Anastasia was a hard worker. She always performed her job at a high quality level. She was much valued in the different places she worked.
She and her husband moved to a country area. He was an engineer, she worked for a community welfare organisation. One of her co-workers was extremely difficult to work with. She reacted to Anastasia with burst of anger, accusations, and then would collapse into tears, blaming Anastasia for any problems which arose. After months of this, Anastasia felt she was walking on eggshells at work. She had to run projects with this woman, and the behaviour was making her feel sick. She felt anxious about going into work, and jittery about the unpredictability of her co-worker's reactions.
She tried everything, including broaching the subject with the coworker. But no matter what Anastasia did, her co-worker would explode, or collapse. Anastasia felt like she was going crazy, and it seemed that others at work were also intimidated by this woman, who could be an incredible bully.
Whilst I spent time addressing some of the details of the issue with her, I was also interested in the direct experience Anastasia had. The feelings - in her body, as she experienced the behaviours of her coworker. Going into these feelings moved us out of the 'talking about' (or 'complaining about') mode, into direct experience. It also brought the reality of what she was dealing with into the present, into the session, so we could work with it directly.
In cases such as this it is particularly important to do this, otherwise the session can become a 'debrief' - complaining, letting off steam getting sympathy. Whilst there may be some value in all of this, the focus of Gestalt is on exploring and deepening awareness and experience. By going into the heart of experience, we help the person go deeper than they can ofter go on their own. At the point things become 'too much', the person often goes into their head - thinking about, explaining, etc. At this point, I drew Anastasia back to the present, back to her feelings, and to see where and how she may want to express that.
In doing so, something deeper emerged. This was memories of the sexual abuse that Anastasia had experienced as a child. The way we found this, was by going into the body experience, staying with it, and then some memories and images started to arise - other times that she had felt powerless. The abuse experienced resurfaced, and again, I brought her into the present, so she could stay with the pain, anger, and powerless feelings, without being submerged in them. I kept her in touch with her 'outer zone' - what she saw when she looked around the room, and I invited her also to look at my face, and describe what she saw. This helped to stay present with the feelings, rather than dissociate. There is no point going into feelings, if they are too much, and the person simply disconnects - in ways similar to what happened in the abuse. That is why in therapy, one has to be very careful at just letting feelings arise, and ensuring that there is enough support for those feelings to be fully experienced. Cathartic therapies can be exciting to witness, and seem to yield dramatic results, but unless the person is sufficiently grounded in the present experience, such intense emotion may simply pass, and not be integrated.
So in Gestalt, we slow the person down. We are not in a hurry to get anyway, to resolve anything. The focus is on being present, in connection, and ensuring that each step of the therapy takes place with integration.
In this case. I also kept Anastasia in touch with me, to feel the support I offered in the moment, to take that in, to realise that as a 50 year old woman, she had resources, and the support externally - myself, her husband - so that she could bear the feelings which had been too overwhelming in her childhood.
After this process, when we came back to the co-worker, Anastasia felt some of her fear (and anger) replaced by an increased sense of solidity.
The problem is rarely 'other people'. It is our own resources in the face of what is happening. Hence, in Gestalt we always focus the person back on themselves, and support them to allow the new resources available in the present to provide a stronger base to address their unfinished business.
Tracy described her business problem: she was a consultant with a number of different businesses. One of her major clients was proving difficult to work with. This was her largest client, and she would go to the headquarters, to work with the staff there in her consulting basis - which included helping to identify problems in the running of the business, working with the staff to find solutions, and providing advice to management. The boss there was treating her as an employee rather than as a consultant. He would frequently expect her to be there on a regular basis, and no matter how often she told him that as a consultant, she could come and go, as needed, he continued to press her for more time. Tracy was irritated by this situation, but nothing she did seemed to change the attitude of the business owner. He didnt seem to be listening to her, respecting her boundaries, or willing to respect her boundaries and autonomy as a consultant. Having heard Tracy describe the situation, I asked her to come into the present, and notice what she was feeling. She described her irritation, and the feeling of tension in her chest. Rather than jump into a solution, provide her with advice, or try to solve her problem, I sat with her in silence for a few minutes. I invited her to stay present, and I did the same. I allowed all the elements she had described to float in my vision, and without making any effort, I stilled any inclination I had to 'do' anything. In this Wu Wei state, a question suddenly occurred to me. I asked Tracy if she had a specified number of hours that was spelled out in her consultancy agreement. She said no, it was just an 'as needed' situation, where the contract mentioned the total length of time - 6 months - but not the number of hours per week. This became immediately clear to me - the problem was not the business owner, who was simply doing what all people do - press for the maximum return for the money he was spending on the consultancy. Rather it was Tracy - whose boundaries were not as clear as she thought. She had not specified just how long she would spend each week, and so she had set up a situation where the limits were fuzzy and unclear. This led to an immediate solution on a business level; however it also opened up another level of more personal work that Tracy needed to do - being clear about her limits. The fact she had neglected to make her time limits clear in this situation actually reflected a more general difficulty she had in setting limits - in other business situations, as well as in her personal relationships. In Gestalt we always focus attention on the responsibility of the person in front of us, rather than cooperate in their blaming - no matter how justified it might seem. That is the key to both personal transformation and improved business practices. All such situations are influenced by personal context - what we refer to as the Field. In this case, the issue of limits and boundaries for Tracy is related to her experience of how limits were handled in her family of origin. Understanding more about herself, and her context, helps Tracy bring more awareness to how she operates in business.
