I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, h… - Carl Rogers

Can I let myself experience positive attitudes toward this other person — attitudes of warmth, caring, liking, interest, respect? It is not easy. I find in myself, and feel that I often see in others, a certain amount of fear of these feelings. We are afraid that if we let ourselves freely experience these positive feelings toward another we may be trapped by them. They may lead to demands on us or we may be disappointed in our trust, and these outcomes we fear. So as a reaction we tend to build up distance between ourselves and others — aloofness, a “professional” attitude, an impersonal relationship.

I am isolated. I sit in a glass ball, I see people through a glass wall. I scream, but they do not hear me.

- Ellen West

In this process it is not necessary for the therapist to “motivate” the client or to supply the energy which brings about the change. Nor, in some sense, is the motivation supplied by the client, at least in any conscious way. Let us say rather that the motivation for learning and change springs from the self-actualizing tendency of life itself, the tendency for the organism to flow into all the differentiated channels of potential development, insofar as these are experienced as enhancing.