Intolerable Feelings
“This I don’t want to feel, I simply can’t stand it, never, ever!” One hurdle in self-perception processes is, when clients get a sense of inner states which feel so painful, so disturbing, so fragile, so undignified that, initially, there seems to be no option to be who they are. On the counselling side it depends on the following: that the client is expecting the possibility that he does not have to be alone with this feeling and that the counsellor will affirm him in this state. It is thus important to work on these elements of the contact and not to urge the client to enter into these intolerable states in this moment. Once the security exists that one is being accepted, then the yearning not to be alone with the feeling will arise by itself. The yearning, in turn, brings with it the will to feel everything which is inside and to express it. In this way, the guiding processes also slot into each other and encourage mutual change.