IN SEARCH OF INSIGHT

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

And all changes take place at the level of innovation

In other words, insights are diagnoses that we make to ourselves, and the very understanding of a problem can become an obstacle to its solution. For example, a person realized that he was afraid to speak in public because he remembered some unpleasant story from the 6th grade when he failed such a speech. The very process of remembering, linking a situation in the present with situations in the past can look very vivid and unexpected. "Now I understand!" - says this person to the therapist and happy with the session and insight goes home. Will he start performing in public without fear? No.

Insight is not enough

Understanding is the road to nowhere. Understanding yourself is useless and even harmful. Understanding yourself and knowing why what happens to you is ineffective. It's like becoming a surgeon after reading books and never taking a scalpel in your life. Sometimes it's just a dead end.

So, don't you need any insights?

Insights are useful to tell about them and show how it was and how it became. They are important as examples or reference points when you look back and realize how much has changed in you over a period of time. They are needed to calm the mind and convince it that the therapy is going to be beneficial and correct. It is because of the insights of the psychology book that all kinds of descriptions of phenomena and symptoms are so popular. It seems that I read a book about maternal love, for example, and everything became clear - how exactly was not loved in childhood, why it is important and how not to do it. The insights are bright, the awareness is useful, but the person remains the same as he was before reading the book. The book gave the answers, and we are changing due to the questions.

The more questions, the faster everything changes

Gestalt therapy is a culture of questions, not answers. The more questions you have about yourself, your life, relationships and ways of interacting in the world, the faster and the more imperceptibly you change. Less noticeable - because all real changes happen very slowly and not very brightly. With small steps, imperceptible attempts that do not turn the brain and willpower inside out, smoothly and in contact - but after a while, when the number of such small steps turns into a qualitative insight, you understand that when it seemed to you that nothing was happening, the most important thing happened. And such an insight is not an insight, but a remark. Awareness of a different quality. It is the ability to see something new that you have not seen before. This is exactly the muscle that is worth developing and there is no end to its development. The process is endless.

The more you notice, the faster you progress

Once you grasp the difference between a big insight and a small remark, once you understand how it happens and why it is sometimes slow and unclear, there is no turning back. A person who has begun to notice himself in life will no longer see what he saw. And then insights will become irrelevant. It will be the observation and awareness based on something new that will be more important, and not what you already know about yourself.

Don't seek insight. Don't look for an explanation for your life. Don't worry about symptoms and diagnoses. Leave yourself alone and stop changing your life with volitional efforts. Relax and just watch. And it is best to do this, of course, in public contact. This is exactly the place where insights do not solve anything, and new phenomena and small changes occur every second of time.