Neurological Gestalt

So I have this re-occurring theme in my work regarding changing an old way of being and becoming something new, which is not surprising as that pretty much sums up reasons why people come to therapy in the first place. The reason I bring it up is that the idea of changing who were we are is questionable in of itself. As I see it when we begin a new stage of development it starts by rejecting an old way of being: "I am tired of being tired. I am tired of beating my head against this wall. I want to do it differently." This is more than just a new year's resolution, this is coming to a place where the way we do things just isn't working any more, whether that be in relationships, work or personal growth.

It starts with this rejection of old ways of being and then creating space for something new. In the ideal the process forms where a new way emerges and then it becomes integrated into the old, but what often happens is a new way emerges and sometimes we suppress the old way. Hence, a pattern of relapse emerges, because we have failed to take in account how the the previous ways of being is still influencing us. Ken Wilber, talks about development as "Nested Beings," which in may way of understanding is to say we transcend our old self, which means going beyond but still including that which came before. Going beyond is the new way, but the integration is the maturation of the new stage of being, wherein we move toward an integrated whole.

But developmentally we often become stuck by not integrating our old ways of being. The belief is that our mind is like software when in reality it is built more like hardware. Software can be deleted and re-written, but from my understanding of neurology, ways of being are hardwired in, meaning the synapses fuse along a path that establish patterns. When you learn something new you have to think about every step as you go, but eventually the brain creates a pathway...

Neurological Gestalt

So I have this re-occurring theme in my work regarding changing an old way of being and becoming something new, which is not surprising as that pretty much sums up reasons why people come to therapy in the first place. The reason I bring it up is that the idea of changing who were we are is questionable in of itself. As I see it when we begin a new stage of development it starts by rejecting an old way of being: "I am tired of being tired. I am tired of beating my head against this wall. I want to do it differently." This is more than just a new year's resolution, this is coming to a place where the way we do things just isn't working any more, whether that be in relationships, work or personal growth.

It starts with this rejection of old ways of being and then creating space for something new. In the ideal the process forms where a new way emerges and then it becomes integrated into the old, but what often happens is a new way emerges and sometimes we suppress the old way. Hence, a pattern of relapse emerges, because we have failed to take in account how the the previous ways of being is still influencing us. Ken Wilber, talks about development as "Nested Beings," which in may way of understanding is to say we transcend our old self, which means going beyond but still including that which came before. Going beyond is the new way, but the integration is the maturation of the new stage of being, wherein we move toward an integrated whole.

But developmentally we often become stuck by not integrating our old ways of being. The belief is that our mind is like software when in reality it is built more like hardware. Software can be deleted and re-written, but from my understanding of neurology, ways of being are hardwired in, meaning the synapses fuse along a path that establish patterns. When you learn something new you have to think about every step as you go, but eventually the brain creates a pathway for that movement and it becomes automatic. We eventually construct our identity around these pathways and thus it becomes hardwired into the brain, meaning it is fixed and difficult to change. When we do want to change we need to create a new pathway and then habituate ourselves to travel the new path. Until this new path is deeply habituated, we have to make a conscious effort to follow the new path. When we are stressed out our tendency is to go the more familiar route. The best example is using drugs. We habituate ourselves to using a drug to feel better when we are stressed out. To change that we need to create a new path, but when we a stressed out we are going to choose the path of least resistance.

This is one idea behind what addiction is, but it also can be interpreted for all sorts of behavior. The bottom line is to change is difficult and to change completely we need to ingrate the old ways of being into our new pattern. Again, using recovery addicts this is the part that is often most difficult, because a big part of getting sober is completely rejecting old ways of being to the point that we begin to construct the addict-self. When a recovering addict has any relapse of old behavior a recovery addict will often say, "that was may addict-self."

From a Gestalt therapy perspective this is just splitting off parts of ourselves we don't like, which ultimately keep a person from being an 'Authentic-self" I am not always a believer in the idea of an 'Authentic-self' but I do think that we often overlook the positive parts of ourselves when we reject old ways of being and that re-integration is remembering what parts of ourselves were valuable in that old way of being and how to re-include it in new ways of being.

When I mentioned Gestalt earlier I was referring to Gestalt therapy, developed by Fritz Perls, although I am convinced most of his ideas came originally from his wife, Laura Perls, but that is a whole other topic. Gestalt is one of those great German words like "ZeitGeist' that does not have a good English translation, but needless to say, Gestalt refers to the process of becoming a whole or complete or integrated. In therapy it is a process of trying to incorporate as mush of the self in any given process. One technique is to have a dialogue with parts ourselves that we have 'split off' in hopes of coming to a Gestalt wherein we learn how we can better integrate that part of ourselves into our whole being and thus be more 'Authentic.' I equate Authentic as being well-integrated, but that again that is a whole other topic.

The point of this all is that from a neurological point of view there is validity into an idea that we can't just become something else and that in trying to do so we actually reject ways of being that are hardwired into the brain and thus all we are doing is becoming unconscious to to those parts that are probably influencing the way we do things in everyday life, thus dooming us when we are stressed out to relapsing. If we really want to change we have to figure a way to re-integrate old ways of being into our new ways of being as the final process in our development into a new stage of life.