Four ways to balance yourselves   Emotional: Speak what is absolutely true from your heart to someone in the moment   We have two voices we can use when we want to answer the question how are we doing? One is what Fritz Perls called the phoney voice, that is careful to not hurt or […]

I was recently confronted by a Gestalt colleague with this statement: Aren’t there many definitions of respect? The question stunned me. I realized I have a body sense of what is feels like to be respected and a body understanding of what another person means when they let me know they do not feel respected by me. These are times that I listen attentively to their truth of the experience and make what amends are possible.

If you have ever asked a friend: what do you think of me? Then you know the tension that can hang in the air while you wait for a reply. We long for some appreciation or awareness of how good a friend we are, how “just” a human being, how interesting is our character, and at the same time we quiver with apprehension that our deepest fears and doubts about ourselves are about to be exposed. Well this blog is not about that — in the blunt words of one of my friends: “Enough about you!”

Hard as it is to ask the question above, I am asking you to imagine asking instead: How am I doing with you? This question opens the door to our interactions — to the other person.

My teacher Jorge Rosner had a simple approach for transforming the I should’s (but I don’t wanna) of life. He told us: When you are facing an inner struggle between Act and Afraid to Act, Just ask yourself: Will I or won’t I? And then: What’s the worst that can happen if I do or I don’t? He recommended we imagine the worst possible outcome, and only then decide I will or I won’t.

I recently took part in a discussion about forgiveness. In the room were both spiritual people and psychotherapists. Someone raised the question as to whether or not forgiveness exists. We were from many different countries and looked up the definition in several languages coming up with words like to pardon, to give mercy. Each definition seemed to hold inside of it a dynamic where someone bestows forgiveness on another. We spoke about how important the concept of forgiveness has been for social regulation, to prevent revenge which is so much a part of human history. Was the concept of forgiveness built into our humanity to keep us from releasing our suppressed anger and desire for revenge?