Jim’s Blog

A boundary is a psychological term that delineates the point at which the individual ends and that which is not the individual begins.  It is a fluid phenomenon, fluctuating over time and across different situations.  We hear about the importance of boundaries in reference to codependency–often an overly porous boundary leads to the individual being taken advantage of and having insufficient sense of self.  In Gestalt, we understand the boundary as the place of contact between the individual and the world.  We may choose to have lots of interaction across this boundary such as when we are taking from and giving to others or when we are actively grasping and taking in what we need form the environment.  This level of interaction creates high levels of stimulus and excitement; there is much to consider, evaluate, experience, integrate, or reject.  At these times we are taking in the raw materials of emotional growth and may be actively interested in growth and being influenced by what we come into contact with.At the extreme, the individual’s boundary might be so open that confluence might result.  Confluence is an interaction style in which the individual experiences little difference between themselves and the environment.  We may have a momentary experience of confluence with another person at the height of lovemaking or perhaps in a moment of intense, shared grief.  Confluence can become habitual, however, and when that happens we risk losing ourselves.  I may, intentionally or unintentionally, mould myself to the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors or another person or group of people such that I lose a sense of who I am.  Over time, life can become dull.  It is not merely the interchange of ideas and energy across the boundary that causes excitement but also the friction that results from the differences between the individual and the environment.  For example, think of how much livelier a conversation is with someone who has a different view of the world than with someone who agrees completely with all that you say.At other times, we may choose to create less porous boundaries between ourselves and the world.  At those times, our focus may be turned inwardly, and we may deflect energy from the environment away from us and retroflect or hold in energy, emotion, speech, or actions that we might otherwise put out into the environment.  These firmer boundaries serve us particularly well if we are in an unsafe environment or if we have just finished an exhausting period of growth or challenge such as completing a difficult class or coming home from a visit to the family in which we have stood up for ourselves.  The firmer boundaries may allow the time to integrate and consolidate the new experiences generated in the time of more open boundaries.  At the extreme, overly firm boundaries can isolate us emotionally.  I miss out on opportunities to interact with and learn from others because of the tight container I have constructed around myself.  Sometimes, the firm boundaries are selective, e.g., I may interact freely with my friends around offering and providing them things they need, but I may tightly control my spontaneous emotional reactions to them.  In this way, we often hold on to anger or resentment because we have introjected or taken in whole the belief that we are not allowed to express anger toward others.  The container around the anger allows no way of release or dissipation of the feeling, and so the anger builds over time.  As it builds, we devote more energy to reinforcing the container to the point that just living day to day can greatly tire us.  This is one of the ways that depression takes hold: we are stuck with intense feelings without any way of handling them and so the body overloads and shuts down.  I find it useful to check in with myself periodically and explore how rigid or loose my boundaries are at that moment.  Next I get curious about whether that level of porousness serves me or not.  In other words, do I want my boundaries to be this rigid or loose in this moment, or am I reverting to familiar ways of being?  For example, I may default to overly loose boundaries in that I assume others know better than I do and it’s best not to question or resist.  Or I may fall back on overly rigid boundaries because there was not adequate safety when I was a child, and I forget that my environment has changed since then.  Finally, once I have a sense of the boundaries I would like to have or try out, I may design ways of experimenting with a different boundary, e.g., taking the risk to voice a differing point of view when I usually keep quiet.  Or seeing what it’s like if I don’t take responsibility for my siblings problems. 

Our bodies are a treasure trove of information about what is going on with us. Here are some ideas for finding and making use of those treasures.

First, we must approach the process of detecting sensation and developing awareness with an open mind. That means getting interested in whatever we many learn from our bodies. We may have a particular focus, e.g., learning more about the depression I feel or a curiosity about a particular habit or a certain part of the body. But within that focus I will gather the richest results if I let myself be open to whatever arises.

I may begin the process by noticing my breath and scanning my body, becoming aware of any sensation–positive, negative, or neutral. I give myself time for the process to unfold and I know that any insights I develop may take time to present themselves. As I slowly become aware of the tightness in my shoulders, the full feeling in my legs, and a slight, twitchy feeling in my face, I spend some time just noticing each of these sensations. (I may also notice the absence of sensation.) Inevitably, one of these sensations will attract my attention more than the others.

At this point, I may focus on just that sensation and get curious about what else I can learn about it. If I am interested in the fullness in my legs, I may choose to experiment. For example, I may notice how the sensation changes as I sit compared to how I stand. How does it change when my legs are still as compared to when I walk or crouch? At this point, the experiments have no other purpose than to deepen my awareness of my legs. This approach requires patience. We so often want results or an answer from what we do. But if the answer were easy to discover, we would have discovered it before.

As I explore, I may feel emotions or think of images spontaneously. For example, as I stand on my legs and tighten them, I may feel a little fear or I may have an image of kicking someone. These may turn out to be valuable parts of the exploration. I need to go slowly and see what catches my attention. It is quite likely that the train of images, sensations, and emotions that I experience may be surprising and different from what I had expected. This is a good thing. If we stay only with what is expected and familiar, we lose access to other parts of our experience that for whatever reason are not easily accessible.

