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Marilyn is now a MD Approved Supervisor.
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Elance
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Welcome to Gestalt Tools and News.
You're receiving this newsletter because of your relationship with me - through training, psychotherapy, spiritual healing work, colleagues, or friendship. I welcome your feedback. Below are some ideas about wholeness and the place of 'knowing' inside ourselves. You'll find information about the Introductory Gestalt Workshop on Monday, the 25th, still with the special price offer. And the new series of the Consultation and Study Group starts on February 8th, where you can discover new possibilities in yourself and your clients. I've included a link to Elance, where you can get reasonably priced help with things administrative and technical and a link to information about Once They Hear My Name, a book of stories of Korean adoptees. I've also included links to the two earlier newsletters if you want to check out my pieces about 'creativity' and about 'curiosity and fascination'.
If you want to unsubscribe, it's easy to do - just go to the bottom and click on "unsubscribe."
Marilyn Lammert,ScD, LCSW
Psychotherapist/Clinical Social Worker
You can read my previous newsletters by clicking the links below:
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Wholeness and the Place of Knowing
"We ignore Wholeness because we're so fixed on our object--the thing we've drawn, the thing we feel, the thing we've identified. But we ignore the fact that whatever our object is not is present as well. By splitting Reality into parts, and then focusing on the single part, we've tuned out the Whole. We've set ourselves up for confusion and despair." -
Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple, 1997
I got the following in an email from a client:"I think things are getting much worse for me within the last week since I saw you. I am thinking about quitting Ann (personal trainer) altogether and canceling my appointment with Dr. Coleman (weight management ) for next Monday. We can talk about it tomorrow as certainly I can cancel the two appointments on Friday. I also want to talk to you about the appropriate DSM-IV code to use on submitting a claim to my insurance. I want to try to make myself get a claim done this weekend. My problem is really getting myself to do anything. . . ."So what happens when I read this?I feel her being pulled away from her own 'knowing' and contact with herself.I know in my being that her experience of what's 'wrong' means somewhere in her is a sense of what's 'right.' That's from Gestalt therapy: we are inherently complete and whole. We know what 'wholeness' is. But we block this 'knowing.' We cut off our experience of parts of ourselves. Here she's cut off from her intuitive non-rational knowing - her 'whole-person' knowing. Intellectual knowing is supported in our culture, non-rational is not. We're all vulnerable to this cutting off.Together we can locate her wholeness - I know that. In our next session, we work with recognizing and integrating her cut-off sense of wholeness. Awareness in the 'here and now' is the way. Through awareness, we can connect to our inborn capacity to grow and heal. I ask her to go inside -- into her body. And once there, to go to a situation where she knows what she wants.It comes quickly: She often goes to a family-run Central American carryout - that's the situation. And what she knows is that she wants to give them a tip. A small thing, but very clearly different from when she goes to Starbucks. Tips are expected there. She gives tips there also, but it doesn't feel the same. It's not from the same place of knowing.I know this is a place of wisdom. From here, we explore the questions about what she wants to do about Ann and Dr. Coleman. She knows what she wants to do.This place of 'knowing' is the place of wholeness in this woman.
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Upcoming Workshop and New Consultation Group Series
Introductory Workshop - Monday, January 25th
Noon - 3:00PM
This 3-hour relationally-oriented Gestalt workshop will enhance your clinical skills. Whether you are seeking to further your Gestalt experience, want greater freedom and creativity to engage with your clients, or want to integrate gestalt concepts into your current practice, this workshop will enhance your clinical practice. Basic Gestalt concepts and methods will be discussed as well as a live Gestalt therapy session demonstration.
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Noon - 3:00PM
5117 Manning Drive in Bethesda
3 Cat. 1 CEU's (Social Work
Experiential Consultation & Study Group
Regular monthly, 2nd Monday
10:30AM - 12:30PM
Next series starts February 8th
Cat. 1 CEU's (Social Work)
$45/session
5117 Manning Drive in Bethesda
pakm78@gmail.com or 301-951-9645
Click here to register, and receive 3 Gestalt articles.
Feeling stuck or at a loss is not uncommon for therapists. The experiential approach we'll be using is based on the idea that we often have the wisdom we need to get unstuck and find our way, but don't always have direct access to it.
In this group, we'll focus on feeling into the client's experience at the same time we're with our own. Being absorbed in this way together naturally gives rise to the kind of creative experiments Gestalt is known for.
The group is structured so that people can learn together and feel safe and supported. You'll have opportunities to practice new ways as you choose to do so. Attention will be paid to personal and interpersonal boundaries. We'll focus on direct experience, awareness, close attention to contact between therapist and client, and experiments.
We'll talk about theory as it relates to our experience.
Comments from previous workshops:
"Great intro to Gestalt." P.T., Arlington, VA
". . . helpful for people at different stages of their practice experience." C.M., Washington, DC
"Marilyn is an outstanding teacher." S.N., Washington, DC
"I would definitely recommend this workshop. It was an easy way to learn. I...enjoyed myself and learned a lot." L.S., Reston, VA
FAQ's
Who would benefit from attending?
