Question: Emily, you say your favourite thing about your job is helping people live happier and healthier lives, would you agree that a content person has self-actualised?

Emily Mattacola answered on 19 Nov 2019:

I think there’s a difference between being content and being self-actualised. Self-actualisation is about maintaining and enhancing your self-concept through reflection, reinterpretation of experience, and personal growth. Being happy is absolutely a part of this, but we can be content without engaging in the reflection and reinterpretation. Also remember that self-actualisation requires being socially competent and having autonomy, meaning that we have good social connections, but we do not let the demands that these relationships create sway us from our path to self-actualisation. Being self-actualised is really hard, and there is a reason why it is incredibly rare! I’m not a counselling psychologist, who tend to be the ones to use person-centred therapy, so my aim is not to help service users to achieve self-actualisation. Instead, I’m more interested in helping them to live well with a chronic condition, and especially focusing on helping people to see that living with a chronic condition doesn’t define who they are.