It was in 2002 that I (Scott) was first introduced to a form of therapy known as "chair work" at the Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Education in New York City. 'It's not fair. It's just not fair and what you're doing is wrong. I was talking to my daughter Nicole's football coaching team sitting in the chairs across from me. Or at least I imagined and felt that they were sitting there, because in fact the chairs were empty.
Nicole, who was then 11 years old, was an outstanding football player. She got into a high-level team, but the coach almost did not allow her to play, and for two seasons she spent most of her time on the bench. Favoritism was clearly at work, and I was furious. Although I repeatedly raised this issue with the leadership of the group, they refused to do anything about it. When the season ended, she was kicked out of the team.
I had been studying chair work for several months when I attended this afternoon workshop, which I finally had the opportunity to participate from a patient's point of view. The therapist suggested that I sit on a chair, introduce the group leaders in the chairs opposite, and talk to them... which I did. I expressed my rage at the way they had treated my daughter and the pain I felt at seeing her misfortune. Finally, I could just speak freely.
“Swap chairs,” the therapist said. After reversing roles, I walked over to them, sat down in one of their chairs, and voiced their objections and their "that's the way it is" position. I remember how my emotional state changed dramatically when I embodied them. It was hard and I was annoyed. Then I came back and spoke again out of anger and pain. This time my emotions were less intense.
Prior to this workshop, I had spent nearly a year dealing with outbursts of anger over my daughter's abuse. Just a few hours after the seminar, I realized that I had changed a lot; now that I thought about what they had done, I didn't think it was normal, but I was much less reactive. The shift has been going on ever since. Somehow, this 15-minute dialogue helped me find a way out of my frustration - something that I could not do on my own. This strengthened my confidence in the healing power of chair work, a therapeutic technique created by the Romanian-American psychiatrist Jacob Moreno, creator of psychodrama, and developed in the 1960s by another psychiatrist, Frederick "Fritz" Perls, creator of Gestalt therapy.
My passion and belief in the value of chair work only grew, and in 2008 I created the Transformational Chair Therapy Project and began training therapists in the US and abroad in the art of chair work. In 2014, my book Transformational Pulpit: The Use of Psychotherapeutic Dialogues in Clinical Practice was published, a guide for therapists.
Despite these efforts, I have always felt that some way has eluded me to simplify the work—to reduce it to a core set of core principles that could clearly and effectively guide both practice and learning. Then, in early 2018, during a meditation session, I had a vision of what I call the “four dialogues,” which showed me how to turn chair work into therapy of elegant simplicity and even greater power. Then I combined that with a framework we call the "four principles" and that integration became the foundation of our work. The first of the four principles is the plurality of 'I's, or the idea that each of us can be seen as made up of different parts, modes, voices, or 'I's. For example, how we behave at work may be different from how we behave at home with family or at a summer barbecue with friends. Sometimes, during periods of stress or intoxication, parts that are either unfamiliar or unwanted may come up—a situation that prompts you to say something like, "I don't know what's gotten into me." This understanding of the human condition is based on the reflections of historical figures such as Plato, St. Paul, and Sigmund Freud, all of whom struggled with the experience of having different parts.
The second principle is that it is healing and transformative for people to give voice to these different parts. In practice, this may involve asking the patient to move to another chair, to embody and articulate their suffering, their fear, the voice of their "inner critic" or what he considers his "heroic self" - that part of himself that takes on yourself responsibility. significant action in the world. This in itself can be a surprisingly powerful experience. Alternatively, the therapist may establish a dialogue between the various parts of the patient in order to bring about greater internal balance and overall improvement in functioning.
The third principle moves from the inner to the outer world. It involves patients revisiting and re-experiencing the loss or trauma as a way of working through the experience. The therapist may invite them to imagine how they seat different people in different chairs and talk
talk to them—perhaps by saying something they didn't say or couldn't say at the time—as I did at the seminar in New York.
The final principle, the ultimate goal of chair work—and the ultimate goal of all psychotherapy—is the strengthening of what is variously called the ego, the inner leader, and the healthy lifestyle of the adult, that is, that part of the personality that seeks to organize, regulate, and direct the other parts. . As this part of the personality becomes stronger, patients may experience greater internal emotional regulation and more effective, meaningful, and purposeful functioning in the world.
Purposefully seeking to engage difficult emotions can be healing—the dynamic of choice changes everything.
These are the basic principles on which the work of the department is based. The four dialogues represent different methods or formats for conducting chair work and are voice-over, story-telling, internal dialogues, relationships, and meetings. Each of these dialogues can be used as a stand-alone intervention or in various combinations to help patients heal and reduce their suffering.
Giving voice can serve as a means to explore and understand your inner world. The therapist may say to his patient:
I would like to invite you to sit in this chair and I would like you to speak from your heart and speak from your pain.
