John Cleese assures us on his YouTube video that creativity is not something you do, it is a way of being.   As Gestalt therapists we are gifted with a vocation that invites us at our best to be relaxed and open and available to play.   (Our worst being when we get bound by our introjects […]

Did you ever wonder why we become so dramatic when we are sharing our feelings? What we do with our emotions has a lot to do with the degree to which we failed to receive support or acknowledgment of our suffering. It is paradoxical that the bigger the drama the less we are able to feel our own suffering and the more our ability to be comforted by others is diminished.

All children love the unknown, the surprise in the wrapping, the thrill of knocking on a door on Halloween, the amazement of sticking your tongue out for the new taste and texture called snow. You have a child inside you whom you promised once that you wouldn’t grow old, a child who is waiting and waiting for something new to happen. Each time you change it up, do something slightly different, the joy of the unknown returns. It brings with it the sense of time stopping no matter what is happening in the wider world.

The remark I hear most often from our graduates is this: I have become comfortable in my own skin. The paradox of this remark from a Gestalt perspective is that only by allowing myself to be uncomfortable in my skin am I truly living life.

My former colleague JoAnne Greenham used to say that some of us were born with a clown in their head. In this way we recognize one another — one of us puts on a rubber clown nose in the middle of an argument and the other stops arguing to guffaw.
 
One of the values of our training at the GIT is a sense of humour, and this seems to be a rare commodity – bestowed by genes and circumstance on some and forbidden to others.