And hello to you and welcome to the podcast. Today, I want to give you a little taster, a bite-sized

introduction to something that Carl Rogers came up with. And if you've never heard of Carl Rogers,

no worries. He was one of the key figures in humanistic psychology. Kind of people are naturally good and can grow and heal if they're

given the right environment type of therapist. And one of his contributions was something that he called

the seven stages of process, a way of understanding emotional and psychological growth, and it gives us

quite a compassionate, flexible way of thinking about where we are on our journey, whether we're

stuck, shifting, or feeling fairly sorted. So I thought today I'll give you a quick overview

of these stages stages a little warm

up before you go and listen to the full episode, which you can find over on Patreon, where we go a bit

deeper into each stage. But here's the basics to wet your whistle. So stage one, you might think of this

as the I'm not the problem stage.

This is where people often don't even know that they're stuck.

Or if they do, they're certain it's because of everybody else.

Their emotions are either irrelevant or they're scary.

I'm fine is their catchphrase. And therapy might feel

pointless at this stage to them because they're stubborn a little bit. Not because they're

stubborn people, but usually because they're fearful. Change feels risky. But with therapy,

they can begin to see some alternatives and move on to stage to the

maybe it's not just everybody else stage where there's a flicker of insight they're still blame

but a tiny crack appears somebody might admit yeah i do lose my temper a bit but it'll come with a

but only because they push my buttons.

This is where awareness begins to grow, so they can move on to stage three, where they're beginning to notice their emotions, not necessarily feeling them particularly deeply,

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