Gestalt International Study Center

1035 Cemetery Road, P.O. Box 515, South Wellfleet, MA 02663

Phone: +1 508 349 7900

Creating the conditions for empathy

Sharona Halpern • Sep 25, 2019

By Sharona (on behalf of Joe, Carol, Stuart and Nancy)

In New England, we are in our final days of summer. Every day of blue skies and summer breezes feels like a gift. I am happy that my windows are still wide open most of the time.

A few years ago, a group from GISC spent a day with Laura Chasin, a family therapist, and a colleague and friend of the Nevis’. She introduced us to the Public Conversations Project, a program she founded in 1989, which applies tools from family therapy to facilitating dialogue between groups who have opposing political perspectives and views. The methodology is simple and user friendly. It requires a facilitator to hold the space and structure, establish agreements among the participants that support uninterrupted expression of ideas, one at a time, and sets an underlying rule that no one tries to persuade or convince the other party. (If you want to know more, look up Public Conversations Project)

In my work, I am often asked to intervene in conflict situations. This summer, a couple I had been seeing for awhile arrived for their session stuck in a contentious conflict. They had a big decision to make that impacted them both, and that they were experiencing from opposing viewpoints. They reported that at home they had debated the issue, and found themselves feeling angry and misunderstood. I thought about the Public Conversations Project, and suggested an experiment. I set the expectations: The outcome of the decision would be set aside. No persuasion or challenge to the other point of view was allowed. Each person would have a chance to speak. After they spoke, we would pause. The listener could then ask questions that were exclusively meant to clarify or deepen their understanding of the other’s point of view and feelings. They did the experiment. When we debriefed it, they talked about feeling noticeably softer toward the other. They were surprised, since they came in feeling so defensive, stuck and hopeless. In our next session, I was not surprised to learn that they had made a decision, and that they were living pretty well with it, despite the fact that someone had to be disappointed.

Lately, I have been thinking that much of my work with couples, and with teams experiencing conflict, is about creating the conditions for empathy. I think most of us believe that empathy is the entry point to the solution to our personal and political conflicts. However, empathy gets lost when we are scared, disappointed or angry. Most of us know what having empathy feels like, and we know what it feels like when we lose it, when we are in conflict. We fight to be understood but don’t often fight as hard to be understanding. The assumption that the other wants to understand us as much as we want to be understood, requires a great deal of support and trust. In our work, we can provide that support and framework, helping people move through conflict toward empathy. I find this part of my work important and satisfying.


A few words about what is coming up at GISC, and in particular in CCTP. We are excited to be offering a Fourth Week (for the first time!) in London, November 8-12. If you have taken CCTP and taken the Third Week, please consider joining us, to deepen your learning and practice of the Cape Cod Model. If you have not taken the Third Week, please contact us, as the Third Week is not necessarily required to participate in the Fourth. We are also planning the next Third Week for Spring 2020. Let us know soon if you are interested, as The Third Week has consistently sold out. Talk to someone who has participated to find out more, and of course, write or call any of the faculty for more information. We are always glad to hear from you.

