Congruence

Rory Lees-Oakes: Congruence . It’s one of those words we use all the time in counselling, and we usually take it to mean being genuine. That’s true, But here’s a harder question: how genuine can any of us really be? In this video, we’ll explore what congruence actually is, why it can be such a powerful agent of change, how it looks in the room, and how honestly any of us can bring it.

Before we begin, we’ve created a free handout that summarises the key learning from this video. You can download it using the link below and keep it as a study guide for your practice.

Let’s start with where congruence comes from. Take yourself back to nineteen fifty-seven. In the Journal of Consulting Psychology, Carl Rogers set out six necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic personality change.

Congruence was the third of them. In Rogers’ own words, “The second person, whom we shall term the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the relationship.” And I’d like to give a mention here to Otto Rank, the psychoanalyst whose thinking deeply influenced Rogers during his years working with troubled children and families in Rochester, New York.

Rank’s ideas were part of what moved Rogers towards a more relational way of working. Now, think about how refreshing this must have felt in the late nineteen fifties. Broadly speaking, a good deal of therapy in that era followed a more formal analytic tradition, the therapist sitting apart from the client, notepad in hand, observing, interpreting.

Rogers offered something quietly radical, that the therapist simply being real and genuine could itself be an agent of change. That was one of the roots of relational psychotherapy. And I should say, modern psychoanalytic therapists are very relational too. The days of distance and arm’s length work have long gone.

So let’s define congruence clearly. Congruence is being real, being genuine, bringing your true self. It means what you feel on the inside matches what you show on the outside. In that same nineteen fifty-seven paper, Rogers described it like this: ” Within the relationship, he is freely and deeply himself, with his actual experience accurately represented by his awareness of himself.

It is the opposite of presenting a façade.” In other words, being genuine inside and out. Now, think about the world we live in. Think about social media, the filters that change how we look, the carefully curated version of a life that doesn’t quite match the reality. Putting only the best of yourself forward, that’s a kind of incongruence.

Putting all of yourself forward, daring to be seen as you actually are. This is me. This is who I am. That is congruence.

So how does congruence actually look in the counselling room? It looks like no professional facade, quietly knowing you are good enough. And here’s the part I find most moving.

By showing acceptance of ourselves, we hold up a mirror of acceptance for the clients. If they can see us being real and genuine, it gives them permission to think, “If they can be real, then perhaps so can I.” And that begins to push away the conditions of worth, those introjected values about who we’re supposed to be.

Um, which brings us to the client. Rogers suggested that a client who comes to us is often in a state of incongruence. They’re carrying feelings inside that feel unacceptable to them, so they don’t show them. It’s hidden, held in, and those feelings don’t match how they act or how they move through their lives.

Think how often we ask someone how they are and hear, “Oh, I’m fine. How are you?” A surface-level glance, no real looking inside. The work of therapy is helping the client see that incongruence and gently to dare to be who they truly are, because at the heart of it, the true self is good enough. Yet so often the true self feels unacceptable to the person themselves.

“I can’t let people see that.” And underneath the everything’s fine, there’s all this turbulence. That is incongruence. So here’s a question worth sitting with. How congruent can any of us really be? Picture a small child in a supermarket queue saying loudly, “Mummy, I need the toilet now.” A child can get away with that.

But imagine being in a formal business meeting. Suddenly it’s much harder to simply be ourselves. I’ve been in workplace meetings where someone grumbled they weren’t allowed to eat their lunch, and when I asked, “why not just bring it in?” The answer was, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that.” So congruence really does come down to personal development and personal growth.

Part of it is being willing to look at our own idiosyncrasies, the things that trip us up in life. Sometimes we’re the authors of our own misfortune, and it’s only when we can look in the mirror and say, “Actually, the reason I struggle in relationships might be this,” that we become truly congruent with ourselves.

That’s a work in progress. Therapy is the catalyst, but it isn’t an instant fix. Congruence is a lifelong journey.

If you’re finding this helpful, do download the free handout linked below.

Now, why being real does not mean saying everything all the time, and this is where congruence has to be balanced with unconditional positive regard.

Imagine a client tells you something and you can see a pattern they can’t yet see. If you’ve only known them a short while, naming it too soon might be more than the relationship can hold. Are you being incongruent if you hold it back? I’d say what comes in here is wisdom. Sometimes you store that understanding up and offer it later when the relationship is strong enough to withstand it.

Some of us can lean towards being too congruent, blurting out our truth at moments that don’t serve anyone. So the real skill is the appropriate use of congruence in the right setting and always in service of the client. That said, congruence does ask something brave of us. It means not hiding behind a professional facade.

Retreating into theory or becoming defensive when a client asks us a direct question is sometimes called defensive psychotherapy, and clients feel it. It means that when we get something wrong, we own it, and if needed, we apologise. Owning a mistake early can strengthen the relationship, not weaken it, and it means that when a client asks something we can’t answer , we can simply say I don’t know.

As Socrates reminded us , the wisest person is often the one willing to say exactly that. If you’re ever unsure where these lines sit, that’s precisely the kind of thing to take to supervision. It’s also worth knowing that congruence isn’t purely a person-centred idea. It appears right across the therapies.

In transactional analysis, Helena Hargaden and Charlotte Sills drew on it in their two thousand and two book on relational transactional analysis, reaching back to the philosopher Martin Buber and his idea of genuine meeting. Petruska Clarkson wrote about the person to person or real relationship. Even in more directive approaches like cognitive behavioural therapy, the most effective practitioners are often deeply real and genuine.

So congruence is valued right across the therapies, whatever modality or modalities you practice. And here’s the pinch of salt I’d add. When we say, “This is my truth, this is how I see things,” we need to remember where our truths come from. They’re shaped by our experiences, the road we’ve walked, our parenting, our schooling, our beliefs, the society around us.

All of that colours what we see, and it colours our congruence too. What we bring is our truth at this moment, and because we keep growing, that truth isn’t fixed. Your congruence today may look a little different from your congruence tomorrow, and hopefully different again a year from now. That’s not inconsistency.

That’s personal development.

Let’s bring this together. Congruence means being real, your outer expression matching your inner experience with no distortion. It’s the third of the six conditions Rogers described in nineteen fifty-seven, and it works by giving the client permission to be real too. Clients often arrive in incongruence, hiding feelings that feel unacceptable, and therapy helps them dare to be their true selves.

None of us is perfectly congruent. It’s a lifelong journey of self-development, and congruence must be balanced with unconditional positive regard, used with wisdom and always in service of the client. So what can you do? Get to know who you are and find your true self, explore your day-to-day interactions and ask, “Am I being congruent here?”

Where you notice you can’t quite be your true self, journal about why that might be, and know that you are good enough just as you are. Here’s my challenge to you: What’s stopping you from being all of you? Because incongruence usually carries a quiet discomfort, a sense of not quite being complete, and there’s something profoundly freeing in being able to say, “This is who I am,” and to know that’s enough.

I’ll leave you with Carl Rogers himself: ” What I am and what I feel are good enough to be a basis for therapy. If I can transparently be what I am and what I feel in relationship to him, then perhaps he can be what he is openly and without fear.”

Thank you for watching. If you found this helpful, you’ll find many more videos here on our channel covering counselling theory, skills, and professional practice.

And you can explore hundreds of articles, study guides, and resources at counsellingtutor.com. We look forward to seeing you in the next video.