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 As I sat with Sally, I asked what she was feeling. She reported feeling anger, sadness and fear.
She talked about her dog, and how one time when she was out walking, a large mastiff attacked her dog and took a large bite of of her.
Sally was distraught, not only from the experience, but because she didnt feel that she could protect her dog.
This is a scary and upsetting incident, but there was also something about the way she said 'couldnt protect' that had a particular emphasis.
I wanted to know more about that aspect.
Sally then talked about an experience 20 years previously, where she had wanted to visit her family, and her husband had stopped her. She was trapped, and very unhappy.
She got ready to escape, with her son. But her husband caught her, and hit her. Her son was sobbing at the time. She had a similar feeling - she didnt do enough to protect her son.
This piece of unfinished business had stayed with her for all this time, being reawakened by the dog attack.
So I set up an experiment. I asked someone to play her ex-husband. I invited her to tell him exactly what she wanted to say at the time.
As she did so, there was a huge release of emotion that had been pent up for so long. I encouraged her to feel those feelings circulate in her blood - to flow to all parts of her body. This was important so it wasnt just about the external expression, or the release, but the full awareness in the present of all the feelings she had set aside.
After this, she felt profoundly enlivened, and the incident with the dog no longer had so much traumatic valence.
Lilly lived with her grandmother from her mid childhood. She went overseas as an adult, and returned after 10 years to care for her parents. She reported feeling very angry at her parents, even feeling hate. She reported a range of other issues - a child lost in childbirth, issues with her husband whom she was about to divorce. She had not told her parents about any of this, as she was afraid of their blame, especially her father. I commented that this was a train full of big issues, and I would only deal with one today. I let people know this so they have a realistic expectation of the therapy. In Gestalt we generally say, we just deal with one 'figure' at a time, that is, per session. If that is integrated, its more powerful than trying to solve everything at once. Its also a way of reminding myself that I dont have to do everything. I brought her into the present, and asked what she wanted from me - she said a hug. As we hugged, I could feel her tense still. I invited her to come into the present, and take it in. She relaxed. I could see her issues with her father were deep seated, and complex. So I wanted to bring these also into the present. I invited her to imagine I was representing her father, and tell me/him that she was afraid of being blamed. This facilitates what we term as 'good contact' in Gestalt - a fully owned statement is the start. I then asked ask me/her father for someting. Again she was afraid of blame. As I looked at her, I noticed her eyes - they were full of strong feeling. I asked her what she felt - she didnt know. When someone is afraid of being 'blamed', often they have their own storehouse of blame, which they see in the other person. I sat there for some time with her, patiently, just looking at each other. She said 'I want to throw things, to smash things'. Now she was getting in touch with her anger. I said - you are showing me with your eyes how angry you are - and indeed, I could see that in her eyes. I told her - I will make myself fully available to you, for you to really communicate with me about how angry you feel. Lilly looked at me, very hard. I encouraged her to let the anger come fully into her eyes. Then BANG - it was like she hit me. But she had not moved, or touched me. She let her full anger come out through her eyes. It went through my body like an electric shock. I said 'I get it now'. In that moment, I truly 'got' how angry she was - not just because she told me, or because I could see it, but because I allowed her anger to impact me, and she allowed her anger out. This was a profound form of contact. It was strong and enlivening for both of us. It was profoundly satsifying for her - no longer in the victim role, and now fully able to own and be present with her anger; and to have me receive it, without reaction or collapse. In Gestalt, we see good contact, in and of itself, as curative.
