Being “me” as a whole: We can be aware of and accept our every state

We are all made up of different parts coming together. Our arms, legs and organs combine to make us a human being. A wardrobe emerges with a combination of drawers, shelves and doors. A computer becomes a computer with the combination of many parts such as graphics card, operating system, keyboard. So many things are actually the sum of the parts.

According to the holistic point of view, the whole is formed by the parts that make up it work together and in cooperation with each other. According to Perls, understanding human is only possible by seeing him as a whole. For this reason, when talking about human health, bodily, emotional and mental experiences cannot be separated from each other, and a change in one of them affects the others, and therefore the whole organism is affected. For example, if we had a very stressful day, we had a headache, when we worked for long hours in a job that would tire our minds, our movement decreased, or when a depressed person wanted to lie down all day, the organism is affected by each other. For this reason, it is desirable to keep the emotional state of people with chronic diseases such as diabetes and blood pressure as balanced as possible.

This holistic approach dominates almost every aspect of our lives. In particular, we do not perceive objects independently of each other. When we see forks, knives and plates, we perceive that there is a meal preparation. When we see a half-drawn picture, we try to guess what it is by completing the missing part in our minds. Or sometimes when we see a piece on the floor at home, we think about where it might belong. Because people tend to complete what is missing.

This happens very automatically and quickly in our minds. Wondering the whole picture, completing the half, finding the missing parts, that is, "being whole" comes from a holistic point of view.

In Gestalt Therapy, which is a psychotherapy approach, integration and especially incomplete works are mentioned together with the holistic approach. According to this approach, if a person does not get enough satisfaction from his needs, it remains incomplete and cannot be completed.

As the number of unfinished jobs increases, people begin to feel tense, tired and exhausted. Conflicts with people we care about can cause feelings such as sadness, resentment, guilt, hatred, grudge, shame. The need that needs to be met in such situations is the expression, sharing and conflict resolution of these feelings.

It is known that if we do not complete these unfinished works, it may cause us to experience the same conflicts again and again as soon as possible. Therefore, this situation will affect our focus on new experiences and also our body. For example, if we did not sleep at night, we may feel nervous the next day and reflect this situation to those around us. We may not be able to focus on people who are telling us something when we are too stuck on a subject and thinking about it all the time. In such cases, it is necessary to think about our unfulfilled need, to realize it, to see how we try to meet it, and to integrate it with our experiences. Only when this integration is achieved can we focus on our new needs and/or find different ways to meet them.

Another advantage of the holistic perspective is that it keeps us in balance. Suppose we are hanging from a tree and clinging to a single branch. When that branch breaks, we'll crash too. But connecting with other branches in the tree and holding on to other branches keeps us alive in such situations and supports us to overcome the difficulties we experience. In other words, we have many experiences, experiences, relationships, etc. in our lives. If we focus too intensely on one thing when we have it and lose that thing, it is inevitable that we will be destroyed.

Our values, characteristics, things we enjoy doing, and our relationships are all that make us who we are. When one of our castles is damaged, the others will be what sustains us to repair that castle. That's why it's very shallow to describe a person with just one thing. We are all sometimes calm, sometimes impatient, sometimes cold, sometimes talkative. We all have both positive and negative traits. So actually we all have many different characteristics. While we highlight some of our features, we put another feature in the foreground when the need provided from there is completed. We reveal the appropriate part of us according to the situations, lives and experiences we encounter.

They change, we change, they change...

I wish you days when you can see your whole and realize your many features.