The part that rushes to know
I'm sitting at my desk, restless and shifting, trying to write about gestalt therapy, and I notice I keep jumping ahead. I want to already have written the perfect post, knowing full well it doesn't exist. The perfect introduction that somehow captures my voice. I'm jumping ahead for the conclusion, the neat summary, the thing that will make me sound like I know what I'm doing.
When I catch myself doing this - and it takes a minute before I do - I realise my shoulders are tight. My breath is shallow. My eyes dry from not blinking – I'm trying to force something. These are signals that I'm blocking something from unfolding. Not trusting the experience or direction. I'm not really here. I'm somewhere in an imagined future where I've already figured it out.
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This is what in gestalt we call a polarity, or basically opposites: the part that wants certainty vs. the part that's okay with not knowing. In gestalt therapy, we pay attention to these opposing energies. Not to choose one and reject the other, or to label it as good or bad in simplistic binaries, but to notice what happens when we split them apart.
What does it cost me to exile the "not-knowing" part? I lose curiosity. I lose contact with what I'm actually experiencing right now. I lose the texture and detail - the specific weight of this resistance, the particular flavour of this anxiety. What might happen if I gave space to those opposites without judgement? What could I learn about my own experience if I let this part in?
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I used to study art. For years, I was trained to have sharp critical opinions, to analyse, to be theoretically rigorous. There was pressure (perhaps more self-imposed than I realised at the time) to know, and to cover broad theoretical bases - to have seen the right exhibitions and films, read the right theory, to eat everything up in order to contribute something insightful. I was hyper aware of my own 'lack', comparing to others.
When I left that world, I think I pushed that whole part of me into the shadow, and it became a shadowy part; "failure," I labelled it. "That person who tried to be an artist and couldn't." So now when that critical voice shows up in other forms - demanding that I write something 'significant', something that demonstrates expertise - I don't recognise it as a part of me with needs. I just experience it as pressure. There isn't a neat way to 'get rid' of that part of me, but the work is perhaps first of all in noticing it, then exploring how that part supported.
In resigning that part of me to the shadows I lose sight of the nuances and possibilities it brought me at the time. It wasn't all bad and was able to drive me forward, to focus, to think critically, and engage with complex ways of thinking and being. To bring this shadowy part into the light I can also recognise my capacity to make and create, to experiment…to play. In the tightness of needing to have the end result, the play and vitality feels closed off…dull.
Working with polarities can mean bringing light to those parts that haven't always felt possible to explore - through fear of judgement, fear of losing something, fear of what might be revealed. The mask might slip. The work is staying close to what comes up when we shine light on those parts, and that's often difficult to do alone.
For me, what if underneath the harsh critic is just someone who cares about doing good work? Someone who trained my eye to notice patterns and relationships? Someone who can help me see structure in the chaos - when this is a choice it can support me. When it's my reflex go-to underpinned by a sense of urgency, that's when I notice discomfort.
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Where do you rush to and what part of your experience do you skip over to get to the conclusion? I wonder what might get lost in the speed for you.
What parts of yourself are you splitting off - and what might happen if you gave them more space?