Ready Yet? Get Set. It’s All That! OHHH Oh Ohhh – This is ALL THAT …

then jam out to TLC singing the catchiest theme song of my childhood from Nickelodeon’s All That.
I’ll wait.

This post is primarily for therapists and counselors, but if you receive support from a therapist or counselor this could be an interesting read. Just be aware that you’re not the intended audience 🙂

Therapist and counseling friends, I’m going to make the assumption that in the course of your schooling just like mine you were at least introduced to the concept of gestalt therapy techniques. If you’re like me, the only part you remembered was the “empty chair” technique and you maybe learned how to spell Gestalt – bonus points if you realize there’s no h in it… thanks for the save spell-check.

Part of why this therapeutic technique stood out for me in grad school was because it was one of the few techniques and theories that was talked about that can support grief work. (Shocker: 90% of my grad schooling didn’t want to talk about grief, dying, or older adults – just like society as a whole. Don’t worry, we in those fields are used to it and aren’t jealous of the trendy child welfare and mental health fields AT ALL.) Just saying. Anyway, I easily understood how it can be therapeutic to imagine your deceased loved one occupying the empty chair and giving the client space and permission to address emotional needs that weren’t able to be met before the permanence that is death. That’s all well and good and was about as much as I thought about it until a few years later.

Down the road, I had a client in a support group who had done a lot of work with her individual therapist regarding her inner child. I realized that talking to your inner child or trying to empathize with your inner child is not only similar to gestalt but actually IS a modification of gestalt. It’s the younger version of you occupying the empty chair.

Now to the mind-blowing part that occurred to me this week. I was listening to a podcast where the therapist was encouraging a client to remember the version of herself that existed before her husband died in a tragic manner and ask “what would she do?” My mind was blown that any version of yourself that you need can occupy the empty chair and not just your inner child or a deceased loved one. Because often, when a loved one dies, part of you dies with them. So this is a way to access that part of yourself. Holy cow.

Now for the reason this post is ALL THAT themed… Just like how the best show of 90s/00s evening TV is a bunch of sketch comedy bits strung together, so can the use of the empty chair be multiple “sketches” and not just one version of yourself that you revisit. Sometimes, I don’t need to talk to the wild, feral child I was, I need to talk to the confident teen instead. Other times, I need to talk to the completely crushed 20 something I was to let her know it gets better. Now hopefully the sketches will be less chaotic or more serious than switching from Good Burger to Pierre Escargot, but the variety is the important thing. Plus the level of agency, creativity, and sometimes fun that being able to decide which version of yourself you need to talk to brings is just awesome, in my humble opinion.

I haven’t thought too much about this next part, but I would assume you could also talk to someone else in stages too, like the Dad from your childhood or teen years instead of the aging Dad you have now, or the aging Dad you had before he died. Seems like the possibilities are endless which is just so COOL to me! I hope you’re able to use this in creative ways with your clients if appropriate, and enjoy engaging in the variety show that is this life.