Evelyn's whole body was tense. She said she found it hard to sleep, since she was a child. I wanted to know about the tension. I asked what happened to her when she was a child. She told a story - she was 5 years old. Her mother left her at a train station, to wait, while she went shopping. She told Evelyn to stay there, until she came back. It was quite some time. Evelyn said a similar thing happened one time with her father - he asked her to wait at the train station until he came back from an errand. But it was dark, and she was scared. Clearly, these two incidents were highly traumatic, and the fear had remained in her body until adulthood, continuing to manifest in the present, as tension. This is the 'creative adjustment' in Gestalt, the way of surviving from childhood, which becomes embedded in how we are in the world. The context was crystal clear - so I wanted to work directly with that setting in the field, bringing it into the present, as we do in the Gestalt experiment, allowing something new to happen. So I asked the group to wander around, representing people at the train station. I asked Evelyn to select a woman to represent a female who felt like a safe person when she was little - an aunt. I asked who would have been a man who was a safe person when she was growing up - she said noone. Finally she said the closest person would have been her aunt's boyfriend So the representative for the aunt stood on one side, and I (representing the aunts boyfriend) stood on the other side of Evelyn. Replicating the scene, I asked her how tense she felt - she reported 10/10. I then held her tightly with one arm around her shoulders, and the aunt-representative did the same from the other side. I talked to Evelyn in the way she might have needed as a child - telling her that her parents were away, but that she was supported right now, and safe, and we would stay with her until they returned. She shook, she cried, and I kept bringing her into the present experience of support, encouraging her to take in the new experience, to breathe it in, and ground through her feet, at the same time as holding her firmly, so she could also let go, and not have to hold herself together in way she was used to. The experience was very intense for her. After some time, she started relaxing, becoming more steady and more able to 'stand on her own two feet'. At the end, she reported her tension was 1/10 - a dramatic change. This experience may or may not be permanently 'curative'. What is more important is that it introduced novelty - support, into a place where she has never experienced support. It allowed her to not only have a healing experience, but learn to take in support where she is used to holding herself together.
Nuri was nervous. She described how she couldnt sleep, and mentioned her parents fighting every night. I said - 'I am 20 years older than you, and could be in the same generation as your father'. I asked her to show me how her father sat (a little bent over). I did this both to get a sense of her father, to invite her into his position (and therefore out of her own) - creating some movement from her child position...and also to anticipate and acknowledge any dynamics between us that may echo her relationship. This is important in Gestalt, to pay attention in the present to such dynamics, as they can provide a great deal of material for direct exploration and experimentation. Next she posed the question - 'does my father like me?'. She mentioned some of the things she thought he didnt like about her. Rather than get into that, I asked her to turn the statement around, to make a statement about the things she doesnt like about her father...and then 'put him in the chair' and say them directly to him. She felt relief. This is a Gestalt process of ownership - people tend to percieve things in other that may or may not be accurate. But the point is, there is a part of themselves projected there. By turning the statement around, Nuri was no longer in the helpless position - dependent on whether or not he liked her. She could move into her own ground, and own what was true for her - the basis of responsibility and authenticity.
Lynne came up to work, but seemed unclear as to just what she wanted to work on. She appeared very disembodied to me. Her conversation would constantly go to abstract issues, questions, things where were engaging intellectually, but seemed far removed from who she was as an emotional being. I noticed her shirt - it had sparkly crystals on it. I made several observations about it, as well as trying to bring her into the present in the conversation. She would pull away from the present, and did not respond at all to my curiosity about her own 'sparkliness'. Ok, none of this was engaging her, or enhancing contact. She did however report that her legs feeling cold - no surprise, as she was hardly in her body. She did feel some warmth in her heart, at our contact. She spoke several times of working with me, the 'maestro'. These references were clearly putting me on a pedestal. So I grabbed this as a point of contact. I sat up on the edge of my chair, physically above her, and spoke of my experience of being 'above it all'. I then invited her to do the same, and we both sat there, perched up on our chairs, sharing that experience. We were on the level, but everyone else was beneath us. This gave her the experience of being able to be with me, in some more horizontal way. I then sat down, and asked her to stay up there on the chair, and enquired about her experience. This gave us a chance to explore the other polarity - the way she sees herself above others. She actually felt quite comfortable up there. When she came back down, she reported feeling a lot more warmth in her legs and body. Talking has significant limits in therapy. Especially when talking does not really facilitate contact, its important to do something different. The Gestalt experiment allows a chance to bring creativity, variety, and presence into the therapeutic contact. It involves taking elements of what actual IS, and bringing them to life, in order to facilitate further awareness and contact.
