Men on the Path to Love
Relationship coach Bill Simpson offers stories and wisdom, to inspire men be the best version of themselves in relationship and live the life they love.
Men on the Path to Love
BONUS: How About Therapy?A Conversation with Gestalt Therapist Melissa Bennett-Heinz
Have you thought about seeking therapy? If so, it might be a good idea to try it. In this bonus episode, you'll hear my conversation with Gestalt therapist Melissa Bennet-Heinz. She tells us about the transformative power of Gestalt therapy and shedding light on its core principles. She also talks about the unique challenges men face in therapy and makes a good case for men who are struggling, to try therapy. Check out How About Therapy? A Conversation with Gestalt Therapist Melissa Bennet-Heinz.
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Hi and welcome to the Men on the Path to Love podcast bonus episode. How About Therapy? A conversation with Gestalt therapist Melissa Bennett-He. I'm Bill Simpson, your host. I coach men who want to stop suffering in relationship and who want a deeper sense of love and connection. I coach them how to do it and how to be the best version of himself, for himself and for his current or future relationship, and to live the life he loves. In this bonus episode you'll hear my conversation with Gestalt therapist Melissa Bennett-Hines. With over 20 years of experience, one of her passions is working with men and navigating their role in this complex world to living more authentically and powerfully by stepping into and connecting with themselves Sounds familiar. Melissa explains what Gestalt therapy is all about and frankly, she makes a good case for men to try therapy. So stick around, you just might learn something. It's the Men on the Path to Love podcast. Welcome, Melissa, to Men on the Path to Love.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Thank you, Bill. It's great to be here today.
Bill Simpson:From what I read about you, you have quite a story and quite a background in what you do, and I'd love to start off with hearing your story. How did you get from where you were to where you are now?
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yeah, it has been. Feels like a long road, how I got to where I am today. So where I am today is, and how I'm coming to you is in the role of what I do in my life's work, which is I'm a gestalt psychotherapist.
Bill Simpson:For those who don't know what is a gestalt therapist it's very complex so it's difficult to succinctly explain.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I do like to share a couple of pieces of information about it. So it is the first known American psychotherapy to land on this soil. It was brought over by a gentleman named Fritz Perls. Him and his wife Laura collaboratively developed it over a number of decades. Fritz was a German Jew, born in the late 1800s and he served in the trenches in World War.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I came out of that experience with what we would call today PTSD and after the war had been struggling with trauma and decided he was going to seek help for it. So in that experience he became interested in his trauma and experience he was having and what was happening to him and his body and in the world and his relationships. And that's how it all began. It really came out of a need to heal. That's in a nutshell. What is it?
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:It is a phenomenological approach, meaning how the person I'm sitting with makes meaning of things in their life right. So it's not about me analyzing, it's not about me being an expert. In you You're the expert. You're recognized as having everything you need already and there have been things that have occurred that have interrupted flow or become patterns that at one point were survival and healthy at a time. But as you grow up and you mature, those old patterns which have become now character, logical meaning out of your awareness, are still operating, but they're not serving you anymore. Of your awareness are still operating, but they're not serving you anymore. I'm very interested in as a gestalt therapist is to help each person really become aware of themselves moment to moment to moment and in relationship in the world around them.
Bill Simpson:Kind of a mindfulness type of approach, absolutely.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:It's considered somatic based. So there's a lot of body awareness, because all of our experiences, our emotions are stored in our body but we disconnect from it right, so it's about reconnecting to your body. It's phenomenological, it's relational, so a lot of the work I do uses what is coming up between myself and the patient or client that I'm sitting with. Relationally, because the therapeutic relationship is this real relationship, but artificially created, right, it is measured and boundaried and financial in nature. And it's also a real relationship where, in this therapy, which is the thing I was most drawn to, was the encouragement, not the okay, like, oh, we understand you're a human and you bring yourself.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:They invited you to be who you were in these sessions and I really liked that approach of being as whole as I could be in the work I'm doing with people. And that will lead me to what does gestalt mean? It is a German word, there is no direct English translation, but it's best described as pattern or shape. We're looking at patterns, both those that you know, that are healthy they work well for you and those that are unknown. Right, and maybe some of those unknown patterns work really well and maybe some of them are keeping you stuck.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, and part of what I'm hearing. You say you're really truly meeting them where they are not who they want to be or pretend to be. They can be their absolute true self with you.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:And that requires a lot of trust right.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yes it is. I appreciate your saying that, because that is the foundation of the relationship for change, and that takes time, right, because it's not just. The patient has to trust me, right, I have to trust our relationship. I have to trust that we have a good enough bond that I might poke a little right. Gestalt is also known it's known as many things. It's also known as a confrontational therapy, and not, I think, confrontational, it's a very bad rap. You think of it as like being very argumentative or conflictual, but all it is in these terms is noticing. Part of my job is to draw your attention to something that I hear or see or am curious about, and explore it with you, and I have to trust that our connection is solid enough that I can do that, when I can do it and how I do it.
