticed that I looked and indeed felt a little hurt by her almost throw away remarks. She then very quickly shrugged her shoulders and said, “ well I am only being honest.”

If I had been congruent I would have been aware that I was a little hurt by her remarks, accepted these feelings and then perhaps I could have communicated these facts back to her. I have become aware that one of my responses to being hurt is to change the hurt into anger, as one of my conditions of worth is not to show hurt, (it is a sign of weakness).


As my anger rose my first thought was to reply that I had never realised just how big her nose was until now, and then say well I am only being honest. I said nothing, and in retrospect I am glad, because I realise that I would only have been using the guise of honesty to score a point (promiscuous honesty in action).

One of the hardest things about being honest for me is realising the times that I think I am being honest, but am I? Am I being true to myself? Can I be congruent if I am not aware of what is going on for me in every day life? Recently on the diploma course I was in the role of a client in a practice group. I felt as though I very little to talk about, so I went back into my past and talked about the fact that I had fallen out with my sister in law, and still had some feelings of resentment towards her.

During the counselling process I realised for the first time, that one of my defence mechanisms was to brush things under the carpet, where they would hopefully remain and eventually fade away. I did this subconsciously and I had no idea that this was such an important way of dealing with things for me. All these years I believed that I was being honest with myself, things that hurt me or even scared me were just brushed aside and hidden from view. But now I realised that they were still there.

They had not been dealt with and from time to time would reappear to say a chilly hello. I had started the session by saying that I had nothing to talk about, I had no problems, I was a level headed, every things fine individual. Now I am starting to rediscover past events and realise that these events although supposedly brushed aside and hidden from view, did and do have knock on effects in my life.

I also realise that by being congruent and maybe with the help of therapy I can go back and remove the blockages that are causing obstructions in my life’s flow. Another way of looking at this process is to liken it to having a hose to water the garden. If the hose has a few kinks it may not stop the water flow completely but it will greatly reduce its efficiency.

If however we can go back and remove the kinks the water will flow freely, with little resistance, the garden will benefit as well as the person using it. This experience of looking at myself through therapy has shown me that in my life there has been real incongruence between experience and awareness, and between experience and communication. Rogers (1967) gives a beautiful example of a person being incongruent when he talks about a man denying the fact that he was angry, although he had clearly demonstrated this anger to others.


Rogers remarks, (Rogers’s 1967 pg340) “What is happening here? It seems clear that at a psychological level he is experiencing anger. This is not matched by his awareness. Consciously he is not experiencing anger, nor is he communicating this (so far as he consciously aware). There is a real incongruence between experience and awareness, and between experience and communication”.

I said at the beginning of this essay that I thought congruence was the hardest of the core conditions to achieve. But I don’t think that I really realised just how hard being congruent really is. To not even be aware that I may be acting in an incongruent way is a hard concept to grasp. If I am not aware that I am being incongruent can I rectify the situation?


Taking Rogers point that being congruent is now fully achievable, then where does that leave us on the road to being congruent? I feel that I am starting to take the first steps along this road, I am expecting a long hard journey with many twists and turns. My companions on this experience will be awareness, and an inner strength, which I hope, will allow me to communicate my findings to myself and anyone else who wants to listen.

I have a friend who sells various items of merchandise to accompany his work. In our last conversation he mentioned that he was having a difficult time with certain individuals in his life. He told me that he was quite happy to give them some of his merchandise if he thought they would benefit from such gifts.


However he was beginning to feel that certain individuals were starting to take advantage of his generosity and he did not like the feeling that this fact raised in him. He felt as though he could not refuse a gift once they had asked, although at times he did feel like saying no.

As we talked I tried to reflect back to him his words and feelings, after some time he said, “I suppose if I’m honest I want to be liked and if I say no people may not like me”. I felt as though the penny had dropped, he was being honest. I admired him for his honesty but realised at the same time, that this was just the start of his long journey on the road of self-discovery.

I believe that the example of my friend’s predicament and from my own experiences the thing that makes being congruent so hard is that it involves a large element of risk. Can I risk telling my wife when she asks, “Does my bum look big in this?” well yes it does. Will I hurt her feelings? Will we fall out? I like people to like me, to say, “ oh what a lovely guy that Tony is”.

I go out of my ways sometimes consciously, sometimes I believe unconsciously, to make them like me. But if I don’t agree with someone else’s views or opinions can I challenge them and risk them not liking me? Can I risk being honest and show my true feeling? Can I risk crying? Can I risk revealing my real, hidden self and take the risk of being hurt?

I realise that my fear of not being liked or wanting to be liked is a condition of worth, and boy do I have a few of these. In our personal development sessions at college, I wait for people to bring me into the conversation; it is as if I’m waiting for permission to speak.


