PLR: Acknowledging Anxiety
PLR – Acknowledging Anxiety
Tonight we learnt about anxiety and how it can affect us. Anxiety is a state of displeasure, fear or concern. Anxiety is normal when reacting to stress but when anxiety becomes excessive it can affect a person’s life for the worse. Fear is a natural behaviour when a threat is present whereas anxiety is usually related to a feeling of loss on control or an unavoidable situation. An example of this would be going out in public, this is an unavoidable situation but for an agoraphobic this can cause a high state of anxiety.
I acknowledge anxiety in myself when I have to do role plays in class. My heart rate increases, I am not able to concentrate and I think of ways to get out of the situation long before I …show more content…
am even in it. During the course of the class I have felt anxious time and time again about speaking in front of people and doing role plays. As role plays are a vital part of the course I know I have to do them so they are unavoidable so this type of ongoing anxiety needs to be addressed for my own sake. Although I am an outgoing person in social situations and in work, I definitely do not enjoy being the centre of attention or having all eyes on me. This is a known-known area of my personality as I know this about myself and others know it about me too.
Through self-reflection and calming exercises I have become more confident, I now quite enjoy role plays which shows how far I have progressed in the class. I enjoy the feedback I get from role plays and how much I learn from observing others. As these role plays are observed by my peers and tutor, I will need to constantly try to overcome my anxiety and let go of my fears of failure.
I feel that by becoming more comfortable with using the list of skills I have available and knowing when to use them that I am letting go of my anxiety and concentrating on the future.
Egan ch 4, page 83 states our role as a helper is to “help clients overcome their fears. If people are overly fearful that they will fail, they generally do not act. Therefore procedures that reduce fear and anxiety help heighten the sense of efficiency.”
I have been working on my listening and role play skills and making sure I am up to date with all the relevant information as I feel that if I don’t know the necessary skills then I will get confused and this could increase my anxiety.
It is more than likely that I will always have some anxiety before speaking in front of a room of people; this is a natural reaction and can be managed quite easily. I have learnt to take this type of anxiety as an advantage as I use the anxious feeling to focus on what I need to remember. I have learnt that by being congruent and showing positive regard to myself that I can increase my confidence levels. When trying to deliver a message in a way that wasn’t true to me I became confused and this showed in my role play work.
Through self-reflection and receiving feedback I notice that I often ask too many questions when in the helping relationship, upon reflection I now know this is because I was using questions to fill the silence as I was not at ease with being watched. This is where I should have been using my listening and challenging skills.
Egan 2007, ch 8 suggests “using specific challenging skills such as encouragement, paraphrasing, reflecting and summarising what has been said to keep the client …show more content…
involved.
Egan 2007, ch 6 suggests that when client’s are asked too many questions they feel grilled and this does little to improve the helping relationship. Many clients instinctively know when questions are just filler, used because the hel[per does not have anything better to say.”
"the client knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been buried" (Rogers, 1961, page 11-12).
Self worth (or self-esteem) – what we think about ourselves. Rogers believed feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with the mother and father.
Self-image – How we see ourselves, which is important to good psychological health. Self-image includes the influence of our body image on inner personality. At a simple level, we might perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly. Self-image has an affect on how a person thinks feels and behaves in the world.
Ideal self – This is the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and ambitions in life, and is dynamic – i.e. forever changing. The ideal self in childhood is not the ideal self in our teens or late twenties etc.
A person’s ideal self may not be consistent with what actually happens in life and experiences of the person. Hence, a difference may exist between a person’s ideal self and actual experience. This is called incongruence.
Where a person’s ideal self and actual experience are consistent or very similar, a state of congruence exists. Rarely, if ever does a total state of congruence exist; all people experience a certain amount of incongruence.
The development of congruence is dependent on unconditional positive regard. Carl Rogers believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they must be in a state of congruence.
According to Rogers, we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self.
The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent orcongruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth. A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.
Incongruence is "a discrepancy between the actual experience of the organism and the self-picture of the individual insofar as it represents that experience."
As we prefer to see ourselves in ways that are consistent with our self-image, we may usedefense mechanisms like denial or repression in order to feel less threatened by some of what we consider to be our undesirable feelings. A person whose self-concept is incongruent with her or his real feelings and experiences will defend because the truth hurts.
References
Rogers, Carl. (1951). Client-centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory. London:
Constable.
Rogers, Carl. (1959). A Theory of Therapy, Personality and Interpersonal Relationships as Developed in the Client-centered Framework. In (ed.) S. Koch, Psychology: A Study of a Science. Vol. 3: Formulations of the Person and the Social Context. New York: McGraw Hill.