In this example, I may end this part of my exploration with some tantalizing bits of experience but with no coherent meaning. A fullness in my legs is heightened when I stand and tighten them; I feel some fear and an image of kicking someone when I exaggerate the tightening; I may also feel vaguely uncomfortable and want to stop focusing on my legs. What, you may ask, is the point of the exploration if the result is just this? Well, it is difficult to say. It may be that over time I will continue to be curious about my legs and will experiment at different times and have similar experiences. I may get curious about the experience and ask myself if it feels O.K. to have an image of kicking someone. Does that thought amuse me? Does it terrify me? Does it make me ashamed? And is the fear I feel similar to any other fear I am already familiar with? What is my experience if I stand but with my legs so loose that they barely hold me up (which is an exploration of the other end of a continuum of rigid leg/loose leg)?

The asking of these questions may or may not yield something profound or interesting. But engaging in this process regularly builds a supply of raw data about yourself and heightens your understanding of your body. As you think about and discuss with others what you notice, you have the opportunity to make connections and develop understanding out of the raw data you have mined.

Recently, I have been reading books by Caroline Myss who identifies herself as a “medical intuitive,” someone who senses the presence of medical issues or problems in an individual by being with that person and sensing her/his energy. At one point she writes that our bodies’ pains or discomforts may be valuable indicators of a system out of balance. Although there is a danger in being too literal about the correspondence between symptoms and psychological or spiritual issues (in my opinion), our bodies often can suggest points of exploration of our psychological reality. For example, in conversation when I feel restless or have a weighted feeling in my legs, neck, and shoulders, I have learned that I may be retroflecting, i.e. stopping myself from saying something I want to say.

These sensations are a gift my body gives me, but it would be easy to lose sight of this gift. Instead of getting curious about the sensations and exploring what they might mean for me, I might respond to them instead with irritation. What is upmost in my awareness, then, is not the original sensations but my reaction to them, and I may respond to the irritation with some form of escape such as drinking some alcohol, eating, sleeping, surfing the Internet.

As Myss says, most people seeking to learn how to be an intuitive like her already possess a good connection to their own intuition. Frequently, however, they do not trust or do not listen to what their intuition is saying. From a Gestalt perspective, I would say that I often do not take the time to get curious about the sensations–especially the unpleasant ones–and develop a sense of what is going on with me. Taking that time means being O.K. with being in the unpleasant sensation–something I like to avoid.

My goal for myself right now is to be grateful for the unpleasant sensations in my body and the chance to find out more about what they mean for me. The meaning may not come immediately or at all, but the quest for deeper understanding inevitably leads to being more genuinely myself and more awareness of all the parts of who I am. Soon I will say more about how to approach that process of developing sensation awareness and making meaning of that awareness.

I have read Myss’ “Sacred Contracts” and am currently reading “Spiritual Anatomy,” and I recommend both.

Last week in the meditation class that I have been taking, we were introduced to the Five Remembrances. I was struck with how they echo themes from Gestalt, particularly the Paradoxical Theory of Change. The Five Remembrances, according to the instructor in my class are difficult truths that must be acknowledged and believed. Not to acknowledge them is to live in denial, and in so doing, we forgo any chance of lasting happiness. The Five Remembrances are these: that growing older is a fact of life; that sickness is a fact of life; that we all shall die; that at some point we shall be separated from those we love; and that the only things we can count on are what we accomplish, not on our possessions.

What a bleak and sobering list of truths to contemplate! Thinking about these points made made me sad, particularly the thought of losing loved ones. It is only in embracing these truths, however, that I can attempt to free myself of the fear and resentment that keep me at arm’s length from the excitement of my life. For so much of my life, I have tried to be careful about exposing myself to disappointment or pain, pulling back from opportunities or challenges because I sought comfort and calm. But the comfort I created for myself was closer to numbness–like staying in on a sunny day to avoid the possibility of falling on the pavement and scraping my knee.

The strategy kept me seemingly safe but bred a resentment against myself. I resented the missed opportunities, the boredom, and the self-doubts, yet I was the one who was restraining me. The resentment leads to internally directed rage and eventually to depression. And my attempts to bring myself out of depression by using the familiar strategy of containing or avoiding unpleasant realities only seemed to add to the numb, sterile state in which I started.

This links to Gestalt in this way: the Paradoxical Theory of Change states that in order to change a behavior, we ought to lean into that current behavior, get curious about it, and experience it more fully. For example, if I seek to change my shyness to assertiveness, I should start by getting curious about my shyness and perhaps even exaggerate it until I feel I know it and have embraced it. Only then have I created enough ground to explore a different way of being, e.g., assertiveness.

Leaning into the behavior that we want to change or disown is counterintuitive and paradoxical. We seek to distance ourselves from the thing we have learned to despise about ourselves. When, as so often happens, we fail to change a certain behavior, we flee from it or seek to block it from our awareness. Ignoring the behavior, however, does not stop it but only puts it further out of our conscious control and, thus, actually makes it harder to change. We end up actually reinforcing the very behavior we want so desperately to change.

In Gestalt we learn to get curious about the behavior, seeking to bring it more into our awareness. This increasing of our awareness becomes an end in and of itself, like meditation. Out of this new awareness comes a new sense of ourselves and a new ground. Out of this new ground, we may choose to explore alternative ways of responding to situations, but without this new ground, the new behavior cannot emerge.

In both Gestalt and in the contemplation of the Five Remembrances, then, recognizing and staying with what is becomes the central task. In letting go of trying to change, deny, or escape our present struggle, we build the ground to live more fully in the present and generate new alternatives out of that heightened awareness.