In the most basic version of this practice, which we have adapted from Embrace Yourself (2011), a guide to the practice of vocal dialogue written by psychologists Hal Stone and Sidra Stone, the patient begins in a chair we call the center—that is where their inner leader resides. or a healthy adult lifestyle. The therapist then asks the patient to move to a different chair so that they can purposefully and consciously express and experience their emotions. For example, they may ask the patient to switch chairs and talk about their suffering and pain, both feelings and thoughts. This practice can provoke the spontaneous emergence of difficult emotions, which can be quite unpleasant, but the purposeful effort to engage and experience these emotions can be healing - the dynamic of choice changes everything. In some cases the emotion goes away on its own, while in others another part or mode may be involved and the patient will find new inner resources or perspectives.
In fact, there is a similar practice in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) called "worry time" where the therapist has their patient regularly and intentionally vocalize feelings of fear, guilt, or depression. Again, no attempt is made to challenge these thoughts or engage in dialogue with them—a single expression is enough.
The practice of voting can be beneficial for several reasons. The release of emotions can itself be cathartic, and in the process of sinking into pain, another mode or part can be activated that provides a counterbalance or alternative to suffering. The third reason, which draws on the ideas of acceptance and commitment therapy (a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that involves mindfulness and acceptance practices), is that chairs create a physical space or distance between the inner leader and the emotion, and thus Thus, through the processes of observation and labeling, the patient will be more stable and less likely to be overwhelmed by emotions and anxiety. The idea of inner distance is taken from Buddhism mindfulness meditation and is associated with the development of observing oneself or the practice of self-observation. The physical properties of chairs help people feel internally that they have different parts and that they can resist being taken over by emotions or a regimen.
The second of the chairwork or dialogue methods is storytelling. The therapist presenting such a session might start like this:
I feel like keeping this secret inside me for so long has been a terrible burden. If you like, I'd like you to sit in this chair and tell me the story of what happened.
As British psychiatrists Glenn Roberts and Jeremy Holmes wrote in their edited book Healing Stories (1999): "At the heart of any therapeutic contact is always a story." Many patients enter therapy with a burden of stories, and sharing traumatic, secret, or shame-filled stories can be an essential component of their healing journey. In the preface to Return from the Precipice (2014), a collection of true stories, American actress Glenn Close put it this way: “Our stories are our salvation. If we find the courage to tell our stories, it will save lives.”
The storytelling dialogue recognizes the healing power of stories and includes several strategies that can help patients deal with their difficult memories. The therapist again invites the patient to move from the center to another chair and tell a complex story or part of a complex story.
orii. When he or she is done, the therapist asks them to stand up, move around, shake themselves, sit down, and tell the story again. The hope is to take them through this cycle of repetitive narrative three or four times. During this process, the patient usually reveals more details with each iteration - a sign that they are becoming less fearful and concerned about the story and that healing is taking place.
The problem with this process is that patients can find it very unpleasant. Inspired by the storytelling approach described by psychiatrist Eckhard Roediger and colleagues in contextual schema therapy (2018), one possible solution is to ask the patient to tell their story in the third person. For example, if I were working with a patient named John, I could ask him to change chair and tell his difficult story as if he were talking about someone else: “John was in a car accident and this is what happened with him". him.' This style of storytelling allows for a high level of emotional arousal, which promotes healing, and also allows the patient to keep some distance from the story, which can be especially helpful in stories where guilt or self-blame are important components.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a "terrible conflict over duty to family and duty to fellow man."
The third format of the department's work - internal dialogues - is focused on resolving various forms of internal conflict and imbalance. The therapist can begin the exercise in the following way:
You seem to be ambivalent about the project. I wonder if you would agree to come to this chair and speak for the part that wants to go forward, and then to this chair and speak for the part that is in doubt.
One form of self-talk involves "working with polarities," that is, helping patients make decisions by clarifying their values and resolving conflicts between them.
As an example, consider the inner world of Martin Luther King, who was often in conflict between the important role he played in the civil rights movement and the importance of being a good husband and father. His dilemma became especially acute after he traveled to India and deepened his knowledge of the teachings of Gandhi. His wife, Coretta Scott King, recalled her husband's words: "A man who devotes himself to a cause, who devotes himself to a cause, does not need a family." She added that: "He had a family and he loved his family and he wanted a family, but he also said that 'a man doesn't need a family' because he had this terrible conflict over his debt to his family. and his debt to his. neighbor, and he really realized that he had this duty to both.
Or take the example of British athlete and Olympic medalist Tasha Danvers, who reflected on her own experience of depression when she said: “I think a lot of depression comes from not living your truth: you are not where you want to be. doing a job that you don't really want to do because you feel like you need to do it for the money."
In such cases, there is a conflict between important values. Working for the world, looking after your family, being financially secure, and living an honest life are all worth doing. Polarity dialogue involves pinning each value to a chair and then asking the patient to speak from that perspective. As Perls firmly believed, when a patient moves back and forth between two chairs that embody each value, there is an opportunity for creativity. This may take the form of seeking a better understanding of how to balance the two polarities; this may include developing a new vision of life that includes synthesis; or it may involve choosing one value over another.
