Introduction
Throughout this Personal Development Profile, I will look back at choices and events that led to embarking on the Humanistic Counselling Practice Course at the University of [CITY]. I will make connections to appropriate elements of Person-Centred theory by referring to certain literature mostly within the psychotherapy realm. I will reflect upon my personal growth and self-awareness both before and after staring this course. I shall explore and explain my belief in the interconnected nature of personal growth and practitioner development. For the duration of this assignment, I intend to reflect on my initial and withstanding reservations as well as my delights, as I have progressed throughout this course.
PART ONE – THERE AND THEN
The benefit of time has allowed my pride to recover from the fact that the circumstances that brought me to this course were neither particularly pleasant nor what I had hoped for.
I had known for many years that I would like to go to university. A number of reasons attributed to this largely dismissive and hasty aspiration; logically speaking attending university was the most lucrative Post-18 option, higher education often leads to a better career in the future and who realistically wouldn’t want that? Socially speaking, university was best aligned with what I was looking for in a social life as making friends and enjoying an active social life was and still is, hugely important to myself and my well-being. Besides that, my school hardly catered for any other Post-18 Options and even if it did, I highly doubt my ego would have allowed myself to embark on any other route than university due to the connotations that I, upon reflection ignorantly, perceived to be attached to other options, such as apprenticeships.
Less positive reasons also attributed to my desire to go to university, however upon reflection they do appear to comprise of what I, and I’m sure many others, would regard as ‘first world problems’. I had very much outgrown both my hometown and home itself. The area I’m from is very middle-classed, possibly even upper class. Within this area, I had been educated in both private and state schools, both of which brought many people with attitudes and personalities which I found less than likeable and that I deduced as a product of having extreme wealth. Therefore, university provided chance of being refreshed by new people from different backgrounds and cultures. Regarding my home itself, I faced the very common teenage problem of identifying as an adult but being treated as a child. I had outgrown living full-time with both my parents and their rules.
Ironically, juvenile reasons also contributed to my decision to go to university. My sister is three years my prior and had gone down the university route herself. She had spoken so highly of university and university life, that the envious side of me meant I was incredibly apprehensive to allow her to have such a rewarding experience without having it too.
As established, going to university for me was pretty much inevitable. After studying Psychology at A-Level, it became apparent that I was to further study it at a university level. I embarked on the journey to find the university that I wished to study at, but I quickly became frustrated as I struggled to envision myself at any – that was until I visited the University of [CITY]. Somewhat surprisingly, I found the Psychology Department was actually the most underwhelming out of all the universities I had visited but it was the university and the city of [CITY] itself that I fell in love with. I could not imagine myself anywhere else and I quickly settled on this idea.
However, sadly when the realities and the magnitude of A-Levels came around this dream was quickly dampened. I confirmed my place at other universities that I really didn’t want to go to but that I believed I had a better chance of attending. I developed the mentality that I was going to underperform and not do as well in my A-Levels as I would have liked. Before I even received my results, I hypothesised fantastic plans to escape the impending and inescapable shame of underperforming. Ideas included retaking my A-Levels, taking a gap year or moving to Australia. The truth is I gave up before I even started, I didn’t try hard enough and for that I only have myself to blame- something which I have only just bitterly admitted to myself. Unsurprisingly, when A-Level results day came about I had failed to achieve the results required to attend my first-choice university but surprisingly I managed to retain my place at my second-choice university. However, to myself this did not matter, as I knew the only university I wanted to go to the University of [CITY]. I withdrew my place from my second-choice university and went into Clearing, to the absolute dismay of my family. I jumped on the University of [CITY]’s on their website and clicked on the Clearing page, quickly I scribbled a list of available subjects remotely related to Psychology. This was what brought me to the Humanistic Counselling Practice course. After calling the University of [CITY]’s Clearing line over one hundred times, I finally got through and I was offered a place on the course.
