Respect the rhythm of contact and withdrawal
When you need to pull back, do it deliberately, notice where you go, and then return.
Por que funciona
Levitsky and Perls treat the natural inclination to withdraw from contact not as resistance to be overcome but as a rhythm to be respected. In their account, a person who feels the urge to pull away is invited to withdraw in imagination to a place where they feel secure, describe it and how it feels, and then come back. Withdrawing on purpose, rather than drifting away while pretending to stay, lets a person recover and return to contact with more of themselves available.
Como fazer
- In a conversation or a piece of inner work that is getting too much, notice the wish to pull away.
- Instead of forcing yourself to stay, close your eyes for a minute and go in imagination to a place where you feel secure.
- Describe it to yourself in the present tense: what you see, hear and feel there, and how your body changes.
- When you are ready, come back and notice what you now want to say or do.
Evidência
The contact and withdrawal rhythm is described, with a direct quotation, in Witchel's 1973 review of Levitsky and Perls's 1970 chapter, including the imagined-withdrawal procedure. It is established Gestalt practice with no study of its own. (clinical)
Withdrawal works when it is a pause with a return. If pulling away has become the way you avoid nearly every difficult moment, or if the need to escape feels overwhelming, that is worth exploring with a trained therapist.
Fontes
- Levitsky, A., & Perls, F. S. (1970). The rules and games of Gestalt therapy. In J. Fagan & I. L. Shepherd (Eds.), Gestalt Therapy Now: Theory, Techniques, Applications. Science and Behavior Books.
- Witchel, R. (1973). Gestalt Therapy: Development, Theory, and Techniques. Paper presented at the American Personnel and Guidance Association meeting, Atlanta (ERIC document ED082090).
Erro comum
Treating every urge to withdraw as weakness and pushing through. In the Gestalt account, forced contact is not real contact; a deliberate pause usually makes the return fuller.
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Mais práticas para Gestalt Therapy: Awareness, Ownership and Contact in the Here and Now
- Follow the awareness continuum
Say what you are aware of, moment by moment, in the present tense, instead of explaining it.
- Change "it" language into "I" language
Say "I am trembling" instead of "it is trembling", and add "and I take responsibility for it" to what you say.
- Notice the top dog and the underdog
Hear the bossy inner voice of "shoulds" and the quiet part that stalls, and let each say its piece.
- Notice the unfinished situation pulling at your attention
Find the unmet need that keeps drawing your attention away from the present, and name it in your own words.
- Exaggerate the gesture
Take a small repeated movement or tone of voice and deliberately make it bigger, to hear what it is saying.
- Notice how you interrupt contact
Catch the moment you turn a reaction back on yourself, or swallow someone else's rule whole, instead of meeting what is there.
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