Many people know the expression “unfinished gestalt”.
It's like a frozen computer program that prevents everything else from working.
The biggest problem with unfinished gestalts is that many of them simply cannot be completed.
Remember the fairy tale about the Clay Guy? He was hungry all the time, and the more he ate, the larger he became, the more he wanted. First he ate all the food from his grandparents, and then he ate them themselves. Your unfinished gestalt, which you strive to complete, can do the same to you. He will first devour your time and energy, then your life, and then yourself, even physically.
The effect of special memory on unfinished actions was discovered by our psychologist B.V. Zeigarnik, student of Kurt Lewin. The essence of this phenomenon is that the psyche strives to complete everything planned, and if it is concentrated on some task, then until it comes to some logical end, this task will be a priority, attention will be paid to it, and away from it. It will be difficult to get distracted and almost impossible to forget. And even if you distract yourself from the task, it will still loom somewhere near your consciousness, constantly demanding your attention until it is completed.
This effect in itself is very good, it forces people not to be distracted every now and then by new stimuli, but to finish their work, not to skim over the surface of life, but to delve deeper into tasks. However, in some cases, the phenomenon of incomplete gestalts is very harmful to a person. For example, when the completion of work depends not only on him, but on other people and circumstances. In this case, he finds himself in limbo, unable to complete this or begin any other work, and drains his life energy into a black hole.
One of the most common cases of such gestalt is unfinished relationships. You fell in love, you had an image of mutual passion, there were some reasons for this or there was a strong need for this, you set yourself the task of creating a loving couple or even a unit of society with this person, but the person is in no hurry to meet your expectations, does not respond or answers you little. You cannot put an end to it, because a lot of effort has been invested in the gestalt and as long as there is at least one chance to get what you want, you continue to fight for love.
The longer this gestalt is in the area of your directed attention, the stronger it becomes, like the Clay Guy feeding off your energy. The larger the gestalt, the more difficult it is to close it, the more persistently it requires action for its completion (for reciprocity and marriage, everything that you have planned). And now, in order not to experience stress, your psyche is forced to create illusions, find confirmation that everything is going according to plan. A powerful gestalt insists that all your strength, all your attention, all your emotions be devoted to its completion. This is how Gestalt traps arise.
How do such gestalts close?
To close the gestalt, it needs to be rearranged so that its center is in your zone of influence, inside your locus of control. An incomplete gestalt is not completed because it goes beyond the area of your locus, you cannot reach its boundaries and therefore you cannot complete it.
Do you see how useful it is to have a well-tuned internal locus? In this case, unfinished gestalts simply do not arise; you are able to complete all gestalts yourself, on your own.
What does a love gestalt look like if you discover it with your inner locus? You do not formulate a task for yourself that is beyond your area of responsibility. You don't say to yourself, “Great girl. We need to screw her!” You understand that the girl may turn out to be married or a lesbian, or she may be such a tightly boarded rapunzel that your strength is not enough to unfreeze her. Or maybe she is a completely ordinary, free girl, but you are completely not her type. Besides, I've never been a fisherman. Isn’t it stupid to formulate the problem “to blow”?
Please note that gestalt is not created when you simply blurt it out to a friend or write YBV under a photo on the Internet. No, it is created when you seriously (!) set such a task for yourself and then began to invest a lot of energy in solving this problem. From the formulation of the problem, a gestalt contour is formed, at first quite thin, which you can shift or change. But the more energy you put into what you planned, the more powerful and unchangeable your gestalt became. It soon turns from something hypothetical to something actual and affecting your life.
It’s even worse if you have firmly decided to get married, since the goal of “cheating” in itself is not so difficult and not so global, it is easier to implement it, and it is not so difficult to abandon it. But if you decide that you have found your soul mate and no one is better suited for you as a wife than this girl, this can turn out to be a rather serious gestalt trap that will drain a lot of blood from you and take many years. Moreover, initially you could have decided to just cheat, but gradually you became so carried away by the embodiment, the importance of the girl increased so much that you seriously decided to get married. Is the mechanism of gestalt growth roughly clear?