Beginning or more experienced therapists who want to feel more alive in their work and experience a heightened sense of connection to their clients.
How will this help me in my work if I'm an experienced therapist?
Sometimes you and a client are stuck, frustrated or feel at a loss. This approach offers a way to 1) go from talking about to direct experiencing, moving the process forward in an organic way, and 2) access the client world for a more complete understanding of what the client is experiencing so you can join together. Sessions will be more interesting, and you'll be more effective.
What kinds of client will this help?
Because gestalt therapy is a process theory, it can be used effectively with any client population the therapist understands and feels comfortable with. The system adjusts to the client. Some examples that come to mind are those who: are stuck--in the past, in a relationship, in a repetitive pattern; those who want to change and can't seem to, have difficulty connecting to their feelings or whose feelings are scattered; those who have polarized experiences, e.g., bi-cultural who don't feel completely a part of either world; those who have anxiety, depression, chronic or psychophysiologic illness.
The effectiveness of Gestalt therapy has been confirmed with a wide range of clinical disorders (such as schizophrenia, personality disorders, affective and anxiety disorders, substance dependencies and psychosomatic disorders).
Will there be experiential learning in the workshop?
The workshop will be a combination of theory and practice concepts, historical background and experiential.
Is there any reading?
When you register, you will receive three informative articles which will be helpful but not required.
What does "gestalt" mean?
The word "gestalt" means a unified whole. People perceive in whole patterns that cannot be grasped by analyzing separate elements. The relationships of the parts to each other and to the whole must be identified and understood.
What if I'm interested in the group but I'm not an improvising person or can't do role plays?
No one will be required to do something they are not comfortable with. The group is designed in such a way that each person is encouraged (but not required) to experiment and learn at the edge of their comfort zone and is supported to stand solid in their own felt experience.
Description of Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt therapy is an enlivening and intimate way of being with clients. It was developed as an antidote to behaviorism and psychoanalysis 50 years ago. Present-day relational psychoanalysis is closer to Gestalt therapy than to classical psychoanalysis. Gestalt therapy focuses on therapist-client relationship and interventions into the client's inner experience.
Gestalt therapy is process oriented and experiential, based on a field theory (akin to the intersubjective field) where all experience is co-created and the experience of the therapist is not more valid or objective than that of the client. The present-centered dialogue is enlivening and allows client and therapist to have an immediate and vivid grasp of current experience, which includes developmental history (since we bring the past to our present experience.) When emotional process is experienced vividly in the present, the meanings that shape the immediate experience can be explored more directly.
The dialogue is the healing element; creative experiments (or techniques) emerge organically out of absorption in the dialogue. Experimentation (trying something new) is an alternative to purely verbal techniques.
The relational experience of client and therapist may trigger awareness of something deeper and beyond words, an experience that some call spiritual.
Example
I am working with a client who has been married a long time and wants to leave; I noticed that although she talks very animatedly about how much she wants out of the marriage she comes back each time without making significant steps toward leaving. I tried gently exploring this contrast with her, but got nowhere. what would you do? After several sessions I decided to tell her my dilemma directly. Her dilemma was that only when she was angry could she move forward, otherwise she gets cajoled into not leaving by her husband. As she described her dilemma, I realized I couldn't feel anything listening to her words--she wasn't connected, affectively, with the words she was saying. I said this to her. She didn't feel connected to her words, either. But I could feel our connection and from this contact between us. I invited her to explore these feelings. I asked her to put herself into a time when she felt cajoled and notice how and where she experienced this in her body. the same with a time she felt angry. From there, she located the center of her body, grounded herself in the sensations in her body and in what she coudl see, hear and sense in her surroundings. I suggested she experiment or try on statements to her husband about what she wants. She reported feeling strong and I could feel her 'aliveness'. The next week she had told her son and daughters that she was leaving their father.
Through experiments, the therapist supports the client's direct experience of something new instead of merely talking about the possibility of something new.
BIO
Marilyn Lammert has practiced psychotherapy in the Washington, DC area for 30 years. She received her Master's in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis, her Doctor of Science from Johns Hopkins University, and has a postgraduate diploma in Gestalt Therapy from the Gestalt Training Center of San Diego where she studied with Erv and Miriam Polster. In addition to her work as a clinician, Dr. Lammert has taught in graduate Social Work programs at Washington University, the University of Maryland and Catholic University.
* Martin Buber wrote about the concept of Inclusion--in this the therapist puts himself or herself into the experience of the client imagines the existence of the other feels it as if it were a sensation within his or her own body. Inclusion is also a way of gathering information. As the therapist gets close to experiencing what it is like to be the client, he or she also learns a lot about how the client thinks, feels and relates, helpful information in exploring the struggles the client faces.
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| Once They Hear My Name
Once They Hear My Name brings to life the stories of nine Korean adoptees, who, in their own words, talk about growing up in typical American families, far from their ethnic origins.
Read a review in the Christian Science Monitor...
These are tales of acceptance and rejection, of struggle and success --- unique stories, with a common thread. The book promises to be a major step forward in our collective understanding of the cultural hurdles international adoptees must tackle everyday.
Read more here...
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