Depressed man gave voice to his son who told him it was time to choose life
The last form of dialogue on the chair is relationships and meetings, which are related to the world of interpersonal relationships. For example, a therapist might say to a patient struggling with a broken heart:
I feel like you are still very stuck even though the relationship ended two years ago. I would like to work with this if possible. I want you to imagine her sitting in this chair and I would like you to talk to her and tell her how you feel.
This dialogue includes the expression of emotions such as love, anger, fear, and grief. It is also a means of enhancing the patient's "assertive voice" - his ability to confidently speak his mind. These are usually two-way dialogues in which the patient also switches chairs and takes the point of view of another "person" from the chair opposite (however, if the patient is having a dialogue with a truly violent character from the past, we do not recommend that the patient switch chairs, reverse roles, or "become » by this person, because it may evoke sympathy for the cruel person, which may interfere with
healing process).
An example of this process is found in the edited volume Psychodrama with Survivors (2000), in which therapists Marisol Bouza and José Barrio describe working with a man who fell into a deep and possibly psychotic depression in response to the death of his son. . In the hospital, after a series of suicide attempts, they decide to switch roles. dialogue. The man sat down on one chair and introduced his son to the chair opposite. From here, he spoke of his pain, grief, and loss, as well as his desire to join his son in the afterlife. He then switched chairs and gave voice to his son, who told him that it was time for him to choose life and give his love and affection to his other sons and the rest of the family. The father took this message to heart and decided to get better.
In 2013, I (Amanda) attended the Transformational Chair Work Workshop and had a direct, deep and dramatic experience using the relationship and meeting paradigm. Scott (at the time called "Dr. Kellogg" to me) led the session and invited participants to demonstrate therapy. I decided to become a volunteer. At the time, I was a clinical resident working with severely traumatized young adults and was on the brink of burnout. My work with a wonderful but very troubled teenage girl stunned me. I sat down in front of the room in an empty chair, and Scott told me to introduce my patient's abusers. I instantly became indignant. Scott then invited me to stand up and protect her. How dare you hurt her! I said.
This moment of catharsis was a relief. I had a deep disgust at the mistreatment of my patient, but until that day I had no outlet for my anger. A few minutes passed and Scott changed course. “Now imagine your patient. Talk to her. Speak from your heart. I sat back down and exhaled. The rage is gone and sadness has taken its place: “I don't know why your life is so painful. Your stories break my heart. My eyes began to water and I was encouraged to keep talking. “I want you to know that I think you are amazing. You're good. I see you.' I felt motivated and hopeful. In the months that followed, my work with the patient improved and I was able to effectively advocate for her treatment in the clinic.
Since then, I also immediately became interested in working on a chair. This seminar completely changed my understanding of the possibilities and limitations of psychotherapy. From that day on, I have been on an amazing journey that has led me to become a certified therapist and trainer of doctors around the world. Chair work has changed my life.
Relationships evoke conflicting emotions; chair work is a powerful way for patients to work with them
It hurts me deeply when I think about the incredible loneliness caused by trauma and suffering, and I feel a great duty to directly confront this experience. Chair work has given me the opportunity to be with patients in the dark while they also take action to get out of the rubble. We can face scary memories together and, as Scott always says, "Trust the chairs." When emotional pain appears, my patients come into contact with it, challenge it, comfort it, and ultimately decide to get rid of it. Their minds and hearts can carry on a dialogue, and from there an amazing transformation takes place.
Scott and I find it striking that we both had key experiences in chairs where we imagined dialogues with difficult or problematic people. Important relationships evoke strong and sometimes conflicting emotions in us, and chair work provides patients with a powerful way to process them.
The future is starting to look bright for those of us who believe in the power of this kind of dialogue work. We are seeing a resurgence in the psychotherapeutic use of the chair around the world. While primarily led by schema therapists who have now made chair work a central practice in their approach, other therapists are also increasingly using the approach, including practitioners of cognitive behavioral therapy as well as compassion-focused therapy. and integrative psychotherapy in general. Four dialogues and four principles made self-armchair psychotherapy possible for the first time. The first manifestation of this can be found in Amanda's Social Justice Department Psychotherapy Workshop, which focuses on finding ways to use this healing practice when working with historically marginalized or oppressed populations.
After all, how does chair work help people heal and change their lives? We believe there are four factors. First, it serves to give greater clarity to parts. Patients can sense and label their parts or modes as they are activated. This helps them gain more control over themselves. Secondly, it facilitates meetings and dialogues between parts that cannot occur naturally.zom. Third, it promotes intense levels of feeling and emotional expression, which can be especially transformative when patients have imaginary dialogues with others. Finally, it can start a creative process within a person that can lead to new solutions or new ways of being in the world. Whether used as a standalone therapy or as an adjunct to existing treatment approaches