What would the gestalt with this girl have to look like in order to be entirely within the zone of your locus of control, that is, in the area of your influence? Yes, whatever you want, but firstly, without far-reaching plans, and secondly, taking into account the will of the second participant. For example: “Great girl! We need to offer her sex!” You can offer sex to anyone. Even if the person refuses, your gestalt will be completely complete, since you didn’t plan anything else besides the offer. Or: “Great girl! We must try to make her laugh, interest her, and please her.” An attempt is not torture, as they say. You will try, and if it doesn’t work out, forget about it, your gestalt will allow you to do this. If it works, you will create a new gestalt, but in the same way place it in the internal locus, in the sphere of what you can do. And everything will be under your control.
What to do with gestalts that have formed outside your control? You yourself didn’t notice how you found yourself hostage to some kind of trap, or you mistook illusions for your own possibilities, or you were drawn into it bypassing your consciousness, or you daydreamed and got caught. So what's now?
This gestalt needs to be rebuilt, otherwise you won’t be able to close it.
But you can only rebuild the gestalt that you can handle. If your gestalt is a real addiction (strong dependence, mania, crazy passion), then such a larva is stronger than you. You can fight with her like Ivan Tsarevich with the Serpent-Gorynych. All her heads will grow back.
To defeat such a gestalt, it must first be depowered.
The good news is that you yourself feed your larva with your emotions, and if you don’t feed it for a while, it will weaken. If you do not feed the larva for a long time, it will become so weak that you can easily catch it and change its settings.
But there is also bad news. A strong larva (addiction, attachment) forces you to feed it. You want to tear your attention away from her, not think about her, not feed her emotions, but she forces you, draws strength from you. We can say that addiction is designed in such a way that it is not you who feed it, but it feeds itself on you, and this is the honest truth.
You are trying your best not to go to the social network page of the one who left you. You tell yourself that it’s all over, that you’ll stop wasting your time on this person and draining your life to him (not to him, but to your larva, he may not need your life at all and may even be burdensome), but the craving turns out to be stronger than you, you again you decide to take a peek. It seems to you that it takes so much effort to fight with yourself that it’s much easier to look at it and close it. Take a look, close it and go about your business. Yes? However, you see some suspicious comment from a suspicious woman on his page, go to her page, study her profile, comments under her posts, and now a couple of hours have quietly slipped past you. And it's not just about wasted time taken from your life. Lyarva became bigger and even stronger. After all, she feeds on attention and emotions, and you were not only absorbed head over heels, but also worried with all your might, your heart was skipping a beat, and your palms were sweating. This is a very nutritious food on which the larva grows like a muscleman on protein, only much faster. (Lyarva lives not somewhere, but in your own psychic field, so she feeds on your energy).
And again good news. The larva also loses weight and weakens quickly. Don’t go to the page for a week and it will no longer pull you with such force, and if it does, then for a few minutes, and then let go. If you've quit smoking, you know exactly how this happens. At first you want to smoke constantly and strongly, then constantly, but weakly, then strongly, but rarely, then sometimes it grabs a little, but quickly lets go. Then I don’t want to anymore, but sometimes I dream about it in my sleep. Neural networks in the brain crumble (and a strong larva consists of neural networks) without receiving positive reinforcement. The process is underway. But in order to make this process not so difficult, it is important not just to hold your attention, drowning it with boredom, you need to give it a different direction. It’s clear that there is no more pleasant direction for an addict’s attention than addiction. However, you are free to invite the cancer to your attention in the absence of fish and he will obey, just so as not to run into emptiness. Keep yourself busy, distract yourself, don’t fight the malicious gestalt one-on-one, call for help from all the animals you know like Tsarevich Ivan, all the resources friendly to you, even those long forgotten by you.
When you have managed to reduce the weight and size of the gestalt, it has ceased to suppress your will, but continues to gradually suck energy, begin to rebuild it.
Realize that the original structure of the task at hand is such that it goes beyond the boundaries of your locus.
Remember (or find out if you didn’t know) the Gestalt prayer, which was invented by the wonderful F. Perls, this is the best mantra for restructuring the Gestalt:
“I am ME, and you are YOU.
I do my job, and you do yours.
I don't live in this world for this
to meet your expectations,
And you don't live to live up to mine.
And if we found each other by chance, that's great.
If not, it can't be helped."
As soon as you write the gestalt into your boundaries, separate from yourself what concerns the will of another person, rebuild your gestalt taking into account and respecting someone else's subjectivity, you will be able to complete it.
