The Working Corner

Guided Emotional Bootstrapping

Victor Daniels

Gestalt! ISSN 1091-1766
Published by
Gestalt Global Corporation http://www.g-g.org/gej

Abstract

Getting “caught” in a troubling emotional state that includes thinking, feeling and somatic components is a common and widespread problem. The approach presented here, when appropriate, can in a single working session enable a person to learn to recognize the elements of such a troubling pattern and move out of it to a more centered and focused state. It involves recognition by the facilitator of when the client seems to be “lost” in an apparently uncontrollable feeling state, and identification of the elements of that state. Then the facilitator provides step-by-step guidance that enables the person to move out of it. Finally the person takes himself or herself back into the unwanted emotional state and then comes back out of it, first with the facilitator’s guidance, and then entirely “by his or her own bootstraps.” He or she then carries this new ability into everyday life.
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An “Emotional trap” is a counterproductive emotional state that a person tends to go into frequently and easily, get stuck in, and have a hard time getting out of. To briefly summarize the method of “self-extraction” from such a state described in detail below, the counselor, therapist, or facilitator:

1) notices a person go into such a state;
2) guides the person to greater awareness of what she is doing, and how;
3) leads the person out of that state and into a calmer, more focused, more centered state of mind and emotion, and into noticing the qualities of this different state;
4) then leads the person back into the troubling emotional state once more, and then out again;
5) then asks the person to take himself or herself deeply into it, and then come back out; and finally
6) repeats step 5 twice more, so that the person has voluntarily gone into and come out of the troubling state three times.

