Between Stimulus and Response

[Glory Ressler]

George:
Your post has lured me out of many months of lurking slumber...Thanks! I resonate with your comments and my previous gestalt training taught much the same...

Awareness and acceptance of as much of the polarities/boundaries of the group/individual choices/self leads to 'the creative point of no difference'. In this state, you can appreciate and accept the value of any choice or emerging direction, without being attached to any one outcome particularly. We too often referred to this as increasing our 'response-ability' (increased capacity to respond)!

Between stimulus and response also comes awareness and mobilization. Some people don't take 'it' in (denial), some people block their own energy building... If we find our way to response (action) then comes satisfaction and withdrawal. Some people cannot reach satisfaction (responding in the same old way and getting same old unsatisfactory results) or have problems withdrawing (leaving too fast or staying too long).

When we, as facilitators, hold the space for the group (and the individuals therein) to explore this process in a personally response-able way (don't do for them what they can/will do for themselves), then people experience their own blocks (as their own blocks) and somehow find a way to complete the cycle.

When this cycle is complete and healthy (on any one figure or issue), then it can recede and space is opened for awareness of new stimulus and increase in response capacity... When the cycle isn't completed, we tend to repeat the interrupted pattern over and over... It's like we keep re-creating it, in order to have an opportunity to complete the cycle.

The process is only natural and most people are naturally inclined to move in this direction, I think. After all, it is well grounded in our physiological propensity for homeostasis and our perceptual tendencies toward closure.

Glory Ressler

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