Marge had been married for a long time - almost 20 years. She had tried very hard over the years to make her marriage successful, but in the end, she gave up. Her husband refused to come to counselling, and there were many problems which she was never able to deal with. For instance, their sex life was bad - he was rarely interested in sex, and when they did have it, he had little sensitivity towards her, coming very quickly himself, and leaving her high and dry. He also would treat her coldly at other times and generally found her 'too much' with her feelings, her high energy, her enthusiasm. Despite all this, she had perservered. Now, she came for therapy. She had certainly suffered in the marriage - though it was not all bad, all of the time. In this picture, her husband was clearly at fault. He had not treated her with enough care or respect, and had not been considerate of her needs - often blocking things she wanted. This was not domestic violence, but there were certain aspects of the relationship which were reminiscient of that kind of extreme disrespect. Was she a fool for staying so long? Should she have given up much earlier in the piece? These were not questions I was addressing. I was more interested in the systemic dynamics, and from a Gestalt point of view, who was she in there, and what was her responsibility? As we explored, some things became clear to me. One was that she was a very speedy person. She talked very fast, she was bursting with energy, ideas, agendas, feelings. I appreciated this about her…but it was hard to get a word in edgeways, and when I did talk, I rarely had the sense she was really listening to me. So, already theres one phenomena which we needed to explore. Her husband had not been available in and for relationship. But - had she? As much as she desperately wanted relationship and depth and love and care…as I experience her, she was also pushing it away. If I said something appreciative to her, she would be touch for a moment perhaps, but then quickly move on, talking, bringing up more and more material. It was like she really couldnt take anything in. She didnt know how to/was not willing to just pause, breathe, and feel the impact of another person. So this was our first major set of experiments - I would interrupt her (an important relational skill in therapy), and bring her into the present, into her feelings, and invite her to notice how she felt about my responses to her. It was hard work, because she would quickly be off and racing. I commented that as much as she yeared for relationship and connection, she also made herself unavailable for that connection. This was the first of many interventions with her. It was essential - if I just stayed with the content, with her stories, with her regrets, with her aspirations, with her longings, I would be ignoring what was ACTUALLY going on in our relationship - which was that she was avoiding actual intimacy, between us. She was so busy longing for something or regretting something that didnt happen, she was not with relationship as it was on offer, between us. This was hard for her to grasp - she had a very good excuse for the last 20 years, in a partner who clearly was not available. That had taken the focus off of the question of her availability. Now I was shining a spotlight of responsibility on her role, and she didnt like it. She needed care for her feelings - which I coudl easily do, as she was a likeable person, who had certainly sufferend. However, she also need me to not perpetuate the system, and be the 'neglected' on on the other end of her racing forward. I needed to be tough with her, to insist that this wasnt ok with me, and I was not willing to simply be 'talked at'. She found this very confronting, yet it was the only way to move forward with her, without getting coopted into repeating in some ways the dynamics of her marriage. For this reason, in Gestalt we pay more attention to process than content, to what is happening in the therapy room and relationship, than what is happening outside of the room. Too much 'talking about' is a distraction from our primary focus on the 'what is'.