In steps 5 and six the practitioner closely follows what the person is doing, and may provide assistance if the person is getting stuck and having a hard time getting out of the troubling state, or is reluctant to go back into it. This guidance is provided only to the degree necessary, however, since the goal is for the person to develop the ability to provide self-guidance and “pull himself up by his bootstraps” when he finds himself back in such a state.
I probably use this process no more than once in ten working sessions, but in those instances when it’s appropriate, it is quite powerful, and can leave the client with an invaluable new psychological skill that is immediately usable and useful.
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I stumbled across the method about twenty-five years ago in a working session with a woman who was very angry at a male in her life but was holding back the anger. I suggested that she use a foam bat and hit him in the empty chair, repeating an appropriate word or phrase each time. Noticing that she hit weakly and with little conviction, I suggested that she stand with her feet shoulder-width apart, facing forward, hold the bat in both hands and raise it high overhead, hit as forcefully and solidly as possible, and take a breath after each time she hit “him.” This procedure often leads to a great increase in the strength and authority with which bottled-up anger is expressed*.
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In this case, however, as she tried to hit with power and conviction she fell into a hysterical half-talking, half-sobbing state, punctuated by wimpy little impotent slaps at the chair. Following her lead, I abandoned the activity with the bat and encouraged her to go more deeply into the tear-filled emotional and physical impotence in which almost none of her potential personal power was available to her. She did this easily. Intuitively it seemed to me that it was not a state that she needed to explore deeply, but one that she knew all too well.
“Do you often feel this way?” I asked.
“Yes, a lot,” she said through her tears.
I asked her to notice what she was doing to push herself into this state and keep herself in it. She did so, with her emphasis on how she felt, and expressed the thoughts and feelings of deep powerlessness that went along with it.
“Now I want you to sense and feel exactly what you’re doing. First get as clear a sense of your present state as you possibly can, and then tell me when you’ve got it.”
“I feel it totally now.”
“All right, now take a mental photograph of that state–engrave it in your mind so that when you go into it in the future you will NOTICE IT rather than being so identified with it that you don’t know what you’re doing. You will RECOGNIZE this emotional state when you get into it.”
After a minute or so she said, “Okay, I’ve got it.”
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It was easy to move from there to guiding her attention to a scan of the tension in her body. She identified the places she was keeping tense: her eyes, lips, jaws, arms, hands, and calves. Then I began to lead her out of her tangled mind-body-emotion state, asking her to let go of each of the things she had just described herself doing, one at a time. I asked her to let go of the muscle tensions she had identified, naming them one by one. She did so. Then I asked her to slow her breath and feel herself breathe. Then to look around and see and hear what was outside her in her immediate environment. She accepted each suggestion easily, almost as if I were a hypnotist and she was following my instructions.
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Once she had completely let go of the hysterical crying, and had begun to make focused use of her internal and external sensing, I asked her,
“Do you ever have a way of being, even for a moment, where you feel completely calm and focused and centered?”
“Well–yes, sometimes.”
“Go to that mental and emotional place now. Continue to breathe slowly and regularly. Tell me when you get there.”
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As she moved into remembering and recapturing that positive state of mind, I could see her becoming calmer and more relaxed. I coached her with another cue or two until she seemed completely centered–to all appearances a wholly different being than the one who had occupied her body just a few minutes before.
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“Now I want you to sense this way of being and feeling, right now in this moment, so totally that you can’t forget it, just as you did with the other one you just came out of, and take a mental snapshot of it so that you’ll be able to remember it and return here easily.”
About half a minute passed. “Okay, I’ve done that.”
At that point a mini-satori of teaching her to do for herself what I had just done for her occurred to me.
“All right, now we’re going to go back into the way you were feeling a few minutes ago and then come back out of it to this place again.”
“I don’t want to go back there now,” she objected.
“You’ll be all right. You’re just going to go there briefly, and you’ll going to learn to bring yourself out by yourself.”
“Well . . . all right,” she said a little reluctantly.
With just a few sentences of guidance, I took her back into feeling the powerless hysterical crying fully, then asked if she was completely there. She nodded.
“Now let’s go back out to that other place.” This time with only a three or four prompts, she was able to bring herself back to the calm, centered state of being she had just experienced.
Then I asked her to do the same thing completely by herself. “I want you to take yourself totally back into the state you were just experiencing, then “pull yourself out of it by your own bootstraps,” without my instructions to guide you. Do you think you can do that?”
She nodded.
“Good. I want you to do it three times, each time first taking yourself completely into the very disturbed state you were just in, until you feel like you did when you “took a mental snapshot of it,” then bringing yourself back out into your calm and centered state, entirely on your own.”
At this point she appeared to believe that she could do it. And she almost did, going into it on her own, and needing just a couple of prompts from me to come back out and find her focused, centered space. The next two times she did it entirely on her own. Then I asked,
“Do you think you can remember this process and do it for yourself when you need to in the future?”
“Yes, I do.”
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We had not, in this session pushed into the full expression of her anger and explored the suppression of her power that holding it back involved. She had clearly indicated that she was not quite ready for that. But the development of her ability to find her centered power, and to bring herself out of her tear-filled “shaking and crying blues,” which she had tended to wallow in for hours, and sometimes to a lesser degree for days, contributed to her ability to deal effectively with the anger/power issue in a future session. And it led to an immediate improvement in the quality of her everyday feeling life.
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In the years since then I have used this approach with a variety of emotional states in which a person becomes lost. It has never failed to work in the moment. The longest-term follow-up data I have is twelve-to-fourteen weeks, and within that time people have maintained this new ability to “emotionally bootstrap” themselves out of troubling states. Most often this has involved the sad/depressed/helpless side of an emotional polarity, but sometimes it involves the compulsively harsh/angry side, or overwhelming guilt, or some other emotional complex. I have not worked with men referred by the courts for domestic spousal or child abuse, but it would be interesting to see whether this method would work effectively with them as one component of a larger treatment program..
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You might correctly observe that the process appears to include behavioral and cognitive-behavioral elements. In a sense it is indeed programmatic as well as exploratory, even though the “program” is a very short term one that grows out of exploration and awareness work and occurs within a single working session. It also involves the behavioral procedure called “fading”–in this case, providing many cues the first time the person goes through the sequence, then repeating it several times with fewer cues each time and ultimately none. Guidance through the process is “faded” out.
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Actually, in incorporating such behavioral elements it is not significantly different from some other methods that are commonplace in Gestalt therapy. There are numerous procedures, such as go-arounds, and escalating coaching of emotional expressiveness, that involve strengthening the ability to express oneself, to develop underdeveloped qualities, or to use little-used capacities. The larger context remains one of discovery. This can include, as it does here, discovering one’s capacity to deal with troubling tendencies or situations more effectively and move out of them more easily..

Following Carl Jung’s principle of working to strengthen a person’s underdeveloped sides, I would use this procedure only with someone who has difficulty expressing anger. By contrast, someone who expresses it easily, or who becomes aggressive easily, needs to learn to hold back their anger and discover and express the grief, pain, or other sentiments that lie hidden beneath it.

THE WORKING CORNER is devoted to sharing and discussing specific aspects of the Gestalt working process, including both method and theory If you’ve developed a useful addition to Gestalt practice that you’d like to share, know of an old technique or idea that’s not well known, or have unique insights into working with a particular situation or population, please e-mail it to us. If it fits, we’ll print it, giving you full credit, authorship, or co-authorship as appropriate. (2020 addendum: i am currently debating whether to add this element –posting appropriate contributions by others– on this website.)

Victor Daniels is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California 94928