Not for wimps

(This article is complementary material for Tutorials 1 & 4, a basic knowledge of core conditions is also necessary if you want to make the most of the forum.)

"This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life". (Rogers, 1961)

"It's not who I am underneath, it's what I DO, that defines me" (Batman, in Batman Begins).

Quick-Start Summary (followed by longer version with more explanation)

What interaction is: It is possible to create, in terms that are clearly definable and measurable, the psychological conditions that bring about constructive beneficial personality and behavioral changes, improvements to relationships, communication, health and intelligence. The technique that creates these conditions is called interaction.

What interaction achieves: Beneficial changes in the personality structure of the individual, at both surface and deeper levels, in a direction that produces greater integration, less internal conflict, more energy utilizable for effective living, and a change in behavior away from behaviors generally regarded as immature or dysfunctional and toward behaviors regarded as mature and healthy.

Process Necessary for Interaction:

1. Yourself and another/others are in psychological contact, communicating (via any means).
2. You have an awareness of what anxiety is and how it causes behavior tending towards incongruence ("nonuse" or "wronguse"), and knowledge of the difference between interaction and action/reaction (this is explained below).
3. You communicate with genuineness, honesty and respect.
4. You adopt a position of unconditional positive regard toward whoever you communicate with.
5. You adopt an empathic understanding of the other person's frame of reference.
6. You endeavor to communicate this to them in a meaningful way.

The "Core Conditions":

1. Genuineness
2. Unconditional positive regard
3. Empathy

Expect the "beneficial changes" to occur in YOU, not in the other person. We do not practice interaction to try to change others, but to improve ourselves.