What is Personal Growth?
Psychotherapy or counselling is typically seen as a health solution to various psychological issues. However, going to therapy can also be perfect for helping you grow as a person and develop better skills at self reflection. Personal growth is best described as the constant and ongoing process of learning that you go through across your whole life. It involves not only understanding yourself and others but also putting in effort to become a more well rounded and emotionally healthy individual.
What is Self Awareness?
One of the core benefits of psychology is helping you develop an increased sense of self-awareness. This is the quality of judging your own behaviour objectively and using that information to learn more about yourself and the world around you. Self awareness is a life long process and one that is deceptively difficult. I’m sure in daily life you’ve encountered people who don’t know what they’re feeling or aren’t aware of how what they do affects others.
How Self Awareness Can Help You Grow
People who lack self-awareness have a hard time growing as they can’t see why what they’re doing is creating the results they don’t like. That’s why psychology is so helpful, in general and for developing self awareness, the psychologists can act as a neutral third party and help guide you to learning more about yourself.
This is why psychologists don’t give advice directly most of the time. People are much more likely to absorb information they have come to themselves as opposed to information they have been told. But self awareness isn’t just useful for psychological disorders it’s also useful for learning things about yourself. Why you get so short tempered around the holidays or why you always find yourself breaking up with partners you really like for small reasons
How Gossip Can Make You a Better Person
Psychotherapy and counselling also have other benefits. This can come in the form of being in a safe space to voice your thoughts, opinions and worries without cause for judgement. Psychologists can act as a neutral third party and provide validation for opinions and goals you can’t or won’t share with the other people in your life who may have a personal stake in the matter.
For example, a psychology session is a good place to voice concerns about toxic relationships or dissatisfaction at work without worry that the information will spread. This can lead to personal growth by allowing you to take risks and be brave in making life changes. It can also help you to see where you may have judged a person harshly or be having thoughts and feelings that seem exaggerated when you tell them to another person.
Maurer, M. M., Maurer, J., Hoff, E., & Daukantaitė, D. (2023). What is the process of personal growth? Introducing the Personal Growth Process Model. New Ideas in Psychology, 70, 101024-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2023.101024