What Is The Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI)?

A Private Self-Assessment Tool For Understanding Your Personal Concerns

If You Can Clearly Verbalize A Problem, The Solution Becomes Readily Available

If you’ve ever wished you could quickly pinpoint what’s holding you back and know exactly where to focus, the Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI) can help. It is a private self-guided tool that helps you identify, prioritize, and address the concerns that matter most in your life while tracking your progress over time.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Reaume Carroll Mulry (Dr. Ray Mulry) developed the PCI as a different approach to psychological self-assessment. Instead of focusing on outside evaluation, the PCI helps you identify your own concerns, recognize what is most important, and decide where to direct your attention.

The PCI is the self-awareness foundation of the Mulry Method. By clearly identifying personal concerns, you can move toward Focused Action and develop a better understanding of yourself.

How The Personal Concerns Inventory Works

The PCI guides you through a structured series of questions covering more than 1,000 possible personal concerns. Most people complete the online inventory in approximately 20 minutes.

The process is designed to help you discover what is most important in your life at this moment. It does not tell you what your concerns should be. Instead, it helps bring your own priorities into clearer focus.

After completing the PCI, you receive an instant personalized “This Is Me!” Report. This report identifies your highly focused concerns and provides a starting point for reflection, discussion, and action.

Your results remain private unless you choose to share them. The PCI gives you control over your information and allows you to decide how you use what you learn.

Why The PCI Was Created

As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Mulry spent decades studying psychological assessment and helping people understand their concerns.

Traditional psychological assessment often uses multiple questionnaires, personality tests, and evaluation methods to gather information. These tools can be valuable, but Dr. Mulry recognized that many people already have important information about themselves if they are given the opportunity to identify and express it clearly.

The question was simple:

Do people always need someone else to determine what matters most in their lives?

In many situations, direct questioning can reveal important information quickly. A person may know the source of a concern but have never clearly verbalized it.

For example, when someone is experiencing serious emotional distress, one of the most important questions a professional can ask is a direct one: are they thinking about harming themselves? Asking the question does not create the thought. It allows the person to express what may already be present.

The PCI follows a similar principle. When concerns are clearly identified, they become easier to understand and address.

The Development Of The Personal Concerns Inventory

Dr. Mulry’s background in psychological assessment included:

Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Center for Psychological Research in Princeton, New Jersey
Teaching graduate-level courses in Clinical Psychology assessment at the University of Texas at Austin and Indiana University at Bloomington
Administering hundreds of psychological assessments throughout his career

Through this experience, Dr. Mulry saw the need for an assessment process that gave individuals greater ownership of their personal information.

Dr. Mulry created the PCI to:

Help individuals define their own concerns
Reduce fear of being evaluated or labeled
Keep results private unless shared by choice
Identify priorities that deserve attention
Support Focused Action

Rather than asking, “What is wrong with me?” the PCI encourages a more productive question:

“What concerns are most important for me to understand and address?”

The “This Is Me!” Report

The PCI creates a personal snapshot of your current concerns.

The “This Is Me!” Report helps you see patterns that may not always be obvious during everyday life. Some concerns may be familiar, while others may reveal connections between different areas of your life.

The purpose is not to create a label. It is to provide clarity.

Clear identification of your concerns helps you make better decisions about where to focus your time, energy, and attention.

Self-Assessment In Action

People often seek help because they do not feel the way they want to feel, but they are unsure why.

Consider a person who believes a relationship problem is caused by personality differences. After looking more closely, they may discover that stress, communication difficulties, financial concerns, or alcohol use are contributing to the conflict.

The original concern may not have been the real concern.

The PCI helps bring these underlying issues into awareness so that attention can be directed toward the areas most likely to create improvement.

Once you understand what matters most, you can take Focused Action.

The Psychology Behind The PCI

The PCI builds on principles from Julian Rotter’s Social Learning Theory.

Rotter explained that human behavior depends on our expectations and the value we place on possible outcomes. We make decisions based on what we believe will happen and how meaningful those outcomes are to us.

The PCI helps identify these personal beliefs and priorities. By clearly verbalizing concerns, you increase awareness of what influences your choices and where change may be possible.

This process supports the development of an internal approach to life, where individuals recognize their ability to influence their own actions and responses.

From Personal Concerns To Focused Action

Identifying concerns is the first step. The next step is deciding what action to take.

The PCI works together with other parts of the Mulry Method, including Relaxation Therapy and In The Zone Skills Training.

Relaxation Therapy helps develop awareness, balance, and control of physical tension. In The Zone Skills Training develops practical skills for attention, performance, and effective action.

Together, these tools support the process of moving from awareness to action.

Tracking Change Over Time

You can return to the PCI over time to track how your concerns change.

People change. Their responsibilities change. Their concerns and priorities change.

Creating an account allows you to save your PCI results securely so you can:

Compare previous completions
Recognize patterns over time
Observe changing priorities
Measure progress

Your history provides a record of how your concerns develop and how your understanding of yourself changes.

The PCI becomes more than a single assessment. It becomes a tool for ongoing self-learning.

Focus And Attention Create Change

Focus and sustained attention are important parts of learning and personal change.

In The Mind and the Brain (2002), Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz described how attention can influence the development of new neural pathways:

“The power of attention not only allows us to choose what mental direction we will take. By actively focusing attention on one rivulet in the stream of consciousness, it also allows us to change—in scientifically demonstrable ways—the systematic functioning of our own neural circuitry.”

The PCI applies this principle by helping individuals focus attention on the concerns that matter most.

When attention becomes clear and purposeful, change becomes more achievable.

Be Your Own Psychologist

The Personal Concerns Inventory provides a structured way to better understand yourself.

When you can clearly identify and verbalize your personal concerns, you are better prepared to find solutions and take meaningful action.

The PCI reflects the larger philosophy of the Mulry Method:

Relaxed, Balanced, Flexible, and Focused.

It is a self-learning approach designed to help individuals understand themselves, develop useful skills, and take greater responsibility for their own progress.