Presenter: Anna Yudin

Description:

How can a therapist work with clients who struggle with excessive guilt? How should a therapist respond when clients take on more responsibility for a situation than actually belongs to them?

In our founding text, Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman write: “Contact, the work that results in assimilation and growth, is the forming of a figure of interest against a ground or context of the organism/environment field.” A need emerges as a figure and develops through the contacting process. We may find something that satisfies the need and experience completion, or the need may remain unmet and we experience frustration. Frustration is an inevitable part of life, but it may become frightening or overwhelming when a child does not receive sufficient support in understanding and bearing the experience.

In situations of neglect, for example, children often do not receive such support. A child may organize the situation through conclusions such as “Something is wrong with me if my needs are not met” or “The other person is bad if they do not give me what I need.” Self-blame and blame of others may provide an explanation for an otherwise confusing experience and protect the child from feelings of helplessness, uncertainty, or isolation. What begins as a creative adjustment may later become a rigid pattern of guilt, resentment, self-punishment, or exaggerated responsibility. Processes such as introjection, deflection, and retroflection may help the child structure and make sense of a situation in the face of not knowing.

The therapeutic task is to help clients become aware of their needs, experience frustration with greater support, and distinguish what responsibility belongs to them, what belongs to others, and what belongs to the situation itself. Through contact with the therapist, clients may have a new experience of being heard, understood, and supported where this was previously unavailable. They may then discover new ways of creating safety without automatically resorting to self-blame, blame of others, or self-punishment.

In this workshop, I will present the theoretical background of my model for working with guilt and offer an experiential exercise and/or a clinical demonstration to show how the model can be applied in practice.

Biography:

I am a teacher, supervisor, and practitioner in the Gestalt approach. My education includes training in Gestalt therapy, and my professional work brings together practice, supervision, teaching, and writing. I am also the creator of professional seminars and educational projects, as well as the author of books and articles that help Gestalt therapists and students in their development. I work with clients, train specialists, and create space for deep professional exploration, with particular attention to ethics, methodology, clinical research, and authentic human contact. I was born in Russia, lived in Norway for 20 years, and now live in Cyprus.