The devil is in the details. Usually they are easy enough to spot after the fact.

It is a little harder to make out the potential details while it is happening — to see room for manoeuvre in something that at first glance looks like a monolith.

Say you are fed up with your job and want to quit.

And what if it were the same workload, but for double the pay?

Or, the other way round, half the amount of work?

Doing the same thing, but remotely?

Flexible hours?

What if the one to leave were not you, but that colleague who never stops talking? Or your boss?..

Such experiments — both thought experiments and entirely real ones — help to reveal which forces in the situation are the key ones for you.

For example, it may turn out that the same job for the same money with the same colleagues is not so hateful if you suddenly imagine that you are not married.

Someone once said:

It sounds grotesque, but it happens.

«Un-gestalting» a situation, stripping it of its monolithic quality, breaking it down into components — these are games with figure and ground.

We change the ground and see how that affects the figure. Sometimes the difference is obvious, sometimes it seems that nothing has changed.

A simple experiment in a Gestalt therapist’s consulting room:

— Let’s swap seats… What has changed for you?

— Absolutely nothing, — the client answers, without a second’s thought.

This happens outside the consulting room too.

The situation is perceived as a gestalt, and it will not be broken down into puzzle pieces.

And what if you told your wife/husband that words like that hurt you?

And what if you asked about taking unscheduled leave?

Change your usual route, the cut of your clothes, your intonation, your angle of view.

It is as if, in the well-known «Gestalt pictures», someone always saw the old woman and never the young girl. Or could make out only the vase, and never the two profiles.

Sometimes a person’s life space really is extremely restricted. For example, if for some reason their movement is constrained. But more often it is the psychological life space that is restricted.

Perception is organised so that only a small part of the possibilities is visible. What catches the eye is the familiar, the habitual. The rest does not «frighten» — the rest simply does not exist.

Perhaps, on seeing something different, a person will change their choices, and perhaps not. That is a personal decision.

A Gestalt therapist has no answer to the question of which choice is the «right» one. But in their consulting room you can learn to change your angle of view and notice details that you could hardly bring yourself to call «trifles».

Text: Olena Vorozheikina