Bill Simpson:And that's where the change comes, because if they don't have that awareness, the patterns continue and you kind of reflect that back to them to say, hey, this is what I'm noticing.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Exactly.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, thanks for clarifying what Gestalt therapy is.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:How did you get led to this work? Yeah, I was led to this work.
Bill Simpson:It found me my background is in.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I was born into a family of classical musicians. I'm the youngest of four. All three of my older brothers were musicians, my parents were professional musicians and I was on that path of pursuing a career in the field of classical music. I am an oboist, so that's my first love and I really had big dreams and goals and worked very hard from a very young age, went away to school, went to a music conservatory in New York City and I would say that is when I experienced my first, probably a depressive episode, and at that time my oboe teacher sat me down. I always went to his apartment for my lessons and we were really good friends and we would often spend two to three hours together at a time and I just sat down on his couch and started to cry. One day I was 21 years old no-transcript need that, you know, that's for people who are crazy, right, I'm not that bad.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:And he did something in this next moment that changed the entire trajectory of my life.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:He said to me Melissa, look, there's two kinds of people in New York those in therapy and those who need to be. And he shared with me that he had seen a therapist for decades and he still went and that changed everything. That opened a door for me that took away the stigmatization that I had attached, that was passed down from my family, and opened the door for me to walk into a therapist's office several months later and I stayed with that therapist for a number of years and, I think, outgrew her in some ways and moved on and had been pretty consistently in therapy for many of the next decades that came and that just opened the door. I simultaneously came to the understanding of like what I was actually trying to do in terms of my profession was so difficult. All of that and the discouragement, I think, that I felt and the fear that I felt around my chances of actually getting a job impacted my playing so much that I I was suffering like I wasn't enjoying it anymore.
Bill Simpson:Um, I could imagine that it was very anxiety provoking being in that competitive, competitive environment.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Oh, incredibly, and I had some degree of performance anxiety, which I never overcame, and so I think it was just a culmination of a bunch of things. I think it was growing up, you know, taking off some of the rose colored glasses and also a door opening that I didn't even know was there, and being open to pursuing something different. And that was tough, coming from my background, because I was living my dad's dream.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:His dream, and I knew it was to go to a conservatory in New York, and he never pursued that, and so I knew I was living a dream of his, for him and so for me to be able to come to terms, to share with him what was in my heart. And it wasn't the easiest conversation. It was hard and I know he was very saddened and upset and grief stricken, and he also was able to support me and he really understood. He heard what you know I was putting on the table and I think he just really valued me following what my heart's desire was, even if it wasn't music.
Bill Simpson:I have that support. That's amazing Because a lot of times it's like you said it's their dream and if you're not fulfilling that dream, it's like you know there's the distance, there's the resistance, the push away, like you know, there's the distance, there's the resistance, the push away Right.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:And you know, I think part of what drew me so much to Gestalt was prior, before I even knew who Fritz Perls was. And it wasn't something I knew I had. It was something that a mentor of mine at my first job after I graduated from graduate school in social work, saw in me, and she was the one that said to me you're going to go and study gestalt therapy and I had no idea really what this was. I think I heard of it in grad school. They might have mentioned it, but it was nothing I really retain.
Bill Simpson:What do you think that she saw in you? That said this is her vision for you.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I think it's just my genuine willingness to be authentic. I don't feel like I have an ability to really hide what I'm experiencing Right. So while much of my work has been to learn to take a breath and just slow myself down, a lot of the work I do with people is to get them to connect back to themselves right and reconnect to those experiences and emotions. And in relationship with others, Part of that has been maybe easier in some ways for me to help people connect to it.
Bill Simpson:I could see that, and having your own experience of going through therapy for years and working on yourself too, that gives you that solid foundation to be able to connect. Your own experience of going through therapy and for years and working on yourself too, you know, that gives you that solid foundation to be able to connect in a different way that someone that doesn't have that experience would be able to do yeah, I mean, it's just different right, it's just another avenue you can take right right um, but you know for me it's worked for many people who I sit with.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:It works well. You know when it works well. It's worked For many people who I sit with. It works well. You know when it works well. It works well. Not every client is a great match.
Bill Simpson:True.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I can relate to that.
