GESTALT TYPE SELF-COUNSELING THAT YOU CAN DO!

This dialogue can be done by one person. YOU. You might have a mirror reflection going, or use two chairs. Hop from one to the other. Of course, the best way is to have a friend run the process. If you are alone, you will create yourself as the person with the trauma, and sit in one chair and you speak at length to yourself, perhaps using a mirror and seeing that other guy as your therapist. Then you switch chairs and assume the counselor role and talk to the 'sick' you, more easily done in the mirror perhaps, than from another chair.

NOW, if you have a friend, and they might be interested in a career that could give them, without shingle, license or education a way to make a good living (100$ the hour, no license necessary,) say that they might be glad to be exposed to this whole process of CLEARING PEOPLE., along the lines of the Fritz Perls GESTALT method.

Give him or her this piece of paper and let them speak the other side of the dialogue. THE PERSON who is getting cleared is the CLIENT. THE person who has this piece of paper and is asking questions we call the COUNSELOR but what’s great is that you can switch roles when you’re finished. YOU CAN ALSO do this in a truth group. In a living room with a dozen people.

COUNSELOR: Let us start. TELL ME, what concerns you now about a relationship?

CLIENT: I am concerned that even though my mother and I have a fairly good relationship now, that the patterns and wounds of the past between us are still affecting how I live my life and my current self-esteem. I feel that I have not completely healed my inner, wounded child in relationship to her.

As a young child, I felt that she had no real understanding or compassion toward me. I felt the lack of a mother's loving touch in my life. Today, she does her utmost to be loving and supportive yet, somehow, I feel the past still influences our present day relationship. She is a very strong woman and I tend to feel smothered by her and if I don't like things her way, then I'm being a 'bad girl'.

COUNSELOR: Sounds like there is definitely a lot of excess baggage in this relationship between you and your mother, that you are ready to release. What would be the foremost and most important thing you would like to heal in this relationship right now? If you could close your eyes for a moment and meditate in the depths of your heart, perhaps there is a voice that would like to be heard inside your head. (PAUSE). Just indulge that voice now. Tell Mother what you want to say.

CLIENT:Mother? I don't think you love me. I feel all alone. I feel you hate me and you wish I weren't even born. That I am just a pain in the neck to you. Our relationship makes me hate myself, like I don't even deserve to be here on this planet How could you be so mean to me? I am your little, precious girl. What is your problem that you can't give me the love and nurturing I need?

COUNSELOR:Would you like to give your mother a voice by doing some gestalt work with her?

CLIENT: Yes, I will put my mother in the chair to answer my questions. (head down.) Head comes up. NOW she is the mother.

MOTHER: Dear you know that I want the very best for you However, I have this rage inside me that I project onto you because you are my little girl. You mean so much to me yet I don't know how to love you and nurture you in a soft way. Life was never easy for me and I had to learn the hard way. I feel it is best for me to be strict in my discipline with you. You run all over me. You want money.

CLIENT: Mother I gave you my tax refund to hold. A year later I asked you for it, you denied I ever had given it to you. How forgetful you are with my hard earned money. You almost came out and said I was a liar and a mooch. I want to feel loved and cared about and really valued by you. Instead, all your carelessness with my needs, my life details, forgetting them and all, and your constant urge to discipline me and make me live frugally when I DO already makes me feel like I'm bad and can never be good enough.

I want to feel like you are so happy that I am in your life, that God gave you this gift of me as your child. You are my first teacher and I feel like you have taught me to hate myself. I just feel so much ugliness in our relationship. Part of me feels like destroying me to get back at you---you want me to do all this great stuff---I will just do the opposite.

God, I never knew I had so much unresolved anger toward you. Your not loving me when I most needed it. I hate you for not understanding and not loving me. Why did you have to yell at me all the time? I can't remember one time of just being really happy and cozy in your arms. I know forgiveness is on the other side of all my anger yet first, I want to deeply express my anger! If you weren't prepared to love me, you shouldn't have had me. You tell me you really wanted a girl---what for?--to abuse me and take out all your anger on me? God, I must have had a very strong spirit to survive my childhood with you. It did its damage to my self esteem; yet when I think about it, it gave me a gift, too. It gave me this incredible longing for love and to seek God with all my heart because I knew there had to be more to this life than "what was on the plate in front of me."

For some reason, you and I were meant to be together as mother and daughter this lifetime and strangely enough, after expressing my anger, I am now moving into a place of gratitude as you sent me into thirty years of healthfoods, yoga, meditation. You and you alone. The painful lessons of childhood have given me a depth, caring, understanding and kindness toward others that I might not have developed otherwise. Pain can be a great teacher and it was your job to be in this karmic role with me. And I can heal the past completely. Miracles happen everyday. There is no need for me to be stuck in the victim role of my past with you. I want to move on already. I want every cell and atom in my being to be vibrating with the universality of love for all God's creation, for me, for you, for all. Perhaps that was the greatest gift of my childhood, this dream of universal love and the ecstasy of oneness that I know is possible. With or without a loving parent.

I forgive you, Mom, and I forgive myself for judging myself as 'bad', as unlovable, as not worthy. I have faith that we can both be healed by the work I am doing on our relationship and I am looking forward to relating to you and myself in a deeper, more loving and conscious way. I do love you and I do love me. I realize that I have projected onto you my own lack of self care and I repeated your pattern of not deeply caring for yourself.

COUNSELOR:You just did a great job of working your own process. Do you feel complete for now or is there anything you want to add?

CLIENT: I do feel complete and I am going to continue to pray daily for my Mother as I have been doing for years. I realize there is no blame here, no good, no bad, it all just is. It's time to let the past go on the deepest level of my being. Thank you, I feel it is enough for now.

COUNSELOR: You're welcome and I support you in your continued goal of deep healing and am here for you.