In the practice of helping, personalizing emphasizes “internalizing” those experiences that make us “person-like.” In other words, we become human as we internalize our understanding of ourselves. In short, we “grow” ourselves as we “know” ourselves. In this context, personalizing is the heart of helping.

PESONALIZING GROWTH

Personalizing is the most difficult interpersonal skill to learn and apply. It threatens us because we are put “on the line.” We feel scared because we cannot change until we have put ourselves “on the line.” We feel disappointed in ourselves because we cannot personalize our understanding of ourselves or others. We are really eager to learn to personalize. We are hopeful that we can change and grow.

PERSONALIZING CHANGE

By responding empathically, we enter the experience of others to help them explore where they are in their lives. By personalizing, we create a dialogue with them that facilitates their understanding where they want to be. It is a dialogue between their “real” selves and their “ideal” selves. They are unhappy with their “real” selves. They are hopeful they can become their “ideal” selves. By personalizing this understanding, we are their agents of change.

“REAL” “IDEAL”

Born of an empathic and ethical attitude, personalizing is served by a set of skills that enable us to accomplish spiraling levels of understanding through which we

•   Become “one” with the experience of others

•   Process the meaning of this experience

•   Process the problems embedded in the meaning

•   Generate goals to remediate problems

•   Recycle the new experiences as we prepare for acting

In short, personalizing is a developmental process for understanding ourselves, others and the world about us. Personalizing moves us from immaturity to maturity in helping and life. Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and I will change the world.” Personalizing is that lever!

PERSONALIZING—HIGHLY LEVERAGED SKILLS

Personalizing builds upon the interchangeable base we have established with our responding skills.

We facilitate personalized understanding when we assist the helpees in internalizing, or owning, the meaning of their experiences, their problems or deficits, and their goals or the assets they want and need. Helper personalizing involves the formulation and communication of personalized or individualized responses to meaning, problems and goals.

Personalizing also involves recycling the new feelings that are attendant to the personalized meaning, problems and goals. Personalizing facilitates helpee understanding and prepares us for initiating helpee action.

PERSONALIZING FACILITATES HELPEE UNDERSTANDING

Personalizing assists helpees in internalizing their experiences. Often we find that helpees talk about third persons: friends, employers, teachers, spouses, parents, children. By focusing upon others, the helpees externalize their experiences. By focusing upon themselves, the helpees internalize their experiences.

When responding “interchangeably” to meaning, we used the externalizing format: “You feel (feeling) because (content).” Now we internalize their experiences by introducing the helpees into the responses using the format: “You feel (feeling) because you (meaning, problem or goal).”

All personalized responses emphasize “internalizing”— making the helpees accountable for their experiences. We communicate this accountability by including the word you after the word because in our descriptions of the personalized meaning, problems and goals.

INTERNALIZING EXPERIENCES WITH PERSONALIZED RESPONSES