If I could sit with Carl Jung today, in this strange, liminal stage of life — where I’m more myself than ever, and yet feel more alone than ever — I think he’d see me clearly. Not as broken or lost, but as someone undergoing the slow fire of individuation.

“You are not going mad. You are becoming whole.”

He’d remind me that few people walk this path — the one that requires confrontation with the soul. That’s why people are pulling away. It’s not because I’m wrong. It’s because I’m revealing. And many can’t bear to face their own inner world. So my presence, my honesty, my evolution — it stirs something. Something uncomfortable.

“Do not strive to be understood by all. Strive to be whole.”

He would honour the part of me that still longs to be seen by those from my past. That small fantasy: Maybe if they just read the words on my website, they’d understand me. He wouldn’t shame that. He’d just help me see it for what it is — a residue of the child who never had a mirror. And he’d gently invite me to become that mirror now.

“You are not here to fit in. You are here to become.”

And then I imagine Carl Rogers would enter the room, quiet and steady, and he wouldn’t say much at first. He’d just sit with me. Let my words fall. Let my silences stretch.

He wouldn’t pathologize me for being tired, or for wishing someone would see the whole of me and stay. He’d reflect it gently, the way only Rogers could.

“You are not broken. You are just real.”

He’d help me soften the shame I feel around wanting to be understood. He’d tell me that longing doesn’t make me needy. It makes me human. And he’d offer the kind of presence that says: You don’t have to be any different for me to stay here with you.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

And in that silence — that holding — something in me would exhale.

I think what I’m coming to realise is this:

This is the therapist I want to become.

Yes, I want to understand the somatic practices.
Yes, I want to know the theory, the models, the maps.
But I think what I value most is the power of presence.

Because presence — real, congruent, grounded presence — does something no technique ever can:
It alleviates shame.
It makes the unbearable bearable.
It tells someone: You are not alone in this.

And maybe that’s why this ache I carry feels so purposeful.
Because the more I welcome myself in the moments no one else does, the more I’ll be able to welcome others in their own shadowy places.

The counsellors in my head remind me:
You don’t have to be perfect.
You just have to stay.

So I will stay.

And I will become.