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 The second session with Zelda went like this.
Having addressed her holding back/letting go process in relation to her family of origin, she was now ready to deal with more current issues. This is often the case - once unfinished business in the person's field is attended to, they are more available for focusing on the present.
In this case, after vomiting previously, Zelda was not more clearly in touch with the things that she was 'fed up' with.
I suggested that perhaps a place to start was by expressing these things to her husband.
So I stepped into the 'husband role' so she could talk more 'directly'. Traditionally, Gestalt therapy has used the empty chair, but in some ways, it can be even better if the therapist steps into the other role, as then its possible to get a more direct experience of what is going on.
So Zelda started talking about things that were not ok her in marriage - her need for more connection, more passion. She spoke about not being able to depend on him, and how he would 'run away' when she tried to talk to him about things.
She was saying all this directly to him in the role play. At times I directed her to use 'I' and 'you' language, rather than talking to me about him. In Gestalt we generally discourage 'about' talk, because its once removed, and more deflective - it reduces energy, intensity, engagement and therefore good contact.
Having expressed all this in a big rush, it was a little like she was vomiting up everything that she had swallowed. It is unlikely that her husband would be able to manage to hear all that, given that at the best of times he would avoid any kind of difficult contact.
Thus being in the therapist role, I could provide her with an opportunity she was unlikely to have in real life. Some people might think this would produce unrealistic expectations. Sometimes thats the case. But what therapy can do is give people the experience of really expressing themselves, and really being heard.
Many people want to change their partner. The focus in Gestalt is on encouraging and supporting the person to empower themselves.
In this case, after expressing herself so fully and clearly, Zelda was shaking. She felt fear. I encouraged her to stay with her breathing, and remain grounded in her body. Her authentic expression is an achievement, in and of itself, and just as we stayed with her wobbly uncertainty in the previous session, staying with the shaky but authentic place in this session gradually gave way to her feeling more solid in her capacity to speak her truth.
The idea is that as a person becomes more grounded in themselves, they become more able to articulate their experience and ask for what they want directly. Clearing resentments allows this to be more present centred, and staying in one's body allows this to be more relational.
These things then are more likely to have a real impact on the other, rather than just eliciting defensiveness or avoidance.
In this case, as Zelda spoke in a clearer and more grounded way, I could feel the impact, and could give her that immediate feedback.
 Zelda reported feeling tension, and conflict. She made two fists with her hands as she said this. She also said 'something wants to come up'.
I said 'let it come'. This is called 'tight therapeutic sequencing' by Erv Polster, and is related to the 'natural nextness' of the moment which we follow as Gestalt practitioners.
As she took up my invitation, she told me that whatever it was, was stopping at her throat. As she breathed more deeply at my encouragement, 'it' went back down.
I pointed out that it appeared that she was swallowing something. This is a clue in Gestalt frames for something being 'introjected' - usually some kind of injunction.
So again I invited her to 'let it come up'.
Again, nothing was clear.
So rather than try to focus on her immediate awareness - when something is blocked we dont push it - I asked about her field - ie the wider context. I wondered about agitation or conflict in her family.
Zelda grew up with her grandparents. Her parents fought a lot. When she saw them, they would be fighting, and she found herself in the position of needing to console them. One time they were going to divorce, and she had to write a letter to them, and as a consequence they decided not to divorce.
She did finally go to live with them, but they couldnt afford to keep her. Her father had to get up very early to work, and so she saw little of him. Still, she wanted to stay with them, but eventually she had to go back to her grandparents.
As she related this, she started vomiting. I encouraged this. It was a very positive sign - she was no longer swallowing her feelings, but letting herself react fully, and releasing what she had kept inside for so long. This was important both organismically, and symbolicallly. This represented a natural undoing of the introjection.
Clearly, she had been put in a position of having to take too much responsiblity for her parents and their situation. So I gave her a counter message: 'as a child, you are not responsible for the adults, for your parents'.
Her response was to vomit more.
I said 'I am disgusted by how much you had to take on as a child'. This gave voice to the feeling of disgust which I guessed was probably behind the vomiting. By bringing myself and my own reaction in, it continued to support her and give her permission to feel her own disgust.
She vomited again.
She then reported feeling guilty. I reiterated the message 'you are not responsible for your parents'. This is something she needed to hear from another authority figure.
Again she vomited.
Next she reported feeling angry. I validated those feelings, and again she vomited.
The she began shaking. I could understand this, and told her that it was made sense, since she had been holding herself together for a very long time. Again, she vomited.
She reported feeling lost and vulnerable. I pointed out this was a good sign of reorganisation, and supported her to stay in that place for a while. In this way, she could allow a new way of being to form, based more on her own needs and grounded in her organism. This is the essence of change in a Gestalt process.
Mary Anne came up for a session.
I noted 'the obvious', which is a starting place in Gestalt for a person's phenomenology. This requires observation without interpretation.
I saw - a pink jumper, black blouse, grey socks...and a gather in the back of the jumper.
I commented on the gather in the back of her jumper - it was an unusual design, and took my attention. Mentioning it is enough - without necessarily focusing on it, unless the client makes more of it.
I then asked Mary Anne what she was aware of. She reported that she had grievances about not being understood. In Gestalt we bring the general into the specific, and into the present, and into the relationship.
So I asked her how understood she felt by me. She said she felt quite held, and understood.
