From the author: Nowadays, different recommendations appear weekly about leaving your comfort zone. In Gestalt therapy (GT), other terms are used to designate the phenomena that describe this term - “base”, “background”. Does this term find application in GT? Read the beginning of the article at the link. Comparing my professional experience and recommendations from other areas, I came up with a formula for how to leave the comfort zone in GT: - at a personal meeting with a Gestalt therapist or in a group led by such a specialist ;- through awareness of parts of your “I”, living your feelings and emotions without autopilot, that is, naming emotions, finding out their addressee and completing actions stopped in emotions (crying, laughing, screaming, trembling); - through decoding the messages that are sent Your body is sick and depressed. Many diseases, especially chronic ones, have a psychosomatic basis. Therefore, if you treat diseases, but do not experience excluded feelings, then they will return to the body and your life in some new way. With sports, then the picture is this: you started to exercise - you rushed out of your comfort zone with all your might, and there old emotions arose. Therefore, you worked out for a couple of months (this is at best), and quit - returned to where you “came from”. What is the positive effect of living through unlived emotions? In this process, the reasons for actions and actions are clarified, most often habitual and having a negative connotation. For example, you regularly refuse to take part in corporate gatherings for your department. This is bad for you, because their boss initiates them, and his attitude towards you worsens. A dialogue with a Gestalt therapist may show that the reason for your refusals is childhood fears about your father, who drank at work and came home in a bad state. And it’s not your present that scares you, but your childhood past. Moreover, the one that events in the present remind us of. Childhood fears, as well as the attitudes of other adults to events (for example, a mother’s censure of her father’s behavior) can form a certain, highly moral subpersonality (that part of the “I”) that cannot relax and have a drink at work place. By realizing the history of the birth of “your” principles, you can gain freedom of choice. For example, continue to respect your values ​​and join colleagues in a restaurant, or give them a sincere refusal to relax together. In both cases, the situation will cease to be dramatic for you (because in any case, you did something because you wanted it). And then look, there will be a chance to improve relations with your boss. You can figure all this out in the process of GT and live your life, not your parent’s, for example. To summarize, we can say that leaving the comfort zone with the help of GT occurs through internal work with psyche and body. Naturally, the outside world changes after it: actions, habits, behavior, relationships. And they make everyday life, the main environment different and contribute to positive changes at work. Anyone who doesn’t believe, as they say, let him check. Sincerely, Your psychologist, physiologist, gestalt therapist, supervisor Irina Chekhova Contacts: Skype "irinachekhova", http://online-psiholog.com/, +38050368-35-44 (Viber, WhatsApp)