Ali’s Story - Journey of a Self Through Gestalt

Account of Gestalt Workshops with Paul 2008

After attendance at 'Inquiring in a Gestalt Way', 'Resolving Conflict & Healing Communities', 'Gestalt Inquiry into Spirituality', 'Facilitating Groups & Leading Teams' & 'Gestalt Informed Coaching & Counselling' with Paul in 2008 I wrote this account. It feels like I have no words or thoughts to describe the Gestalt experience I’ve had in the last year. It may be that I’m just afraid of letting my usual torrent of analysis drown out the delicate new ways of being that were just starting – on rare occasion - to emerge. But in counterpoint to my dominant style, this ‘other’ way seems almost completely wordless. There are only two other places I have felt it emerge. One is in my psychotherapy sessions, manifested by my complete silence for 20-40 minutes of each session. The other is in music. Neither facilitates writing this account, so this will be a good practice of some kind of integration of the two.

In attempting to do this new thing, to speak with a different voice and allow it to speak at all, I get a sense of relief from contemplating the many helpful structures for our thinking/experience that Paul has provided to us. Whenever he proposes a series of levels, or ways of experiencing, it makes me think simultaneously of the body, of music, and the structures present there which can represent order, and yet at the same time allow completely unique moment-on-moment expression and the possibility of harmony. So it subverts the way the purely logical side of my mind would use it – at least a little.

This idea of levels is useful when thinking about why I attended the Gestalt workshops at all – there seem to be a number of answers. The starting point is apparently related to ‘work’ – I had asked an experienced consultant who I regularly work for as a project assistant how I could develop myself to a higher professional level, and this is what he heartily recommended. However because it was something I had proactively sought out, the sense of reassurance of a natural flow towards this path i.e. that I ‘should be here’ and that I had really chosen it was never quite there. I found it easy to dissociate myself in fantasy from the rest of the groups as ‘I wasn’t a consultant or coach like them’ and hence dissociate myself from any work ambitions – consulting or otherwise – that I may harbour. Nonetheless there were many moments over the course of the year’s workshops which found this notion challenged – and indeed brought to light that this is the way I generally live my life i.e. ‘I’m not really meant to be here’. This included brusque rebuttals by other participants of my claim that I was the only non-consultant present, warm glowing feedback at times on my coaching efforts, and the chance to lead a group exercise in a way I wanted to and finding that it pretty much worked. If anything this has increased my hunger to be operating in life ‘for real’, actually out there, actually with something to say and my frustration at not having the opportunity – but perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place?

There is a huge attraction for me of organisational life – the chance to be involved in articulated theories and strategies that shape the conditions we’re in – or are meant to – and the practice of acting them out. This was something I could not find in the musical realm – I could get lost in it, but no-one provided a guide map at the verbal-intellectual level and I was too afraid or shy or angry or lonely to keep wandering out there on my own.

However the soulful wasteland of the corporate environment (in my reality) – a giant colourful cartoon landscape painted on a plastic sheet, the stench of rotting corpses underneath – or my practice of diving deeply without almost all limits so that balance becomes impossible, have made it also a deathly experience. I never ‘made it’ in the corporate sphere even though to a certain degree I tried hard. ‘Managed out’ from one large corporate, and sacked from a small consultancy - the track record seems in fact to favour failure.

But perhaps I forgot what I was doing there, and that I had never meant to stay? These moments were certainly painful reminders to move on. The intellectual brilliance of the people at times, the chance to work actively together, the sense of working community coexisting at the same time with an utter lack of human-benefiting vision, or worse a self-engorging systemic machine that is sophisticated enough to create a slippery reality that is in fact the direct opposite of what it really is. It’s such a paradox. What I felt – once I became more conscious of it – seemed to run against the flow of much corporate life. But I was not enough, not big or strong or brave enough to ‘change’ it and so I would move on to try to learn more.

Now, with my love/hate relationship with business and lack of any prolonged experience, I don’t fit the classic consultant shape. And perhaps that isn’t what I want. And yet my curriculum vitae does not look promising to the schools I apply to fill their music teacher posts. Perhaps what I was really looking for was myself.

I was taken by the O’Donoghue quote in Paul’s article referring to what people can do with their selves in the face of others. In the quote and article he talks of a work identity, but in my case I would extend it more broadly to a public identity. He says ‘they become seduced by the practice of self-absence’, and this starts to move beyond the territory of work alone and into other aspects of my life.

What I like about this quote is the acknowledgement of the seductive aspect of self-absence, and just the acknowledgement of self-absence at all as something that exists and is practised. Something that has always surprised me is how I could be running the show this way (with nobody home), yet unable to help myself dropping little clues and hints and cries for attention – and yet apparently nobody would notice. And yet why would they? Not many of us have the time and space for insight, the courage, the skill and even perhaps the right to penetrate someone else’s self-inflicted prison – and of course if you try you will be fought to the death. If I think of it in reverse, I often meet people (they probably remind me of myself) where it feels like there is an impenetrable wall around them, and when have I had the bravery to lob something over the parapet and shout ‘what are you DOING in there’? I sometimes whisper it softly and a nose peeks out – but nothing more. This relates to the ‘personal/private/home’ level of why I think I attended the Gestalt workshops. The fact that Paul was able to see me behind the parapet, and voice it, was a source of constant delight and freedom. It was if one had always wanted to be seen, but dared not proclaim it.

