From roundabout to seesaw: Gestalt therapists working with partners of people who suffer with addiction

"Abstract: As a practising Gestalt counsellor, I noticed that I had an increasing number of clients who are not misusing substances themselves but are partners of people who do. I was struck by how little dialogue there is around this generally in the field of counselling and psychotherapy. The main support available to partners of people with addictions is support groups, but there is little understanding or consensus on how they may be understood and best supported in the counselling room. A UK-based research group contrasted six different perspectives on understanding the dynamic between partner and substance- misusing other, which were co-dependency, psychodynamic, systems, stress-coping, feminist, and community (Velleman, Copello and Maslin, 1998). Looking at this from a Gestalt therapy theory perspective has generally remained unexplored. This small-scale research paper is a result of dialogues I had with three Gestalt therapists who have had experience supporting a partner of a person who suffers with addiction. An overarching image emerged out of these conversations which I will use to describe the process these Gestalt therapists have gone through with their clients, in the hope of initiating dialogue around this, in and outside of the Gestalt community. Keywords: co-dependency, affected family members (AFMs), addiction, Gestalt therapy, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), confluence, creative indifference."