For example, the gestalt: “I want to marry this woman” needs to be reorganized into the form: “I want to propose to this woman” or “I want to try to make this woman fall in love.” Has the offer been made? Received a refusal? Gestalt is closed. Move on to other tasks. Have you tried to make someone love you? Have you been refused? Gestalt is closed. Is it worth creating new gestalts and repeating exactly the same attempts? If nothing has changed fundamentally, it’s hardly worth it. Better move on to other tasks.
If the understanding of all these things is transferred from the speculative level to the level of feelings, that is, one feels how useless it is to stretch one’s hands beyond someone else’s boundaries and bang one’s forehead against a closed door, this scheme begins to work effectively.
Have you ever tried to work with your gestalts? Did anything work out?
When was the last time you took inventory? We're not talking about Carven dresses from last year's collection and ballet flats that you no longer wear. It's about relationships. And also projects, plans, ideas, dreams and other things that remain unfinished and unrealized in your life.
Psychologists say that “incompleteness” spoils the quality of life. In psychology, this is called “incomplete gestalt” (gestalt translated from German - “image”, “form”, “integrity”). These are situations when we didn’t receive something from other people, didn’t say enough, put off an important matter, didn’t keep a promise, suppressed feelings, broke up with someone with a feeling of unsaidness. All this leaves an emotional residue in the subconscious, which over time begins to ferment like spoiled compote and poison relationships with others.
At the same time, our whole life is a continuous unfinished gestalt, it’s just that some gestalts (for example, a feeling of hunger, a dream of Louboutin shoes or a trip to Patagonia) are relatively easy to realize, while others (for example, when a man unexpectedly left you) can imperceptibly, like ghosts. follow you all your life and constantly demand compensation for the moral damage you once suffered.
Having an unfinished relationship, we often carry this baggage into subsequent novels, subconsciously imposing on the new man roles from our own unfinished play.
Psychotherapists love to delve into our gestalts (of course, if we completed everything in due time, these people would be left without work!). They call important things that we have not completed “mental abortion”, believing that “unfinished work” can take away our vital energy and provoke neuroses, depression, addictions, stress and conflicts.
True, human nature is surprisingly dual: on the one hand, we strive to satisfy our desires and needs, and on the other, we paradoxically try to avoid the logical conclusion of important matters. This is, in general, normal: everyone writes their own script and chooses which acts in it to play out to the end and which not.
But even if you do not strive to complete your gestalts, I advise you to revise them - life will become easier. For this:
Understand your desires, needs and priorities for today. Perhaps your childhood dreams are no longer relevant. For example, you dreamed of marrying a millionaire, but it turns out that your husband is a middle manager, and you lament that on your fifth wedding anniversary he cannot give you a Chopard bracelet. Talk to yourself as honestly as possible and decide who exactly needs the bracelet (Chopard demands your ego? Are you jealous of your friend who has it?).
Oscar Wilde, victim of all vices, said that the best way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it.
Dreams need to be tasted - especially if they do not let you go after years. If you have dreamed of dancing the waltz since childhood, take one or two classes. It is possible that the waltz will seem to you a complex and boring dance, and you will switch to bossa nova or yoga. But there will be a feeling of an honestly fulfilled duty - to yourself.
In some cases, gestalts are powerful stimuli for development. This is especially true for a career - the main thing is to reconsider your true goals and priorities more often. For example, in your fifth year you set yourself the goal of becoming a big boss by the age of thirty. Now you are 35, you have a very interesting job, but you are still a subordinate. Ask yourself what is truly important to you in your career. It is possible that if you really wanted power, you would have achieved it.
Don't plan too much. It’s better to outline one or two really doable (!) tasks (for example, unpack your suitcase and pack gifts), do them and go to bed with the feeling that you have accomplished a feat.
If you feel that there are echoes of the past in your current relationship - you and your partner react to each other in the same way as you did in the previous romance - try to behave differently: unconventionally, freely, turning off the usual internal restrictions and fears. It's a risk, but there's a good chance you'll be pleased with the results.
