Personal congruence: the secret to protecting our dreams and our essence

Surely you have often heard about congruence and what it means to be someone who is congruent. Or perhaps you have heard the typical comment of “he is incongruous! “He does one thing and says another, no one understands him!”

Well… it seems that Being congruent is linked to a certain transparency, both internal (of a person with himself) and external (in which what one reflects is what one IS). One shows nothing but one’s truth, without camouflage or masks.

On the other hand, people who act incongruently are those who generate certain headaches for both themselves and others. They move away from what they ARE, they behave in a different way than how they feel or how they think.

Congruence is the correspondence between what one feels and expresses.

Therefore, we can define congruence as that balance that exists between one’s most visceral state (what one feels in one’s “guts”) and the externalization that one makes of it in their behavior, both verbal and non-verbal. That is, when one is congruent there is no lack of harmony between what one feels and what one externalizes.

For example, if I feel betrayed by my friend, I will not camouflage it or act as if nothing had happened. I will reflect how I feel, since there is a lot of pain that I have received and I would like her to be able to see how she has made me feel. I will be consistent with my pain and my feelings.

Congruent people generate trust towards others

Congruent people usually generate trust in others, since they do not show another side than what they feel, nor do they make any effort to pretend or disguise their internal state. They know how to listen to what they feel inside and are able to accept it, without deceiving themselves or others.

They show themselves as they are, without giving any nuances other than how they feel. They are brave people, since we live in a society in which we have not exactly been taught to show what we feel. Rather, on many occasions we have been encouraged since childhood to hide our true emotions, to mask them, or even to cover them with others that are better tolerated in this society.

Sometimes we cover sadness with excessive joy… or we use sadness to get what we long for and that is not given to us.. Surely you may know someone who was very happy shortly after suffering some loss (for example, a love loss). She does not allow herself to suffer the loss because “she has to be strong” and because “no man deserves his tears.”

And when he needs to cry, he will laugh. And each time you will be accumulating more weight on your true emotion. Covering it until there are no shreds of it left. In this way one ends up becoming an expert in pretending and inexperienced in letting oneself be and feel as one is.

Congruence speaks of the correspondence between thoughts and actions

We also talk about congruence when we refer to that harmony that exists between our actions or behaviors and our way of thinking. Many times, we have probably discovered ourselves acting in a way that contradicts our thoughts and values. This produces a mixture of strangeness and shame in us.

If I boast about how tolerant and patient I am with others, but then, at the first opportunity, I am incapable of assuming points of view other than my own; If I get angry and nervous… I’ll probably have to rethink this idea of ​​myself. Since believing that one is one way, but then actually being in a way contrary to what one believes, produces an unpleasant sensation. Therefore, this inconsistency tends to be eliminated: in favor of one side or the other.

The problem of being incongruent lies above all in the distrust that we end up generating in other people. It’s hard to trust someone who acts differently than they think, and it’s hard to trust someone who acts the opposite of how they really feel.

Intuition shows us who is being consistent with us and who is not.

There are very intuitive people who are able to perceive these dissonances and at the same time are able to perceive when someone is being congruent. And this is something that is worthy of gratitude, since It is easier and less reckless to be yourself in the company of people who are being themselves – without any mask –to be in the company of people who give the sensation of being at a masked ball.

For all this, it is very important to continue knowing ourselves, without fear or hesitation in observing what is inside us. If we accept what we are we will have no need to hide or deny it. He thinks that living with a mask on is exhausting and does not create any authentic relationship with the other.

Finding balance between what you feel, think and do is quite an achievement. that will make our relationships more true and authentic; starting with the relationship we have with ourselves since we are our only life companions from the moment we are born until we die, whether we want it or not.

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