I then asked what she was aware of in her back. This derived from my previous observation, and my interest about what that might be connected to in her experience.
She reported feeling tension there, frequently. I asked her to notice that experience in the present. I asked her where specifically she felt the tension, and she showed me the place. As she stayed with the experience, she felt the tension, but nothing more. So I stayed there with her, present.
Then, I asked her if I could put my hand on her back in that place. Sometimes that helps focus awareness.
As I did so, her emotion moved. She reported that her father never supported her mother, and that as a child, she took on her mother's resentment about this.
I acknowedged her own need for support - differentiating her need from her mother's need. I invited her to feel my support for her, in the present, and to breathe into the feeling of this in her back.
As she did so, she relaxed, reported the tension being released, and feeling a new strength in her back.
In this way I brought the issue into the present, and into our connection. The hand on her back was part of a Gestalt experiment which then evolved - as good experiments do - into a healing moment.
 Cheri hardly spoke. She appeared extremely shy, and mostly just watched what happened in the group. On the occasions she did say something, she was tentative, seemed nervous, and did not use many words.
She finally came forward to do some personal work.
She relayed how recently her cousin - Milly - had returned from overseas with her husband. When Milly walked with her, she was 'too close', and Cheri felt uncomfortable. While they were walking, Milly brushed Cheri's breast, something she was not ok with.
She then explained that since she was a child, her cousin had acted quite sexually towards and around her in a variety of ways. As an adult, Milly had showered her with gifts. The family had not understood Cheri's discomfort, nor her distancing from Milly who seemed 'so nice'.
I asked her feelings - disgust, and shame were primary.
Shame is an indication of the need for support, so I talked with Cheri about support - what I had to offer her in the present, and my availability to be present with her in revealing such a very personal matter.
Although such things are the content of psychotherapy, its important to explicitly acknowledge the support necessary, and available, in the present for the client.
A friend had suggested that Cheri 'just tell her to stop it'. This is the kind of simplistic advice one might expect from a friend; therapy offers a different route.
Firstly I gave Cheri validation. I acknowledged the validity of her need for support on this delicate issue, the value of her bringing it up with me; I told her that she was not a bad person (part of the experience that goes with shame), that she didnt do anything wrong, and that it was not ok to have her boundaries invaded by anyone.
This is a little the way one might talk to a child - carefully explaining certain basics. This was not done in a patronising way, but rather in a way which recognised that she had never received these messages, and needed some basic understandings to be put in place.
In this role, I do take a kind of parental, or helpful-adult role in relation to her child-self.
I introduced what are known as 'protective behaviours'. These can be taught to children, usually at school, from a very young age. They let children know that their bodies are their own, that they can speak up if someone uncomfortable happens, and they always have a right to say 'no' to any physical touch that they dont like.
So I explained all this to Cheri: she had never heard any of this as a child, and even as an adult, did not fully understand it. Its important to not assume people know that they have a right not to have their boundaries invaded!
I also sketched out a scenario for Cheri. I asked her to picture me as the adult, sitting both her and Milly down when they were children, and talking to them directly and openly about this matter - saying something like 'sexuality is ok, but its not ok to step over someone else's boundaries'.
This imaginary exercise gave Cheri the experience she never had - of being supported in a very vulnerable place, of having boundaries made clear, and of the topic being talked about in a natural and non-shaming way.
This can then provide a background experience she can draw on...and potentially empower her to say something as an adult.
We then shifted to adult mode, and I discussed with her how she might speak to her cousin directly about this matter now.
 Damien said he was looking forward to the group, curious about what he would learn.
This is a passive position - it doesnt declare anything about himself.
So I asked him to imagine looking back on the group, and be specific about what he might have learned that would be interesting or helpful for him.
He said he would have liked to learn about dealing with rejection.
So he was set an exercise - to go around the group and name who was safe and who was unsafe. Then to pick 4 of the people who were unsafe, then to pick one of those.
Damien sat in from of him. He said he was expecting to be rejected. When asked to be specific about how that might happen, he couldnt - he reported feeling confused.
I took this as being a sign of dissociation - that is generally the case when someone reports confusion and cant focus on details. I asked how much in his body he felt - 10% he replied. This confirmed the level of his overwhelm, and made it clear that the therapeutic work had to proceed with a great deal of support.
So a small circle was created in the group, to increase the safety level for him. Each person made an attempt to understand how he was feeling. This helps take the focus off him, and provide a sense of being seen.
I was in the small circle, and I also spoke to him about my understanding. I said - 'I guess that you might be feeling in a kind of soup, of rejection, shame, and bruised feelings'.
He replied this was true.
I knew this because all the symptoms he showed were those of shame, and I know how difficult it can be for anyone when they are in the midst of such feelings - how lost you can get.
So next I invited each person in the small group - myself included, to share with Damien about an experience we had at some point in our lives of feeling shame.
This again took the spotlight off of him - very important in working with shame - and gave him a sense of the support that comes from feeling you are not alone.
I then invited the group to hold hands, including him. I asked how much in his body he felt - he reported 60%. This was a major change, and indicated the work had been effective.
I pointed out that he was no longer alone. We then did the same thing in the larger group - hold hands, and I asked him to really look people in the eyes. In this way, he was able to stay grounded, to really feel the connection, and draw strength and nourishment from it, rather than be scared of it.
 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.
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