Understanding Johari Window

The Johari Window, named after the first names of its inventors Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, explains our inner world by dividing personal awareness into four areas, like four panes of a window:

• Open: Known to yourself and others
• Blind: Known by others but not to yourself
• Secret: Known to yourself but not others
• Undiscovered: Unknown to yourself or others.

As a listening helper, you need to increase your open area by decreasing the other areas and becoming more self-accepting. Always use openness with discretion for the help-seeker’s benefit – not to take attention away from them and onto your own concerns. People who have a lot of blind spots lack awareness of how they affect others. Such people are likely to give or receive much feedback or disclose much about themselves.

hose who have a big secret area similarly withhold themselves. Beneath both of these behaviours lie fears about being hurt, rejected, or ‘found out’. People with large undiscovered areas have little understanding of how they tick. They may not have learned or taken time to reflect on why they think, feel, and behave as they do. To some extent everyone has elements of each of these characteristics – some blind spots, some unknown parts, and some withheld aspects. Indeed, to survive in the real world, you often have to protect yourself by not opening up these areas and keep defences in place. When helping others, you need to decide if you’re willing to take the risk of opening up your self-awareness and make changes in how you relate to others. My own experience is that it is worth it, partly because doing so has made me increasingly comfortable with myself and because it has improved my relationships with others. Self-discovery and self-acceptance are lifelong endeavours.
The way to increase your open area is by one, or all, of the following routes:

• Disclose more about yourself so that you keep less of yourself secret. This doesn’t mean telling anyone and everyone all about yourself, especially when the other person is trying to tell you about her difficulties. It also may not be appropriate to disclose aspects of yourself in certain situations – others can make judgements. Self-revelation about an experience or feeling of your own can help the other person to feel more normal in relation to her experiences and model to them the importance of being aware of and expressing emotions. You can practise self-disclosure in everyday life within relationships of trust. Notice what happens both inside yourself and in the other person when you take this risk of showing or describing your feelings and thoughts.
  
• Take time to reflect on experience, to develop self-insight and discover more about yourself. Keeping a diary or journal is a good way to increase self-awareness. You may find it difficult at first, if writing doesn’t come naturally to you. Set a time limit of 6 minutes and keeping the pen on the page, keep writing, even if it is gibberish. Doing this, I became better at letting my writing, thoughts and feelings flow. You can take a theme from that 6 minutes of writing and do another 6 minutes focusing on the theme, which can take the exploration deeper. It helps knowing that what you write is personal and for no one else to see. Some people cut and paste poems and pictures, do doodles and sketches in their personal journals. Both the writing itself and reviewing what you’ve committed to paper straight away, and from time to time, increase your self-knowledge through noticing patterns and repeating reactions.
  
• Seek out feedback wherever you can so that you understand more about how you come over to, and affect, others – challenge your blind spots. The prospect of getting feedback can be very scary, especially if you lack confidence. And yet it isn’t usually as bad as you expect and certainly better than your imagination! We are often our own harshest critics. Take time to really listen to any positive feedback – many of us play down the praise we receive, or simply don’t hear it – and encourage feedback about how you come over from anyone seeking your help.