Real confidence: Carl Rogers' 7 stages of personal growth

Have you ever wondered why confidence feels elusive, even when you’ve ticked all the boxes?

You’ve achieved things, taken the courses, pushed through fears. And yet, in certain rooms or roles, doubt still creeps in. You second-guess what you said. You worry about how you came across. You try to act confident, but inside, you don’t feel it.

This isn’t just about imposter syndrome or low self-esteem. It’s about something deeper: the degree to which you feel emotionally safe to be fully yourself.

One of the most powerful frameworks for understanding this is Carl Rogers' Seven Stages of Process. It comes from person-centred therapy and maps how people grow from self-protection to self-trust. It’s rarely discussed outside of therapy rooms, but it’s profoundly useful in coaching, especially when clients are trying to build authentic, lasting confidence.

Let’s unpack what it is and how it might help you see yourself differently.

The 7 stages of process

In simple terms, Rogers outlined a journey of psychological growth that moves through seven stages:

1. Resistance to experience: Emotions are denied or avoided. The person presents a polished image, but doesn’t share what they really feel.
2. Slight willingness to communicate: They begin to talk about problems, but at a distance. Feelings are intellectualised or blamed on others.
3. Cautious self-expression: Feelings are acknowledged, but only cautiously and often in the past tense.
4. Emerging openness: More real-time emotions are expressed. There’s some conflict between what they say and what they feel.
5. Emotional ownership: Feelings are embraced and accepted as part of the self. Vulnerability increases.
6. Self-acceptance: Emotions are experienced without defence. There’s alignment between values, feelings, and behaviour.
7. Ongoing growth: The person is fully open to their experience, confident in their self-concept, and able to change flexibly.

These are not steps to complete. They’re stages of the process. You might be at stage six in your relationships but at stage two in your career. You might move forward, then pull back. That’s all part of growth.

So what does this have to do with confidence?

Most people think confidence is something you build through practice, positive thinking, or performance. And those strategies can help. But many people find they don’t stick, especially when they’re rooted in masking vulnerability.

Confidence that endures doesn’t come from pretending you’re fine. It comes from feeling safe enough to stop pretending.

Confidence grows naturally when:

• you can be with your feelings, without judging them
• you no longer need to manage others’ perceptions to feel OK
• you can speak from your truth, not from a script

This is exactly what Rogers’ Seven Stages describe. It’s not about becoming someone else. It’s about becoming safe enough, internally, to show up as you are.

How to apply this 

Understanding where you are in this process can shift everything. You stop asking, “Why don’t I feel confident yet?” and start asking more useful questions like:

• Where do I feel I have to hide parts of myself?
• What emotions or thoughts do I still push down?
• Where do I feel congruent, and where do I feel divided?

In coaching, this insight helps us identify whether your confidence challenge is really about skill or about permission to feel, express, and own your experience without fear.

Coaching might explore:

• when and why you learned to avoid vulnerability
• how to gently reconnect with denied parts of yourself
• practices to move from intellectualising to emotional presence
• how confidence is felt in the body, not just spoken in the mind

This is deep work, but also incredibly empowering. Because once you stop fearing your feelings, you stop fearing the world.

Ready to build real confidence?

If you’re on a journey to show up more fully, in work, relationships, or life, this process can help you get there. You don’t have to perform confidence. You can develop the conditions to feel it from within.

If this resonates, I invite you to reach out to a professional. In coaching, you'll work at the pace that feels right for you, whether you're just starting to question your patterns or ready to explore what’s underneath.