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| Fritz Perls |
their spirit voice or soul aspect. I remember asking a client to participate in
Fritz Perls’ “empty chair exercise.” This is a Gestalt technique in which
the client engages with an aspect of themselves, an emotion or another
imagined person. The client takes turns to play both herself and the other
aspect. In this case I asked my client to engage with her inner critic,
playing the critic first. She sat up straight in the chair positioned across
from the couch where she had been sitting and chided: “You are going
nowhere! You’re a loser, and you’re wasting your time.” After the critic
lambasted her for a while, I asked her to move back to the couch and
respond to the nasty critic. I was floored when she said, “You’re right.”
Before I could interject in her defense, she continued: “But I’m making a huge effort to makes strides and I’ve come a long way.” Engaging in this manner helps clients to hear just how hard it is to rise above an inner voice that is pulling the rug at every step. They begin to feel how they are walking around as their own worst enemies.
It’s pretty tough to hear the voice of the spirit or soul
self with another part of the self firing condemning insults. How harshly we
judge ourselves sometimes is in direct correlation to how egregiously we judge
others. Referring to a friend of hers, a client said to me: “Come on. You have to admit anyone who treats a goat like a pet is ridiculous. It's a farm animal. It's meant to be milked, not pampered.” As I glanced at the goat hairs poking from my jacket hanging on the back of a chair, I purred: “Tell me about what that means to you.” Clients sometimes defend the
inner critic, assuring me that without that voice they would get nothing done.
They would become lazy, good for nothings. They would repeat their mistakes and never rise to their potential.
I’m not recommending giving up our consciences
for Lent, becoming hussies and addicted to gambling.
