If you want to practice the virtue of parrhesia on your own without a fascilitator, the first step, of course, is to learn to listen to yourself acceptingly and to learn to overcome scruples. It’s not about training skills that will make you a better or more successful person. It’s about self-actualization, not self-improvement. To become a better person, you have to refuse self-improvement.
The best thing that can happen to you is not to learn all the latest lifestyles and behaviors and then go with the crowd and hope to be successful. The best thing that could happen to you would be to fully know and realize your real self. But then you would be God. So that is not going to happen. The cynical way of parrhesia is to get closer and closer to that ideal through virtue, understood as a lifelong process.
The attempt of self-improvement is blasphemy, because you would want to improve God..
In the linked video from 1970, the most famous Gestalt therapist, Fritz Perls, gives an insight into his practice. Even though in our Encounter groups from the mid-70s on, I think we were far better, because braver, bolder, more intense, fresher, than Perls, his insights may still be helpful for you if you want to venture into the adventure of self-realization and understand the difference from the self-improvement so often demanded today. Because this is exactly what the example of the man who dares to sit in the famous hot seat of Gestalt therapy is all about. So learn to refuse self-improvement.
Especially if you are alone, you can also try the game with the Two Chairs. And your top dog, who wants to push you to become better, can at least in your imagination turn to your best friend, whom you don’t want to lose under any circumstances Maybe your top dog is friendlier to this person than to your under dog?
Unlike Perls, I don’t think that everything important already pushes itself to the foreground as “unfinished business”. To discover your taboo forbidden truths about yourself, the client-centered method of Carls Rogers is more helpful here. You can also use this method on your own. I will go into this in another article.
Whereby in all cases it is better to find a cynical fascilitator to support you. Soon an Encounter group is also useful, so that you can get further. You will notice yourself when it is the right time and then you will surely find an appropriate possibility..
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