Harvey mentioned divorce in his family. His parents were divorced. His brothers were divorced. He was divorced. He was wondering what was going on in his family. This was a clear invitation to look at family patterns, and examine the field. I did not follow this obvious line of interest. Partly because he wanted some served up 'answers' on this front, and it was a little too much 'ordered up' for me - I want to get beneath this - to find out more about who he was, and the details of his experience. People can get fascinated by the field, but this can be more of an intellectual interest, and not necessarily the best start to therapy. So I asked about his own experience of divorce. He talked about feeling fairly settled with it. I also shared something of my own experience. There appeared to be no unfinished business left, or at least none that he was revealing. But then he talked about his son, who he now only saw twice a year. He reported that he would sometimes would wake up crying, thinking about this. He felt a deep pain in his heart, and he talked about how he would avoid dealing with the topic, or thinking about it, because it was so painful. I used some awareness processes to invite him more fully into the experience in the present, and was present with him in that place. But, he only got so far in going deeper. He said that he would like to do a process like this overseas... as there were many of his students and colleagues in the workshop, and he did not feel completely comfortable opening up. I gave him an image - on one side, the sea of his emotions, on the other, the obstacle of the cliff of his holding back..he was on a narrow ledge between. He agreed. I did not try to push him on this. I respect people's limits, and their 'resistance' as being valid. I told him - 'I am with you, in this place, sitting on this ledge'. I stayed with him in that space for a little while. He got a sense of the support available to him in that place, and it touched him deeply. He said that he would take that experience with him. The session did not end on a 'finished' or 'resolved' note. We did not go through the whole awareness cycle. Often we can do that in Gestalt, but not always. And, thats ok. Whats more important is the experience of contact, of being present with the client in the 'stuck' place - which in one sense is not stuck, but a place of choice. They choose to stay in that place. Being with them in that way creates the ground for something different to happen - and builds relationship. Then, when there is enough internal and external ground the person can more easily choose something different. No matter where the client is, no matter how 'resistant', we can be with them in a Gestalt process, and find the place of contact.
Larry had been practicing trying to notice his feelings. He found this enormously difficult. He had set them aside for so many years that most of the time he just 'felt emptiness'. Now, he was able to start recognising, sometimes, small feelings in his body. So I wanted to build on this. I asked him to pick three people in the group that he had the strongest feelings in relation to, and name those feelings. He did so, then I supported him to bring those statements into relationship with the people. Doing so, he got a heartfelt response. This was encouraging for him. I guided him as to how to continue such conversations, ensuring that if he gave a thought/perception response, he also included a feeling as well. As he did this, the conversations built. He got some very positive feedback. Others in the group, for the first time, felt touched by him. He started to feel enormous warmth in his body, which continued to build, so he was heating up significantly. This was the feeling of emotional pleasure, which he was unused to, and constituted a very important ground-building experience for Larry. The conversations developed. Next came learning for him regarding making enquiry about the other person. As he named his own responses, they contained a lot of positivity towards the other person, but did not include curiosity or asking questions, or checking out his perceptions or imaginations about them. I showed him how to do this, to check out his projections to find out who the other person really was. Then the next stage involved talking about the impact on him of hearing the complexity of the person being revealed to him. In his previous emotionally dry world, his understanding and experience of people was more two dimensional. Now this recognition of his own, and then other's emotions gave him a more three dimensional experience, but one which he then needed support to decipher, and understand how to continue to dialogue with. Everyone appreciated Larry's efforts, including me, and gave him very positive feedback. This process was significant, as men often do not have the skills to develop intimate conversations. The first stage requires them to get in touch with their feelings. Due to socialisation, and perhaps traumatic experiences, many men are substantially out of touch with their feelings. It requires careful support, both from a therapist, as well as those around, for this to occur. Then support is needed to build on this, into conversation, and dialogue. Because women are more easily in touch with the feelings (for the most part), they can easily take up group time, as they are more easily articulate about their feelings. Men can need additional space and support - and patience, in this process.
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