Gestalt therapy suggests getting rid of unfinished experiences using three steps: forgiveness, farewell and gratitude. Try to realize and accept things as they are. Don't suppress hatred and resentment, but simply allow them to go away. Sometimes it makes sense to write a letter (it is not necessary to send it), sometimes it makes sense to meet and have a heart-to-heart talk with a person to whom you have something to say for a long time. It’s never too late to do this, even if nothing formally binds you for several years. There are no strong emotions left in your relationship, and you will be able to speak with him very frankly. It is possible that you will learn a lot of interesting things about yourself.
How to finish what you started
Olga Danilina, Jungian consultant psychologist:
The founder of Gestalt therapy, Frederick Perls, understood Gestalt as a dominant need - a desire, feeling or thought that currently occupies you more than all other desires, feelings and thoughts. As soon as the need is satisfied, the gestalt loses its significance and gives way to a new need. But our desires are not always fulfilled, and the so-called “unreacted need,” according to Perls, becomes the cause of neuroses and psychological blocks, including physical ones. The solution to the problem is to realize your need, make it more clear (that is, form a gestalt) and try to “neutralize”, that is, complete it.
Any relationship has an internal logic of development: for example, the acquaintance of a man and a woman can lead to marriage, the birth of a child, or a joint life strategy. Broken, painfully ended relationships between lovers, business partners or former friends (especially when resentment and unspoken grievances remain) are an unfinished gestalt that prevents the building of new positive relationships. What prevents you from bringing things or relationships to their logical conclusion? It is possible that the previous unfinished gestalts are not only your own, but also inherited. Your mom, who is still going through a divorce from your dad, may unknowingly put you in a similar situation. What to do? Find your own path in life and learn to take responsibility.
8 principles of Gestalt philosophy
- Live now. Be in the present, not the past or future.
- Live here, deal with what is, not what is not.
- Don't fantasize. The experience is real.
- Stop unnecessary thinking. Better try and see.
- Express your feelings - instead of manipulating, explaining, reasoning, making excuses.
- Accept trouble and pain as well as pleasure.
- Focus not on the “shoulds” and “shoulds” from other people, but on yourself. You don't have to listen to them.
- Take responsibility for your actions, thoughts, feelings.
When you manage to finish all your work on time, a person feels happy. This special satisfaction from your life and the realization that you are a real good guy make life more complete. The task of going through the full cycle in all endeavors is embedded in the consciousness of each individual. But some affairs or relationships remain unfinished for various reasons.
“Well, okay,” you say, shrugging your shoulders. Everything would be fine, but only an unfinished situation becomes a door through which energy flows out of a person. He cannot fully be “here and now”, work and rejoice, just live. He loses motivation and desire to develop. Fatigue, apathy, and depression appear. And if he doesn’t learn how to close gestalts, he risks living his days like that.
What it is
The question “how to be happy” has worried people since ancient times. There are dozens of answers to this question, but none of them are exhaustive. But long ago, doctors and psychologists came to the understanding that if a person is consumed by thoughts about something that happened a long time ago, he will not be able to live effectively today. He will make mistakes at work, have trouble sleeping at night, he will constantly not have enough time for his family, because every free minute he mentally goes back again. When a person realizes the problem, he can turn to a psychologist with a question about how to close the gestalts. Unfortunately, this is not so easy to do. First you need to understand the mechanism of this phenomenon.
From theory to practice
Translated from German, this word means “whole image.” That is, it is not so important how the situation ends, but you need to live it to the end. From the point of view of psychologists, every task started should be completed. But in the life of every person many large and small incompletenesses accumulate. You missed a word with a friend, didn’t finish reading a book - even in one day several such gestalts can accumulate.
There are also more serious ones: a break in a relationship, the death of a loved one, unfulfilled dreams. And every day all this scrolls through my memory. A person is trying to find a way out, to understand what was done wrong. And he doesn’t fully realize that nothing can be changed. All that remains is to figure out how to close the gestalts and allow yourself to move on with your life.
What does incompleteness look like?
This is a rather difficult concept to grasp. Therefore, we will try to reveal its essence in the simplest possible language. Let's try to draw an analogy with a computer. What happens if you don't complete the program correctly? What if there are several programs? Most likely, the PC will think for a long time or freeze. Or it might even break down completely.
