Congruence is Essential to Living Well

Synch your life and be more like yourself

Tara Winstead on Pexel.com

Can you imagine yourself completely unfettered by human perceptions? Can you think of how you would be if no other person’s point of view affected you and what you want to do?

That is hard. That might be impossible. It seems to do what I ask, a person must not engage with any other and live isolated. That is what I am thinking right now. So maybe a better question is: Who would you be, and how would you act, with as little interference as possible from other human beings?

It’s not that important to answer any of those questions. We can probably agree that all sorts of people have power in our lives through various methods of influence. Obviously, there are family and friends.

Then there is media in whatever form you consume it. Television and the Internet batter us with messages of every type any time we watch and/or interact with something. Some are curious about subliminal messages and write books on the subject (interesting, but I am ignorant about it).

But, even associates and unknown faces in the crowd impact us. It is overwhelming. There are endless stories of someone “waking up” one day to discover they are merely acting out a script someone else wrote.

I want to talk about the opposite of the copycat process we are born into and the mentality we unconsciously keep falling for. We all want to reach our potential and become a self-authored individual, right? Actually, I am not sure. More on that later.

Carl Rogers and his theory of congruence inspired me to write today. He was a psychologist and a pioneer with a patient-centered approach to mental health. I find Rogers’ work uplifting but not without faults. In my humble interpretation, he sought a methodology that allowed people to work toward self-actualization.

If I think of myself as a good person, then what I observe should support that assertion as true. There is an immediacy to Rogers’ concepts where our knowledge of congruency can be instantly evaluated. For example, if I believe I feel good then my body should not tell me I am nervous, frustrated, or angry.

I have been searching for the word congruence for a long time and did not know it. Before hearing it in the context of psychology, I associated congruent with Math class and some lessons I tuned out many years before.

I want a life where everything pursued both large and small works together. My values and goals should align and every action (practically) should support my purpose.

Congruence can be viewed as making one’s inner conception of the self correspond with one’s life. People must conclude that who they are coordinates with who they think themselves to be. Congruence requires, in my manner of thinking, that the inner self matches the outside characteristics and goals of a person. Some of my thoughts here are my interpretations of what Rogers said.

Another word comes to mind: honesty. Much of what Rogers worked toward was a better and more fruitful relationship between therapist and patient. In mental health, we should not expect to improve much at all by hiding our thoughts and feelings. What we say should to some degree be “in the moment” of what is going on inside us despite fears of over-sharing or vulnerability.

If I tell you I had a good week, feel content with my life, and got good sleep, but I seem frustrated and sleepless, then there is an obvious incongruence. We do this with friends all the time—so I am not only speaking about some clinical type setting with trained professionals.

Incongruency is like a design flaw in a machine, but in human beings we might call it a soul-level problem that can be a great hindrance. I mean it can cause us not to function very well, be confused at our core, and appear to others as disingenuous and deceptive. An incongruent person is someone who does not understand themselves and certainly cannot “be themselves.”

Congruency is a prerequisite to fulfilling our self-authored prophecy of what we can become. The word potential is a fine one to use. When I say self-actualization, this is what I mean.

Rogers contended that the self is not static, therefore we cannot say “mission accomplished” when we reach optimal congruence. Life produces a constant tension between alignment and misalignment, and there is no such thing as a one-hundred percent state of congruency (I am not sure I agree with this paragraph completely, but it does make lots of sense).

As usual, I take the broad, borderline-existential approach to any set of conclusions and almost all questions. I tend to weigh my visceral response to anything first before it enters the regions of my analytical brain.

How good do you feel right now? How about in general? That is vague but a necessary start, to me, to evaluate all this subject matter. Maybe these are the most important questions.

I assume everyone has done something or considered some decision where we think: “This does not feel right.” There is some incongruency between values and actions in this situation. More than that, we need to take a look at our overall state of health and contentment and ask if our life’s mission statement is playing out as imagined or not.

Part of my fascination with congruency is because it challenges us to think deeply and do the work every individual must for his or her own sake. We can easily fool ourselves and this is so common it requires no evidence. This is something we already know. What I mean is that we must do some soul-searching and no other person, not even a great therapist, can penetrate our minds deep enough to do that in our stead.

Remember the questions at the beginning of this story? I think they are a bit unfair but also very usable to begin to commit to a more congruent state of being in an overall sense. Misusing who we really are usually results from the expectations, judgements, and preferences of other people. There is pressure to conform to a certain something at every stage of life, and that may have nothing in common with your identity or wishes.

Denial. This is a crucial part of the story I am now telling. When there is incongruency, all kinds of unfortunate things might happen. Denial is one, because we start to pretend either reality is not as it is or that we are something different from the answers received from that soul-searching.

Lying to ourselves is extremely costly and causes resentments. This is what denial is, in my opinion. A person somehow knows he is upset at himself or others but never addresses it. Someone can spend an entire lifetime denying themselves but eventually regret and self-hatred will seize them like some monstrous creature. Then, it may be too late.

Low self-esteem is also in this mix. We can think of poor self-worth as failing at being ourselves. We can deny and lie until the cows come home, but feelings of incompleteness, and of incompetence, gnaw away at our self-esteem.

Now, I must stop myself and turn in the other direction. All that I have said so far could be labeled as an optimistic view of humanity. I may be giving us too much credit without accounting for those who do not think and will not when reminded that self-reflection is important.

Some people stumble unaffected through every day, but how many? And is this a facade that hides more introspection than is visible? Certainly, there is safety and comfort in denial.

This may be the most important question of this story. I am not sure. Anyway, here it goes: How many people, or how much does the average person, care about achieving congruency?

You probably value it, dear reader. And to be as clear as possible, I believe congruency is a must-have to be confidently assured I am progressing with a healthy mind. I hate the thought of not acting out my wishes for my life.

Identity is a must. Self-esteem must be part of identity and also precede it. Thus, I must think about and work on congruent balance. I know this is simplistic, but it’s also true.

This is also essential, I think: If you find your world to lack congruence, contemplate your environment and if it is one conducive to success. This really matters and probably should have been stated earlier in the story.

I do not mean only your location on a world map, but ponder who is close to you, what messages you hear, and what rules and traditions create the terms folks around you acknowledge as orthodox. You might need to change your environment.

Congruence is a great predictor of personal growth. If where you are is opposed to who you are, then you may want to inspect your life and make some hard decisions.

Although, I hope they are not too hard. Thinking is always a good thing, and that is what I try to help others do. If you start to think, armed with great ideas, you are much more likely to heal yourself than someone else doing it for you.

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