Jane talked about difficulties she had with her live-in home help. The woman did not always listen to what Jane asked for, and did not always do things to the standard Jane expected. I pointed out that this was a complex relationship. The woman was both employee, and also a kind of family member, in the sense she was residing in the house, and very much connected with what was going on, even if in the background. I also pointed out that this woman had her own feelings and needs, which had no airspace. The roles here were overlapping and mixed. The woman was younger, so there was an additional complication of perhaps some kind of mother-daughter dynamics going on. The lack of attention to these complexities, and the focus on only one role relationship can lead, as in this instance, to unstated tension and conflict, which in a work-relationship arises as resistance, often passive aggressive. The dynamics of power make relationships complex. People can to some degree put aside their personal needs in order to fulfil the requirements of a job. But these boundaries can easily get blurred, and the capacity to set aside one's own needs tends to be more limited that many people realise. The personal almost always interjects into the professional, and hence the importance of attending to 'fuzzy' issues in a work setting such as feelings. Ignoring them often leads to them going underground, and the classic 'top-dog / under-dog' dyad forms. An experiment then would be to play out this dyad with Jane, with her playing both roles - herself and the housekeeper. In this way, she gets an insight into what is going on beneath the surface with her home-help, and also she gets a chance to make explicit her anger, frustration, as well as other feelings such as superiority and hostility. The nature of the topdog/ underdog cycle is that the more resistant the underdog role gets, the heavier the topdog becomes - exerting pressure, yelling, using 'shoulds', threats, etc. But the underdog role just goes underground, passively resisting, digging their heels in, 'forgetting', or doing a half baked job, or being careless. They might say 'sorry', or 'I will try harder next time', but these are just part of the excuses that keep the cycle going. The topdog, who feels they have the power, gets increasingly frustrated. The only way to step out of this cycle is for the topdog to move away from shoulds, and notice feelings - personalise, rather than trying to wield their power to solve the situation. The underdog role needs to take responsibliity, and make the resistance visible. This is what we facilitate in a Gestalt dialogue between the two sections. Jane's housekeeper may be her employee, but the same dynamic is also an internal one, within Jane. By bringing these two parts into dialgue internally, a resolution and integration can result, that combines power with feelings.
Mandy wanted to work with her vulnerability. So I stepped straight in, and started sharing some of my own vulnerable feelings (including some internal emotional pain) in that moment. She also shared about her feelings of pain. So we spent some time connecting, me revealing my own vulerability, and checking in with her about her experience. She apprecaited the connection, and relaxed somewhat, reporting changes in her feelings. She metioned wantint to become 'softer' as a woman, but the difficulty of doing so in her work, where she was known as being a very tough businesswoman. She wanted to join with some of the women employees in more relaxing activities such as flower arranging, but she didnt really know much about it. Regarding some of her previous clients who had been helpful to her - she did not call on them once she moved on - she wondered if this was too hard? I apprecaited both sides, including the need for her to be tough in negotiations, and hard end decisions. She said however, that she felt the conflict between wanting to be one way (softer), and the demands of business. I acknowledged the complexity of moving between the 'I-thou' and 'I-it', and the challenges of changing hats and roles with employees and clients. I shared some of my own experiences in trying to do this. This helped build the ground between us, including my sharing my own vulnerabilities in the process. I then suggested an experiment. She would stand up in one or other of the two positions, which she named 'soft woman' and 'manly woman', facing each other. I facilitated a conversation between the two. At first, the 'manly' side was oppositional, saying 'you are too soft, its not possible to survive in the world if I am like you'. After some dialogue back and forth, the soft side acknowledged the pain of being so busy, not enough time to spend with family or children. When she came over to the hard side, she collapsed in tears. I supported her, as she could hardly stand, with the pain. I gently encouraged her to put her pain into words. Finally she said 'yes, its too much, I need more of your softness'. A little more dialogue, and the process was complete - she felt integrated, calm, and able to bridge both sides. Gestalt emphasises wholeness, and integration is the result of bringing split polarities into contact. However, this cannot simply be a technical exercise - the relational ground needs to be built firstly
Jerry wanted to talk about parenting. Something I had previously said had triggered him. He related an incident about the previous day, where he had played ball with his son in the morning. In the evening, his boy wanted to play again with him, but he pushed him away and told him to play on his own, because he was very busy. But then later, he felt sorry about doing that. He explained that he was under a huge amount of pressure. His wife didnt work outside the home, they had financial goals they wanted to achieve, he had worked hard to get where he was in his career, and afraid if he slackened off, his income would go down in a competitieve field. I observed the universality of his dilemma - torn between differing responsibilities - work and parenting. We discussed these difficulties for a while. He had also cottoned onto something I had said about authentitity. He said how hard it was for him, as he had these different pressures and pulls - what direction should he decide in? I asked him what he would like to do - he said, more exercise - he never used his gym membership. But…he couldnt see a way to change things to create more time. So I invited him on a fantasy experiment: to 'float down the authentic river'. I asked him to describe what an authentic day would look like. Jerry said he would work 2 hours a day. I asked him the detail. He would get up, play with his son, do some caligraphy, then some tai chi. He explained how he used to do a lot of tai chi, but for over a decade simply had not had any time. He had recently met a tai chi teacher, whom he wanted to learn from. I asked about the rest of his day. He would do some exercise, then play more with his son when he came home from school. He said - 'but this would mean I would not enough income, we would have to live off our savings, and that would have an end'. This was a real world practical dilemma. The he mentioned he was in charge of a staff of 500. So I made a creative suggestion. 'You could take some of your authenticity into the workplace. You could direct your 500 employees to do an hour of caligraphy first thing every morning. Or an hour of tai chi.' Jerry said that there was pressure from his bosses, and pressure from the clients, so more than one day of this experiment would probably not wash with them. I pointed out that there were examples of people doing this kind of thing in business, and productivity going up, even though working hours went down. We discussed this for a while - I wanted to ensure he understood what I was suggesting. Jerry reported feeling very releived. There was, after all, some way to bring authenticity into his life, and into his workplace, without giving up what he wanted. Gestalt affirms the principle and practice of authenticity. The focus is on 'what do you want' rather than 'what should you do'. There is life energy available if we can help people tap into their authenticity, and act on it. Of course, we cant do what we want, every minute of the day - there are social adjustments. But mostly people err on the side of those adjustments, and move away from their own life energy. The point is to start somewhere.