What happens to the human psyche? Incomplete gestalts do not allow development and hinder personal growth. The person seems to be walking in circles or living in a dream. Gestalt is an unfinished business that tugs, tugs and cries out for return. A person feels a desire to return to that situation and replay it. Since it is not easy to close gestalts, a person often lives his whole life with this burden. This means that less energy is left for yourself, your favorite things and your family.
Negative or positive
Gestalt pulls us into the past. And it can be good or evil. Neutral situations cannot affect us years later.
If the gestalt is built on the negative
The person was insulted, humiliated, he did not fight back, did not say what he wanted - in these cases, the strong emotional stress of these situations literally forces him to find himself in exactly the same circumstances again and again. It's easy to explain. Since you can close the gestalt on your own only by living this situation to the end, life gives you such an opportunity. But here’s the problem: without realizing this, the situation will repeat the one in which the gestalt originated. A woman marries an alcoholic. After her divorce, she seeks a new relationship and meets a new alcoholic. In this case, all candidates who do not have such an inclination will be rejected by it. Gestalt is not closed, and most often the reason lies in the relationship with the father.
Positive Gestalt
Nothing good either. It is human nature to feel nostalgia for the past and want to return to a fairy tale. For example, you remember how great it was to go to clubs as a student. And it seems like there’s nothing wrong with it, but while you are turned to the past, your back is to the future.
Find and neutralize
Indeed, in order to change yourself or your memories or attitude towards them, you need to understand the processes that take place in them. If this is too difficult, then you can contact a practicing psychologist and ask how to close the gestalt. What does this mean and how to understand where to find the very object that needs to be closed?
You should look where it hurts. It's like a splinter: as soon as you remove it, the wound heals quickly and easily. You can understand that there are unfinished scenarios in life by a number of signs:
- Certain work, information or activities cause a person to experience an attack of anxiety or worry.
- An individual cannot complete a task or project, although there are no obvious reasons for this, but as if something is preventing him.
- A person avoids new relationships after a painful breakup. This way they simply avoid new, possible pain.
- All new relationships follow the same scenario. This suggests that the gestalt is not closed, and the script does not allow one to deviate from the standards for choosing partners.
- A person realizes that he constantly steps on the same rake. He becomes a victim of scammers; this is not the first time he has been borrowed money and not repaid; he quits his job in scandal.
All this suggests that in the subconscious there are unfinished processes, attachment to people and places.
Prevention is the best cure
What does it mean to “close the gestalt”? This means finishing all unfinished business. But it’s even better to simply prevent them from appearing. That is, everything needs to be completed on time, when this matter is relevant. Unfinished processes are attachments to people, repeating life scenarios and places. How not to pick up such bindings?
- Always complete your thoughts and deeds. Easier said than done, but otherwise the echoes will remain for a long time.
- Always express what you want, don't keep it to yourself. Swallowing a comment out of politeness, holding back your opinions and holding back your feelings is a communication practice in society. But all of this is detrimental to your mental health. If you cannot tell a person directly what you think about him, then play out this situation at home, with someone close to you. And here, don’t hold back yourself anymore.
- Always express your feelings - this is the first rule that must be followed to close the gestalt. What is this in simple words? It means allowing yourself to experience the situation. Did you feel something? Try to express: shout, sing, draw, hit a punching bag.
How to complete a gestalt
First you need to understand the process itself. What does "gestalt closed" mean? The fact that you stopped wasting energy replaying situations from the past and corresponding experiences. Now you can live here and now, build and create. To do this, you need to understand your unfinished gestalt. Let's say you notice that your relationship is developing according to one scenario, in which you constantly demand attention and care from your partner in an exaggerated form. Your relationship ends and it happens again. Think about what unfinished process from the past is causing you to play out this scenario? Who didn't give you enough love and care? Once you understand which situation has not been completed, you can work with it.
Working methods
Of course, the first and easiest way is to get what you wanted from a certain object. But situations are different, people move, die and create obstacles due to which you cannot close the gestalt. What is this in simple words? By and large, this is a clash of scenarios and interests. But there are several ways to help you cope with the task:
- Modeling. Imagine how you could complete your gestalt. Live this situation so that its ending suits you. If the ending of the real situation was undesirable, now everything can be changed. Just don't do this all the time. If the changes suit you, then mentally you will not want to return to it.