Warmly,
Sharona (on behalf of Joe, Carol, Stuart and Nancy)
By lfitzpatrick 19 Dec, 2023
Dear Friends, Thank you for your ongoing support of GISC and for being such a vital part of who we are as a global learning community. This year, I have some important and exciting news to share. For many months, the GISC Board of Directors and I have worked together to develop a strategic vision to take GISC into the future. Our aim is for GISC to be the place that brings diverse individuals together, in community, online and in accessible in-person environments, for meaningful, transformative learning, so they can multiply their impact for larger systems change. We know this is achieved through relevant programming, experiences that are deep and build mastery over time, a focus on diversity, inclusion, and belonging – and by continuing to evolve as an organization. To this end, last month, the board made the strategic decision to put the Nevis Meetinghouse in Wellfleet up for sale and move our center of operations to Boston, Massachusetts. After the trials of Covid and the societal shifts we’ve seen since, it’s become clear that our greatest opportunities lie off-Cape, online, and in new places in the US and abroad. Making this decision is the best way we know to honor the legacy of our founders, Edwin and Sonia Nevis, and expand our important mission. While the building in Wellfleet has been a cherished physical home to many of us, it’s been the profound insights and lifelong relationships created there and elsewhere that are the most valuable treasure we share. Together, over many years, we’ve formed and re-formed community to hold our greatest hopes and aspirations as humans and professionals. “The Center” is indeed a community – it is you, our participants, members, supporters, faculty, and friends – not a physical space. This change will allow for greater accessibility and open up new opportunities for collaboration and partnerships in education, healthcare, and the helping professions. It will better enable thought leadership and our commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion, expanding our impact in the world. While we understand that this news may bring sadness to some, we hope you will also join in our excitement for new ways of becoming all we can be – with all the creativity and liveliness that change can bring – while holding onto the essence of who we are and what makes GISC special. Please be a part of making this new vision a reality with your continued support and give generously to GISC this year. Your gift of $1,000 will place you in our Founders Circle, and every unrestricted gift of $125 or more includes a GISC membership. Our members are entitled to special perks and program discounts and will receive an invitation to our Virtual Town Hall to learn more and share thoughts on our vision for GISC. We also welcome gifts directed to our Scholarship Fund, Clinical Initiatives, DEIB work, Faculty Development – or your own area of interest.
By Stuart Simon, LICSW, MCC 12 May, 2023
Lately, as I sit with clients, I have found myself exploring the experience of not knowing. It's notable because I have spent so much of my professional life wanting to learn and grow ...which necessarily involves knowing things. I assume we all do that. But as I said, I have been exploring "not knowing". I find I am enjoying "not knowing". Perhaps it's really the experience of not having to know. I think this is making me a better practitioner...therapist, coach, consultant. It provides me a lot of freedom. However, the road to "not knowing" has not been comfortable for me. It's too close to the experience of feeling "stupid". Perhaps turning 66 has helped. It brought to mind picture of the Old Lady and the Young Lady: 
By Laurie Fitzpatrick 19 Dec, 2022
Dear Friends, We at GISC are grateful for you, our donors, members, and participants, for playing such a vital role in bringing GISC’s powerful Gestalt approach to so many, “transforming the way we live and work in the world.” Our community is the heart and soul of this organization, and we thank you. GISC is better poised than ever to reach more people and to make the kind of impact so needed in the world today. We’re taking our Gestalt Leadership Development training into more organizations and creating a clinical initiative to develop and promote new offerings for psychotherapists. We’re working to become more accessible, experimenting with delivery at central in-city locations and by optimizing our online presence. And we’re actively educating ourselves as a community on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, to grow as an organization and be a place where everyone called to this work feels they belong. The brilliance and legacy of GISC founders Sonia March Nevis and Edwin Nevis equipped us well to bring our own solutions to the problems individuals and organizations face today, and still, we must continue to develop ourselves and prepare new generations of coaches, leaders, and practitioners. As luminaries in the Gestalt world age, retire, or, sadly, pass away, we’re reminded of the imperative to carry this legacy forward, person to person. As 2022 draws to a close, we’d like to ask for your continued help in bringing GISC’s important work into the world. Your gift will support these and other initiatives: Faculty Development – to support our faculty community and offer advanced training. Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging – to move GISC and those we train to a place of awareness, equity, and competence for living in a diverse and multicultural world. Scholarship Fund – so we can continue to provide scholarship assistance to those who need it. Clinical Initiative – to develop new offerings for mental health professionals. Virtual Delivery – to bring our rich GISC experiences to wider audiences online. Please give today to support our work and expand our global community. You can donate online by clicking the button below or by check via mail, directing your gift to your favorite initiative or to the general fund. Again, this year, we invite you to join our Founders’ Circle with your gift of $1,000 or more. All contributions of $125 or more will entitle you to a free GISC membership for 2023.
By Lucy Ball, BAHons 13 Jun, 2022
A Message To Our Cape Cod Training Program (CCTP) Graduates
By Stuart Simon, LISCW, MCC 27 Apr, 2022
A Message To Our Cape Cod Training Program (CCTP) Graduates
By Laurie Fitzpatrick 09 Dec, 2021
If the past year has demanded anything of us, it has been to draw on our inner resources – and one another – to reimagine the ways we live and work in the world. To achieve things we don’t yet know are possible. “This might not work,” one of my favorite lines by creativity expert Seth Godin, speaks to the way every important undertaking is a leap of faith, as we will only discover what works by trying new things. I am so proud of GISC’s faculty, board, staff, and participants, as we have worked to create something incredibly important and worthwhile this year – reaching outside of comfort zones to offer programs in new ways, bringing our experiential programs online, beginning to explore biases we didn’t know we held, and so much more – all while contending personally and professionally with a global pandemic. Many of us – leaders, therapists, coaches, consultants – have moved through our own fears and resistances and blind-spots to look at what is, what else might be possible, and to help bring others along their own paths of learning. It has been a joy to see program participants join strangers from around the world on two-dimensional screens, yet somehow forge intimacies and embody learning none of us were sure was possible. They have walked away from signature programs we thought could only be delivered in person saying things like: “It's been life changing” “What stands out for me in this program is the good-heartedness.” “I experience the organisation as one that lives and promotes its values, which seems rare these days!” “…Each program I attend attracts people willing to engage in the material, share in a meaningful and intimate way, and show up from around the world. It makes my world a better place.” GISC, like the individuals in our community, is doing some reimagining of its own. How might we stand on the fertile ground our founders laid and best equip today’s generation of learners to bring more meaning and competence to their own lives and the lives of those they touch? How can we be more inclusive and just? And, we have developed some new initiatives to address these questions. Please support GISC with your gift this year and be a part of reimagining our future, expanding upon all that we’ve learned to become something more. Your gift will support: New Programming to enhance skills and ways of being that are relevant to today’s leaders and practitioners Diversity Equity Inclusion & Belonging – so that GISC is a place where everyone feels they belong and are supported to live, work, and promote change in our multicultural society Virtual Initiative – expanding accessibility and our ability to bring GISC’s brand of powerful, safe, highly experiential programming online Scholarship Fund – supporting nonprofit leaders, clinical practitioners, and participants from underrepresented communities Faculty Development – To foster thought-leadership and equip our next generation of faculty to bring the best of Gestalt theory and practice into the future 
By ktessier 04 Oct, 2021
Meet The Next Phase faculty member, Dave Bushy
By Sharona Halpern 30 Sep, 2021
CCTP Summer 2021 Newsletter 
By ktessier 29 Sep, 2021
Meet Melanie Nevis, GISC faculty for Highly Sensitive
By ktessier 23 Sep, 2021
Meet A Competency Development Program for Coach Certification faculty member, Jackie Sherman.
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