The (Surprisingly Pleasant) Gestalt Experience of a Writer who Prefers Narrative Therapy

Plus the nine biggest things I took away from a Gestalt class, some of which still make sense to me years later

Sep 03, 2024

When I was in my mid-thirties, I returned to school to get a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology. It was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done. The written work, the grades, the whatever basics of schools weren’t the hard part. The intensive sitting in classes and working through emotional material and holding space for a small cohort of other people month in and month out going through their own hard things … that was the hard part. And rewarding.

I recently came across this old journal entry I wrote for my Gestalt class, which I took as a week-long summer “retreat” intensive in between my first and second years of the program. Reading through it, I felt like it shared a lot of things that were important for me to learn as a wordy creative person trying out something new. And I hope it might be informational/inspirational for you as well …

Before the Beginning

I had a lot of ideas about what the Gestalt intensive was going to be like for me. I was right about some and wrong about others. Or more accurately, I was half-right about it all … right enough about the experience because I know myself pretty well and understand my own interests and comfort levels but half-wrong because by being open and curious about the potential for learning I was able to discover new aspects of myself. In each moment, I have the potential to be someone new.

I began to anticipate the Gestalt class experience well in advance of the first session. I like to think that I know myself. I like to envision myself as someone who prefers academic learning to experiential exercises, which is essentially the opposite of the Gestalt experience. I like to think of myself as … well, someone who thinks, someone fascinated more by the ongoing narrative of a variety of changing theories in my head than by anything happening inside of my body. And I like to quell my anxiety about new experiences by learning as much as I possibly can about them.

The funny thing is that I thought I’d hate Gestalt because it felt like an opposite of me and yet I resonated with Gestalt theories when I’d had a chance to read them. Last semester in Clinical Relationship we read the Beisser article on The Paradox of Change and it was one of my favorite articles from the entire semester. It makes perfect sense to me that when we try to change things, they don’t change and yet when we accept things exactly as they are in the moment then we will inevitably grow. Grudgingly, I had to admit as I read the assigned Perls’ book and the optional Gestalt Integrated book for the intensive class that there was a lot about the theory that appealed to my brain.

But that didn’t stop my mind and body from reacting with apprehension to the idea of sitting in 6-9 hours of Gestalt class every day for seven days. I pictured with horror the possibility of sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the center of 30 pairs of prying eyes and trying desperately to authentically notice any sort of sensation in my body. In the middle of one night the week before class I considered dropping out of school to avoid this altogether.

Instead, I soothed myself with theory. Perls wrote about the contact boundary, allowing me to think about myself as an individual within an environment (and to recognize with gratitude that this particular environment was only a week long). He described how we are always experiencing either an impatience to get to a positive cathexis or the dread of a negative cathexis. Yep, that sounded about right. I wanted to drop out of school to withdraw from the negative cathexis. Instead I promised myself tons of self-care throughout the week and into the following week. And then the class began.

It’s Just an Experiment

There was an idea reiterated throughout the entire Gestalt course, in different ways by the various instructors, and it was one that helped me to really take in a lot more of the Gestalt experience than I expected. This was the idea that “we’re just trying things out”. Although I may say that I don’t like experiential learning (a defense mechanism made up at least in part by lifelong introjections), I found it comforting to think of each exercise as just an experiment. It was just something I was trying on to see how it fit. In fact, I ended up approaching the entire week this way. I’d try things on, see if anything felt like it was worth keeping and if I hated all of it at the end of the week then I’d end the experiment and discard it all. By adopting the attitude that I didn’t have to introject anything more from this class, I was able to actually sort through what might work for me in different settings now and in the future.

Of all of the theories that we worked with, my favorite was the set of exercises used to explore the four types of boundary disturbances: introjection, projection, confluence, and retroflection. In particular, I was deeply affected by two exercises – the projection exercises where we selected and described photos and the confluence dyad exercises.