- Transfer. Since it is not always possible to close the gestalt in a relationship that has already ended, do it in the current situation, in the present. But this must be done consciously and with the consent of the person who will help you. Instead of bullying your partner, ask him to shower you with care and attention. The open gestalt will gradually come to its logical conclusion. What it is and how it happens, you will understand and feel in the process.
- Expressing feelings and speaking words as it becomes necessary.
- Stop the fight. This is another important point. If you are looking for a way to close the gestalt in a relationship on your own, then... stop. Stop denying it, accept it and come to terms with its existence. Sometimes this is enough. A person stops feeding it with his emotions. Realize what process is unfinished and try to be completely indifferent to it.
Unfulfilled desire
This is the most insidious kind of incomplete gestalt. Let's look at what it is now. If you really wanted something, but couldn’t get it, then a void will form. Subconsciously, you will always strive to fill this emptiness, even if indirectly. For example, my mother wanted to become a doctor, but the birth of children led her to drop out of college and not get a profession. She will force her children to study to become doctors, although they will be interested in a completely different field of activity.
How to prevent the destructive nature of such a gestalt and end it? Think about what you yourself wanted when you chose this profession? What did you feel, what did you need, and what did you intend to gain through becoming a doctor? Once you understand this, try to achieve these goals in any way possible.
If you need to end the relationship
Of course, this moment is quite painful. And the most difficult thing to overcome is the strongest attachment to the gestalt. It completely captures the whole person and keeps him in chains. This usually happens after a breakup. A person cannot help but think about the subject of his sighs. He constantly visits her or his page and asks friends. How to close the gestalt in a relationship? The “when you leave, go away” principle should work here.
You can’t leave halfway or stay a little. You should cut off all ties, burn all bridges, delete your number and get rid of all things that remind you of the past. Sometimes a change of place of residence and a long vacation help. Of course, you can’t just get rid of addiction, but it gradually weakens and will soon go away completely.
How to live after a breakup
Women are especially often clients of psychotherapists. They usually make a request about how to close the gestalt in a relationship with a man. And it doesn't matter how it will be formulated. This doesn't change the meaning. They need practical guidance on how to close the gestalt. There are several options:
- Sources of goodness. This is a hobby deliberately added to life, which gives rise to the kindest feelings in the soul.
- Positive experience of unfinished situations. For example, a woman was thrown by a classic gigolo. And every time she is attracted to another man of this type, she laughs at herself. Thus the memory becomes more and more insignificant. Soon it will simply merge with the past.
- In order to look at the future, it must make you happy. And not necessarily something big and significant. The main thing here is not the scale, but the volume of joy and pleasure.
Back to life
If a person feels that he is unable to cope with the problem on his own, he needs to see a psychotherapist. Therapy is aimed at awareness and perception of oneself as an individual, as a holistic image. Through awareness, the client accepts the rejected aspects of the personality. These are emotions, character traits and desires. After this, it is important to continue working. It should be aimed at self-acceptance and restoration of personality. A person must be independent, that is, follow his own aspirations, and not make other people's dreams come true.
Reason to contact a specialist
The reasons for visiting a specialist are constant stressful situations, difficulties in building relationships, and poor adaptation to the new environment. If goals and desires are not achieved, that is, there are constantly insurmountable obstacles on the way to them, if depression has surged, a depressed state, all this indicates that it is time to do serious work on yourself.
One woman, after breaking up with a young man, having read a large number of articles on the Internet and diagnosed herself with gestalt, decided that only a psychologist could help her close it. Her only question was: how to close the genstalt in a relationship? And the psychologist, in turn, advised the woman to get angry: “Well, imagine - a man got you, took advantage of your trust and your feelings, and then just left. You need to be angry with him, because that’s the unfinished gestalt.”
The doctor in this case was guided by the theory that there are three stages of loss - denial-anger-sadness. But the same scheme does not work for all people.
Some people are ready to instantly express their negative emotions, while others endure and listen for a long time, and then suddenly bring down everything that has accumulated. Let's try to figure this out.
How to recognize gestalt?
The main symptom that will allow you to make this diagnosis is unresolved hopes. For example, you were in a relationship with a man and planned to become his wife. He left you and married someone else, hope still glimmers in your head.
Gestalt is something incomplete, and incompleteness is when we cannot define a person into one or another category of relationship - friend, lover, stranger.