Tonight we learnt about anxiety and how it can affect us. Anxiety is a state of displeasure, fear or concern. Anxiety is normal when reacting to stress but when anxiety becomes excessive it can affect a person’s life for the worse. Fear is a natural behaviour when a threat is present whereas anxiety is usually related to a feeling of loss on control or an unavoidable situation. An example of this would be going out in public, this is an unavoidable situation but for an agoraphobic this can cause a high state of anxiety.
I acknowledge anxiety in myself when I have to do role plays in class. My heart rate increases, I am not able to concentrate and I think of ways to get out of the situation long before I …show more content…
am even in it. During the course of the class I have felt anxious time and time again about speaking in front of people and doing role plays. As role plays are a vital part of the course I know I have to do them so they are unavoidable so this type of ongoing anxiety needs to be addressed for my own sake. Although I am an outgoing person in social situations and in work, I definitely do not enjoy being the centre of attention or having all eyes on me. This is a known-known area of my personality as I know this about myself and others know it about me too.
Through self-reflection and calming exercises I have become more confident, I now quite enjoy role plays which shows how far I have progressed in the class. I enjoy the feedback I get from role plays and how much I learn from observing others. As these role plays are observed by my peers and tutor, I will need to constantly try to overcome my anxiety and let go of my fears of failure.
I feel that by becoming more comfortable with using the list of skills I have available and knowing when to use them that I am letting go of my anxiety and concentrating on the future.
Egan ch 4, page 83 states our role as a helper is to “help clients overcome their fears. If people are overly fearful that they will fail, they generally do not act. Therefore procedures that reduce fear and anxiety help heighten the sense of efficiency.”
I have been working on my listening and role play skills and making sure I am up to date with all the relevant information as I feel that if I don’t know the necessary skills then I will get confused and this could increase my anxiety.
It is more than likely that I will always have some anxiety before speaking in front of a room of people; this is a natural reaction and can be managed quite easily. I have learnt to take this type of anxiety as an advantage as I use the anxious feeling to focus on what I need to remember. I have learnt that by being congruent and showing positive regard to myself that I can increase my confidence levels. When trying to deliver a message in a way that wasn’t true to me I became confused and this showed in my role play work.
Through self-reflection and receiving feedback I notice that I often ask too many questions when in the helping relationship, upon reflection I now know this is because I was using questions to fill the silence as I was not at ease with being watched. This is where I should have been using my listening and challenging skills.
Egan 2007, ch 8 suggests “using specific challenging skills such as encouragement, paraphrasing, reflecting and summarising what has been said to keep the client …show more content…
involved.
Egan 2007, ch 6 suggests that when client’s are asked too many questions they feel grilled and this does little to improve the helping relationship. Many clients instinctively know when questions are just filler, used because the hel[per does not have anything better to say.”
"the client knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been buried" (Rogers, 1961, page 11-12).
Self worth (or self-esteem) – what we think about ourselves. Rogers believed feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with the mother and father.
Self-image – How we see ourselves, which is important to good psychological health. Self-image includes the influence of our body image on inner personality. At a simple level, we might perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly. Self-image has an affect on how a person thinks feels and behaves in the world.
Ideal self – This is the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and ambitions in life, and is dynamic – i.e. forever changing. The ideal self in childhood is not the ideal self in our teens or late twenties etc.
A person’s ideal self may not be consistent with what actually happens in life and experiences of the person. Hence, a difference may exist between a person’s ideal self and actual experience. This is called incongruence.
Where a person’s ideal self and actual experience are consistent or very similar, a state of congruence exists. Rarely, if ever does a total state of congruence exist; all people experience a certain amount of incongruence.
The development of congruence is dependent on unconditional positive regard. Carl Rogers believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they must be in a state of congruence.
According to Rogers, we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self.
The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent orcongruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth. A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.
Incongruence is "a discrepancy between the actual experience of the organism and the self-picture of the individual insofar as it represents that experience."
As we prefer to see ourselves in ways that are consistent with our self-image, we may usedefense mechanisms like denial or repression in order to feel less threatened by some of what we consider to be our undesirable feelings. A person whose self-concept is incongruent with her or his real feelings and experiences will defend because the truth hurts.
References
Rogers, Carl. (1951). Client-centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory. London:
Constable.
Rogers, Carl. (1959). A Theory of Therapy, Personality and Interpersonal Relationships as Developed in the Client-centered Framework. In (ed.) S. Koch, Psychology: A Study of a Science. Vol. 3: Formulations of the Person and the Social Context. New York: McGraw Hill.