This I can trace back to my mother always telling me, especially in the company of guests, “sit there and don’t speak until you are spoken to”. I never cry “don’t cry or I will give you something to cry about” (no thanks I already have something to cry about). Crying is a sign of weakness and big boys don’t cry. These conditions of worth can be a major cause of incongruence in our lives.

A personal and very painful example of this for me was that I longed for positive regard from my father until I was thirty-seven years old, then he passed away. I wanted him to be proud of me, to hold me, to respect me and love me. But he was never very tactile, never loving and he never gave me any inclination about what he thought and felt about me.

I do understand that for men of his generation it was very hard to show feelings. In my efforts to gain some sort of positive regard, acknowledgement, respect, love I tried to act in ways that I thought would please him. An obvious way was never to cry, this was considered weak, and boys don’t cry, especially the eldest son. ”You should know better, you’re the eldest” were words I would often hear, especially when things were going wrong.

Even when I was not involved, “well where were you? You should have been looking after your brothers”. So I took on these conditions of worth from my father in an effort to gain his approval and respect. I never cried, and I still don’t, I always feel that I could have done better or should do better. But sometimes I want to cry, and sometimes I feel as though I have done my best, I cannot do better, but this causes incongruence between my organismic self and my self-concept.

I can feel this incongruence physically as knots in my stomach or a tightening in my chest (very uncomfortable). These conditions of worth can go very deep and be buried within the subconscious mind, so how do I deal with these conditions of worth? I believe that the answer is simple but not easy, there is a big difference between these two words. I try to be congruent with myself, I feel the feelings (emotions), I don’t deny them, I am aware of them, and I accept them.

If I can then communicate these feelings through awareness, via a journal or therapy or even personnel reflection (meditation), then I believe I can go some way to removing harmful conditions of worth, and reduce my incongruence. Another risk of this process is that to strip a way our conditions of worth and change our self-concept can feel very scary.

If I strip away these things what will be left? Is a poor self-concept better than nothing at all? (Better the devil you know). I don’t believe so, to change takes courage, but my organismic self will be left, and if this organismic self is linked to God, as I believe it is, then I can only triumph over adversity, for if God is with me who can stand against me?

So how does congruence fit into the therapeutic relationship? Rogers puts great emphasis on the fact that it is the relationship that facilitates change. He also says that within the relationship certain conditions should exist. He states, (Rogers 1989 pg. 221) “that for constructive personality change to occur, it is necessary that these conditions exist and continue over a period of time”.

Two persons are in psychological contact.

The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious.

The second person, whom we shall term the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the relationship.

The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.

The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and endeavours to communicate this experience to the client.

The communication to the client of the therapist’s empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved.

I n condition two Rogers talks about the client being in a state of incongruence. There is conflict between his organismic self and his self-concept. I can relate through my personal experience of not crying, although I felt like it, in the hope that appearing strong would please my father, (incongruence in action).


In condition three Rogers is emphasising how important it is for the counsellor to be congruent in the relationship. Mearns and Thorne talk about how, (Mearns and Thorne 1988 pg. 96) “like empathy and unconditional positive regard, congruence makes it easier for the client to trust the counsellor and the counselling process.

If the client accepts the counsellor as congruent then he will know that the response he gets from her can be accepted as open and honest. He knows that the counsellor is not concerned with manipulating him and consequently he can feel more free in the relationship”.

I was with a client who informed me that at one point in his life he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was going to die. As I listened to him a great feeling of sadness came over me and I shared this feeling with him.

To my surprise he replied “why are you feeling sad? I’m not”. He had calculated everything and death was a convenient way out of a depressing life for him. On reflection I realised that my feelings of sadness were based around my own fathers death, but although similar they did not belong in this relationship.

Although in this instance I was congruent with my client about my feelings, I was not congruent with myself about where these feelings were coming from. But I do believe that by being congruent with this client, our relationship grew stronger and became more trusting. I can now see that congruence is a very important concept in the healing process, indeed I believe that it is vital if growth is to take place.

Every time I think about congruence the words “ the truth shall set you free “ always come to mind. If I can be honest with myself and dispel some of my negative conditions of worth, lose some of my excess baggage.

Take some of the load off my organismic self and let the real me shine through, and help others to do the same. Then what as a species would we be incapable of achieving? Imagine all the love that would be set free, released into the world to heal and comfort us all. As Rogers himself said a state of being fully congruent is hard to achieve, but I truly believe that the bigger the battle the greater the rewards. And this is one battle that I for one am prepared to fight!

Warm Regards:

Anthony Somers