In terms of surfacing this self in the workshops or groups there was I think a limited degree of success – largely my two available modes seemed to be silence or analysis. I enjoyed responding to Paul’s call for us to be more challenging, but quickly retreated back behind fortified walls as the sharpness of the projections felt too much. But I was left intrigued, and confused at how few steps I seemed to have walked and having no idea how to go forward, but having to do it anyway – and now without even the live Gestalt structure as a guide in the moment. We could wonder how ‘self-absence’ even works. My experience is of something constantly dying, or on the verge of doing so – so how is anything sustained? This is how I think it links back to the seduction aspect – I call it ‘snacking’. By way of explanation, I can look at my bodily practices, my eating habits - they are generally the best guide to my soul state at the time. Currently – and this has been the case for the last year or two – I can’t seem to bring myself to eat meals. I have no time is one excuse – I’ve been doing numerous jobs and am never at home, certainly not at meal times, or near anywhere I could cook. So that means that I can only eat on the run, and when I’m hungry and its a choice between an apple and a packet of chocolate digestives I’ll go for the latter every time. In fact I’m almost convinced that I’ve created the whole situation, just to give myself the chance to ‘snack’. The benefit of snacking is a sharp penetrating stimulation of the senses to wake up the dying ‘absent’ self and keep it on life support long enough until the next round. Because snacking itself is seductive – you never have enough and that’s the point. In the same way occasional meaningful connections with sharp-minded people in corporate environments gave me a heightened version of the human contact I craved but was unable to create by truly remaining in an ongoing family or friendship community. These connections were intermittent and demanded no commitment – but it was easy to be seduced, and forget that these relationships are not even friendships, as chocolate will never nourish like a meal – and yet at the same time it does feel like the hunger that needs to be answered now.

The third level of enquiry during my attendance at the Gestalt workshops was around ‘relationship/ sexuality’. I started the Gestalt work while in the last throes of a painful connection with someone, one that had been characterised by giving up on ourselves, seeing what we could get from the other, burgeoning new sexuality (mine), alcoholism (hers) and acutely blissful and torturous mergence as we fought to the death to save ourselves enough airspace in the claustrophobic and unnatural cocoon we had created. Halfway through the year we finally managed to stop the relationship part, but it was only at the end of the year that I finally submitted to the idea that I should leave my work and the ongoing emotional dependency I had. Another ‘forced departure’ that was no doubt for the best. I imagine that I was a nightmare to be with, and my starting in-authenticity of ‘seeing what it would be like’ to be with her was a cruel decision that cost us both – although I think we were both deluding ourselves. She also gave as good as she got – it was like being faced by my most feared demon, in the flesh, and it felt worse than I could have possibly imagined, again and again. And yet I’m still here. During this year and these experiences, I went through the workshops and found that different situations showed up and evoked strong reactions. I discovered with delight that there were two ‘real lesbians’ at one workshop I participated in – ‘they do exist, even amongst ‘consultants’, it is possible’ – were thoughts I had.

I fell in love with a man two workshops later – the next one I attended after the relationship ending – or at least I thought I did. We conducted what felt for me like a whirlwind phone romance for a week until we finally tried to bring it into reality by meeting and I felt my soul straining at the leash as the train edged closer and closer, finally snapping and flying as far out of my body as I could imagine, leaving my empty shell to play the old familiar role and die another mini-death. Another level which I connected to the Gestalt workshops was ‘family’. On the one hand my mother paid for me to attend the workshops – so it seems that there is some connection there, initially through the basic trade of money. I am quite rejecting of her advances, so perhaps this is the only way she could get to me these days. However other than this, I feel like I’m returning to the more wordless state again – I can’t think or express what I learned at this level, aside from sharing a rather bleak picture of my family experience, and receiving some warmth and care in the ongoing fortnightly group that I felt in a somewhat familial way. This will undoubtedly come up more in the psychotherapy path that I’m deepening as I leave the active Gestalt space.

Closely connected to this, and the resulting level of enquiry which is one I am particularly present to now is the level of ‘identity’. While growing up, I was a girl with close-cropped hair who was often mistaken for a boy – but perhaps this was also to a degree how I identified? During one primary school year I started calling myself Alistair, as I didn’t like the direction that things were heading in. When I turned 16 and my body started changing this feeling deepened, and perhaps I never got used to it – my life-modelling and fuzzy-haired body are an ongoing attempt to deal with this, without much noticeable change in response. When I began as a graduate in corporate life and quickly realised that I could never quite make it as the ‘tops’ had, without giving up more than I was prepared to, I felt even more trapped. Years of attempts to be a fulfilled sexual partner with people I mildly liked, but in a physical dynamic I didn’t, deepened the distress.

One of the comments Paul made to a female peer and I during one fortnightly group was that that we were ‘two of the most masculine women he knew’. I was hugely touched by this remark, because of the impotence I feel - what always seemed to so obvious in my childhood, as an adult I did my best to hide. When I stack myself up against the others I don’t seem to appear as a masculine woman, but I would like someone to acknowledge me for all I am. In fact this acknowledgement may be necessary for survival, as I can only deduce from the willingness with which I invite others (men and ‘masculine’ women) in, and prostrate my feminine side before them, that this subjugation is what is going on inside me. The lonely young boy who perpetrates these acts needs not only space, but some honesty, if this way of living is going to begin to transform. And after climbing up and down the ladder of the levels of my experience on this journey, I now realise that this – above all - is what I have learned.

About the Author: Ali Warner works as a freelance project manager and graphic recorder on large-group facilitation events, while teaching beginner piano and music theory privately. She runs the Barnes Primary School Orchestra and is training in the Kodaly Music Education method. She practices meditation and studies within the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, and is trained as a Shambhala meditation guide. ali@aliwarner.com