The projection exercise was a brilliant way to bring to life the stark difference between what is really happening with other people and what I think is happening with other people. I selected a photo of a girl-woman and quickly made up a story about her, assuming that she was sad, stressed, overworked, daydreaming of a better life like Judy Garland in the scene where she sings “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”. I love making up stories. I do it all of the time, for work and for play. But this exercise reminded me of the danger of that when it comes to relationships with real people, because most of what I react to about them is stuff I’ve made up in my own head. Perls describes projection as a boundary disturbance where there’s “too much self” (as opposed to introjection, which is “too much other”) and it doesn’t surprise me at all how easily I fall prey to this. I spend a lot of time alone and in my head, so of course I make up tales about others that are based on my own experiences. So I am tucking that girl’s photo into my mental pocket in order to remember to look twice at the reality of what’s in front of me.

Then there was the confluence exercise, in which we played at being and confronting confluence as both therapist and client. My dyad partner, who is a friend who knows me fairly well, thought that I would hate the confluence exercise because I draw such rigid boundaries around myself in so many ways. I kind of thought he would be right, and yet it turned out that he was the one made uncomfortable by how easily and boldly I was able to be confluent with him. I was easily seduced by the allure of merging with another. It’s something I can understand and explain as a result of a history of childhood trauma and an adolescence rife with codependency. But that’s an old story, one I’ve known for a long time and thought I’d put past me, and it shocked me a little to see the reality of how comfortable it was to merge right in with someone again. It’s informative, a good thing to know about myself as I move forward in new (and therapeutic) relationships).

Slap in the Face

When I returned home from retreat, I had a phone call with my brother in which I tried to explain the class to him. I told him the things I liked and the things I didn’t. I described the picture of my filled-in self-image drawing, the one in which I’d left most of my body empty and filled my head with a celebration of all of my thoughts and theories. I told him, “I think what I learned is that if I could I’d just be a disembodied head spending my entire life thinking about various theories.” My super athletic, always-moving, always in-the-body kid brother responded, aghast, “be careful what you wish for!”

And all of a sudden that response, from the right person at the right time, slapped me back into my body. Because yes, I love theories and will probably always prefer long, involved narrative discussions to somatic exercises … but I wouldn’t want to give up my body either! I love my body. I may not always tune into it but then I’m lucky because it works well enough that most of the time I don’t actually have to. What if it didn’t? No, I don’t want to be a disembodied head after all. And really, although Gestalt focuses less on narrative content and more on immediate sensory awareness, isn’t it ultimately really about a holistic approach to living without a mind-body split? That’s something I can take with me.

On Integrating It All

This paper feels inadequate in terms of describing my experience. While I’ve written about some of the theories that I liked and the exercises that spoke to me, it seems that I’ve left out so much of what we did and what I got from what we did. I look at my notes on the foundations of Gestalt, incorporating theories of Reich, Buber and Husserl and wonder how I can fail to mention them? I look at my chart on the structure of neurosis and want to write a whole paper with my thoughts about the implosive and explosive layers. I realize that I have not even mentioned the topdog/underdog, the technique of shuttling, the pros and cons I see this non-reductionist, client-centered humanistic approach to therapy. I fondly remember a few of the exercises – running across the room at each other and yelling stop, putting hands to hands and feet to feet – and I have so much more to say.

But what I think is that none of it is ready to be written, yet. It’s still filtering through me, still being integrated, not yet clear in words even though the experience has already occurred. We take in a full course on this therapy in just seven days but it takes weeks, maybe months, maybe years to really understand how this week has affected us.

As I write this, I’m thinking of how it is when I water my houseplants. They are all plants that need to get mostly dry and then be soaked thoroughly. I fill the pot with lots of water, watch some of it sink into the soil and the rest sit on top of the surface. Over the next few days, that water sinks in. I don’t really see it happening, but I see that it has happened. The plant lives, it grows, because the water has nourished it over time. I think that’s what has happened with the information from the Gestalt course; it’s settling into my crevices inside and nourishing me in ways I can’t really see as it is happening. In each moment, I will change and be something new.

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Top 9 Things I Learned from Gestalt Class

Oh, wow, I live inside a body, not just a head.
Beware of the word "should"; it signifies an introject that might be worth giving back to its owner.
Confluence isn't always bad. There are orgasms, after all.
All of those times that I've tuned out the world around me in order to rejuvenate were actually excellent self-care practices using the technique of shuttling.
My ears still glaze over when someone starts talking about their dreams.
How I eat may reflect the way that I take in information.
The only dogma of Gestalt is that we work in the here-and-now.
I am in a constant process of imploding and exploding in order to become self-actualized.
I am not the same me that I was a moment ago.