For example, you do not see this man as your husband, but you understand that joint projects and interests are possible here. Then understand for yourself - this is my business partner. And then everything will fall into place.
Consequences
Unfinished relationships unjustifiably waste our energy: after all, we receive nothing in return, only giving - love, attention, hopes, and so on. It is important to learn to stop, to put an end to it. If the ex-man remains a friend, but continues to count on something more, explain it to him or end any relationship.
If incompleteness appears on your part, explain to yourself. As a rule, women suffer from unfinished relationships. There may be several reasons:
- Usually the fear of not finding a better man and being left alone is tormented.
- A woman invests more in a man than she receives from him.
- A man in the subconscious symbolizes someone close, accordingly, his loss means as much as the loss of a mother or father.
Ways to close the gestalt
- We spend a lot of energy on these relationships that will not lead to anything good. Try to sublimate it, direct it to create something new - create something with your own hands, write something, and so on. This will allow you to unwind and take a fresh look at the relationships that hold you back.
- Try using this technique: draw a dot on an A4 sheet of paper and, looking at it for ten minutes, imagine that your feelings come out of you and through the so-called “third eye” move to a point on the sheet. Internally say “I am putting an end to this relationship.” Do this every day for a month.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a direction in psychology was founded in Germany, which was called “Gestalt psychology.” Gestaltists based their approach on the fact that a person’s perception of the surrounding world is based on the sensory and figurative perception of objects and phenomena as integral structures, indivisible into individual components. For example, if a person sees some familiar object with missing parts, then his consciousness strives to complement this object and “complete” these missing parts.
In the same way, people strive to complete, complement, bring to a logical whole unfinished actions, unexperienced feelings, unexpressed emotions and thoughts. The principle of completion formed the basis of the psychotherapeutic methods of Gestalt therapy, founded by F. Perls. He believed that the individual always strives to complete the unfinished gestalt, to complete the unfinished and to achieve a sense of wholeness and harmony. When certain life events and situations, as well as the feelings and experiences associated with them, come to a logical conclusion, a person experiences a state of calm and confidence, felt not only on an emotional, but also on a bodily level.
What does it mean to complete a gestalt? This means satisfying the need, the main and most significant one at a given moment in life, conscious and felt at the physical, emotional and mental levels. In Gestalt psychology, the emergence and satisfaction of a need is a cycle of formation and completion of Gestalt. Figuratively speaking, every human need is a bright figure that stands out against the general background of life experience. When the need is satisfied, the figure leaves, dissolves in the surrounding background, but another figure appears, and the higher and more significant the need, the clearer and brighter the contours of the figure. An incomplete gestalt is an interrupted cycle, a situation that is needfully or emotionally not brought to its logical conclusion. What is happening and why? The reasons for this can be very different. These may be external social factors or intrapersonal prohibitions and restrictions imposed by upbringing. Well, so what, someone will say. Unfinished actions do not mean the end of life, does it continue? Yes, life goes on, but how, and what? Every unmet need, especially a deeply significant one, leads to stress. Stress caused by the incompleteness of one need gives rise to the incompleteness of another. So, gradually life turns into a series of failures, unexpressed feelings, emotions, which entails boredom and inaction.
Emotionally incomplete gestalt is feelings of disappointment, grief and anger, sadness and resentment that arose sometime in the past in relationships with parents, lovers, children, spouses and which were not expressed and expressed. An unfinished gestalt can also come from actions not taken in the past, from something that has arisen and is unconscious, etc.
Psychotherapists argue that an incomplete gestalt forces a person to constantly return to it, to those unexpressed feelings, interrupted experiences or actions, trying to somehow relive them again, in a different form. Very often, parents, forcing their children to perform certain actions and deeds, try to complete their own unfinished gestalt in the past. But even more often, a person tries to avoid completing what was once unfinished, thereby increasing his dependence on the past. It includes mechanisms for avoiding and suppressing emerging unconscious needs and desires that were once unrealized, and this, in turn, leads to neuroses and
Gestalt therapists, using various therapeutic techniques and methods, help a person to identify and realize from vague sensations and intuitive dissatisfaction once unfinished actions and emotions in order to experience them again, on a different level, and thereby harmonize their life.