 When I was training to be a therapist at the Gestalt Institute of New Orleans, my mentor Anne Teachworth would often quote the founder of Gestalt Therapy (Fritz Perls), who used to say “Lose your mind and come to your senses.” He wasn’t advocating that we lose our sanity, but rather that we lose the false grip of control we think have when we are trying to solve a challenge by thinking and analyzing it in our mind, without any awareness of how we feel about it.
Our feelings are like an internal GPS inside of us, which constantly guides us to where we want to go. But so often, we get stuck in our heads, attempting to mentally solve a problem without listening to the guidance of our feelings and then we get frustrated because we don't know what to do! Sound familiar? It's a bit like sitting in your car and programming your GPS, and then talking about it (and analyzing it) instead of following it, and then wondering why you aren’t getting where you want to go. Our feelings are important messengers that can guide us about how to get our needs met, but in order to pay attention to our emotions, we have to feel them in our body, not think about them in our head. Do you ever find yourself wondering am I depressed? Often, when clients explore this with me, they will say I don’t really know what I feel. If you don't know what you feel, you don't know what you need. Using your senses is a gentle way to start identifying what you feel (and thus need). Then you can use your inner GPS to guide you in the best direction to get your needs met. I you need help identifying what you are feeling right now, I'd love to help you with this, so please click on my Services page to learn more about online counseling with me, and if you’d like to continue reading more posts, you can click here to return to my Blog. Comments are closed.
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