Cynthia wanted to do some therapy work, but was not clear on just what to choose. I asked about her background - she was a social worker. She had been divorced for some time; she wanted a family in the future, but was not ready at this point. Her issue as it emerged, was a current problem at work, to do with problems 'managing the team'. I asked a series of questions, focusing her on questions such as - 'what exactly, who exactly, when exactly', before we arrived clearly at the problem. One of her employees was not pulling his weight. She and others in the team were compensating by increasing their own workload. It was clear to me - she was avoiding conflict. I asked about whether this was also the case in her previous marriage, she agreed. I asked if she had ever had a good fight. She thought for some time, and replied that once she was so frustrated with her mother, so many things had built up, that she blasted her, told her all her opinions. It had been 'refreshing', and had not seemed to damage her relationship with her mother. This was an important template for me to work with. So I invited her into a thought experiment first - to imagine 'blasting' the employee at work. She smiled, and was happy to imagine that. I then proposed a more challenging experiment - to put a chair in front of her for the employee, and to imagine he was in front of her, and 'blast' him. She agreed. When she did so, it hardly seemed like a blast to me. But she was shaking. So I moved closer to her, put my hand on her back (after checking with her) to support her. She said she had a violent feeling in her chest, but was trying to calm herself. Instead, I invited her to be with that violent feeling. I told her that I would rate her blast at 10%; she told me for her it was more like 50%. I then showed her what I would do if I played her role - I did a little demonstration blast, where I spoke strongly and did not mince my words. Cynthia's response was a fearful one - that she did not want to be a bad person - putting others down, or being mean. This was a self belief, or introject, but I didnt want to go into that in the moment. So I outlined to her the theory of separating out person from behaviour. I put out two pillows on either side of the chair. One I said was the person, the other the behaviour. I invited Cynthia to talk to them alternately. She easily did so - acknolwedging the personhood of the employee, then in a powerful voice and powerful words, outlining the unacceptable behaviour. She felt calm, and pleased that she had been able to 'blast', without being destrutive of the other person. Aggression is a topic of interest in Gestalt. It is not seen in negative terms. It is life energy - which usulally becomes overly suppressed according to social norms and rules - or introjects - that a person 'swallows'. This increases passivity, reduces assertion, and leads to a loss of life energy. The person doesnt really know who they are, what they want, and they dont bring themselves fully into relationship. In this case, Cynthia's avoidance of conflict was an avoidance of her own aggressive energy. Whilst there is no doubt, aggressive energy can be destructive, its also destructive to turn it inwards, or to fail to express it when appropriate. This was the problem at work - her accepting a higher workload rather than holding someone accountable - and was likely to be a large part of the failure of the marriage. But Cynthia needed a great deal of support to be able to get in touch with and express the full extent of her feelings. Ultimately, she needed to find a way to do so, and reconcile her values. This was provided the through process of the Gestalt experiment, finally culminating in the skill of separating behaviour and person. Without the actual experiment, this would remain simply a 'good idea', or just become a kind of skill to practice. What was significant here is that her understanding represented an integration, resulting from the combination of the challenge of the experiment, her own risk taking in the process, and then being taught the skill. These come together in our goal in Gestalt - the integration of new way of being and understanding, into the person's being.
These case examples are for therapists, students and those working in the helping professions. The purpose is to show how the Gestalt approach works in practice, linking theory with clinical challenges.
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