Opinions from both my family and friends on my decision made myself question greatly whether I was making a careless and catastrophic mistake. However, it was most surprisingly my sister who comfortingly pointed out the similarities between something I had said in my own personal statement: “the importance of looking at a person as greater than a sum of their parts, using a person-centred approach” (Kendall, 2018) and to the first line in the overview of the Humanistic Counselling Practice course “The humanistic approach to counselling suggests that each person has their own unique way of perceiving and understanding the world” (University of [CITY], 2019).
It was in that moment that I felt reassured that I had chosen to study something that was suited and important to myself.
The month leading up to commencement of the Humanistic Counselling Practice course left myself riddled with doubt, but the time interestingly provided the opportunity to explore what in my life could have organically drawn myself to this course, if I had not been so set on studying Psychology. I was incredibly surprised when I realised that what I had most enjoyed learning about in Psychology was from the likes of humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow. This along with the realisation, with thanks to my sister, that I tremendously enjoyed the person-centred side of my care home job made me hugely excited to start a course that would encompass some of the elements that I had already enjoyed either learning about or experiencing.
Now I wish I could say I had some great philosophical calling to this course or to be a counsellor, like so many of my course mates appear to have had, but I didn’t and for that I still find myself feeling very guilty for.
PART TWO – HERE AND NOW
Since starting this course, I have been put in many uncomfortable situations for which I am now incredibly grateful for. I am especially referring to the sessions with my personal development group. The first few sessions were honestly some of the most awkward and unpleasant hours of my life. Silence was something that I had never been well-equipped to deal with and it was something I was incredibly avoidant of. I wouldn’t allow silence to continue for very long as I considered it as worrisome within social interactions. It was something I found hard to decipher and I often jumped to negative conclusions when presented with it. Lacan explains it well (in Payne, 1993, p.47) “Even when the temptation to fill the void with sound is resisted and the silence is maintained, it is too easy to misinterpret the silence”. I found it incredibly hard to break the silence in personal development. The fact we were essentially sat down with a group of ten strangers and told to engage in a conversation for the next hour and fifteen minutes, actually caused the total opposite outcome than intended to occur. I cannot think of any natural situation where I’d be in a room full of ten people and we’d struggle to make conversation.
However, I believe it was the artificiality of the situation that attributed to both my and I assume my peer’s, as evident through the silence’s mere existence, struggle to break the silence. Despite my long-term aversion to silence, after encountering so much of it, within the sessions with my personal development, I now feel a lot more confident around it. Surprisingly, I sometimes catch myself finding comfort in it as it provides the opportunity to gather my own thoughts or possibly interpret what others have said/not said. I now truly appreciate the power of silence and have gladly found I am now much more attuned to my own as well as my peer’s non-verbal communication.
Regarding my feelings towards some of the first modules, I have particularly relished the Counselling in Education module as it has contained many topics that I had already encountered when studying A-Level Psychology. It was immensely comforting already having a lot of the theoretical basis of Attachments under my belt, so I felt very confident going into it. However, I was pleasantly surprised as I found it incredibly refreshing looking at Attachments from a much more humanistic standpoint than I had previously encountered. A-Level Psychology looked at Attachments in a very Manichean way and I have truly enjoyed the way this course has approached the topic so broad-mindedly.
I have taken real delight in getting to know the group on the course. It has been really interesting interacting with people from a fairly wide variety of ages, races, socioeconomic backgrounds and geographical areas. Not very often do I find myself, as a middle-classed white Briton, short in abundance and it’s been really refreshing getting to know people different from myself. Despite these differences, I feel a good sense of ‘group’ and find we have a lot of common ground, which I’m sure the fact we are all female helps with. I like to see myself as an approachable and prominent member of the group, which I believe is a beneficial quality that I had already brought to this course. This has been confirmed when I have been warmed by other members of the group confiding in me and feel I have offered them the necessary support. Skills practice has been great for getting to know my fellow course mates on a deeper level, although I’m not sure I will ever enjoy having to film myself and listen back to my own voice.
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