When every part of you is completely satisfied with what’s happening. When we've talked to our clients about this, they come up with words like ‘agreement… harmony… alignment… unity… completeness… balance… peace.’
Congruence is a sign that your needs, your yearnings, your values, your beliefs, your life directions are all fitting together beautifully. It feels right. It's what you have been aiming for ever since your life began… minute to minute, day to day, year to year… to feel that everything is right.
Incongruence is the opposite – the (sometimes painful) feeling when something in you is in disagreement, unharmonious, out of alignment, divided, incomplete, unbalanced… conflicted. Incongruence feels somehow unsatisfactory – as if your mind and body are signalling that something is wrong.
But incongruence itself is not an error. It's essential and hugely useful. It alerts you to when a problem needs solving. Perhaps there's some kind of threat… some kind of fear… some need for protection… some need for action… some need for resolution.
Inner conflict is the ultimate form of incongruence, when your needs, your yearnings, your values, your beliefs, your life directions… are battling.
You need to act. You need to resolve the conflict.
You need to get back to when everything felt right for you. You need to move forward to congruence.
Here's one thing, though, which you need to know. It's possible to be congruent and hurting. Because even when mind and body are aligned, in harmony, in balance, there can still be pain.
So maybe after a loss, the sadness hurts deeply. It's still totally appropriate to grieve.
Maybe there's an injustice – and the anger that follows is hugely painful. But the protest is still completely justified.
Or maybe there's a willing sacrifice – a giving up of something precious that brings with it emotional devastation. Even so, the sacrifice may still be totally the right thing to have done.
Congruence is not necessarily always about being pain-free. Congruence is about what feels right for you.