Bill Simpson:I've had to fire some clients yeah.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:And you know, and some clients have had to fire me.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, yeah.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:And that's okay too, Right.
Bill Simpson:Exactly.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yeah right, we have to go with what's going to be best for us in the long run, and I always want to honor that in my work, because that is the most important.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, and I always say to my clients look, you know, you're in charge here. I mean, if this is not working, hey, you got to let me know, because otherwise I won't know, or I may kind of you know, know, but not really know if you don't tell me.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Right.
Bill Simpson:And I don't want to waste your time or my time if it's not working for you.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I think it comes out in my first session. I'm mindful to tell everybody, the worst thing you will do in this relationship is not communicate with me, you know. So I really invite them to share their experiences, both positive and maybe negative. Right, it's just information that they probably need to say and I might need to hear, and if we can adjust along the way and it works great. And if not, that's okay too.
Bill Simpson:Yeah absolutely so. You know I'm all about men on the path to love here, melissa, and I know you work with men and women and specifically men's issues. What types of issues have you experienced with men in your practice?
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yeah, I really do enjoy working with men. They're the same and very different.
Bill Simpson:Right, exactly.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I will say that there's so much of what is going on underneath is very similar. It just looks different in its expression. Yeah, and so we're not all that different. I think that we really kind of embrace a culture of like men are from Mars, women are from Venus attitude and it's like, but it's not. We're not that different. So we'll start this by saying there's issues that overlap. So I will start this by saying there's issues that overlap.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:What people show up to my office for and what it turns out they're coming to me for are two different things. Right, and that's the art of the therapy I practice is when that shifts over. Right. So how they often present, stressed out, disconnected, maybe feeling depressed, having conflict in a relationship that's really important to them. It can be a partner, it can be a parent. Many of them are very intelligent, high achieving folks who have done well, like, excelled in life, very organized, very put together, perfectionists, and what gets revealed as I get to know them is how they have sacrificed themselves for the good of someone else. So it could be their family as the breadwinner, right, the provider. It can be for the company they work for, it can be for a parent, the similarities that I see often are what I call enmeshed dynamics, so enmeshment happens when there isn't really a division between you and the other.
Bill Simpson:Right. One bleeds into the other.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yes. So a lot of their actions and motivation underneath what they're doing is in the service of someone else, right? They're very often like self-sacrificing. So they haven't learned to connect to themselves. They haven't learned what their own needs are, what their true heart's desire is, and haven't been told that it's okay to express it, even if they know right. So you get, as a man, I think, two emotions that are acceptable. You can be angry right yep or you can be neutral.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I've had men in my practice and my work say to me you can't even really be too happy because, if you're too happy, then that gets labeled as something and you might get judged for it and be told to calm down or what you're getting so excited for. And so I think, like the two experiences are what you get to have in your arsenal as okay to show.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, and vulnerability is just out the window.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yeah, that's right. For most men that's weak.
Bill Simpson:Yeah.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Right, don't show that softer side, don't say you're struggling, don't ask for help. And that's such a very isolated, lonely and pressure-filled life.
Bill Simpson:Sure is, and as a relationship coach for men, and as you say, it's all the same, but that's my focus, because to help men open up with their vulnerability, and it's not to save the relationship, it's to save themselves, to be true to themselves and get in touch with themselves first. Then you take that to the relationship and see what happens.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Right, that's key. I appreciate hearing that. Right, that's key.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I appreciate hearing that, and I think that the struggle for a lot of people in that is what comes up as a lot of fear, right, fear to say what they're feeling, a desire to people please or protect the other, not wanting to hurt, not wanting to make somebody else upset. So being able to tolerate your own anxiety and fear around what this will do in relationship, while also still be able to hold your experience and honor that and one of the things I try to help people understand about. I think a lot of what we're talking about, too, is boundaries, right, boundaries of self and taking care of yourself. Is it's a gift you give. You know, boundaries have such a bad rap too, like oh, it's selfish.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:It's the opposite of selfish, because by you caring for yourself, you being authentic, you allowing your full self to show up and be present, you give a gift to the other.
Bill Simpson:Absolutely yeah.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:You know, saying I have needs is a gift, because that means you go out, get those needs met and then you can come back to these relationships and feel whole and feel present and want to give right, and when their spouse or partner doesn't know what they need and they're, you know, running around trying to figure that out you're not telling them.
Bill Simpson:Once they hear what you need, maybe what you feel and what you need, wow, that's like, now we, now we can do something with it. Otherwise, how are you?
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Right.
Bill Simpson:Yeah.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:There's no solution in the secret.
Bill Simpson:Yeah.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Right, if you keep everything secret, you can't find a way through it. No, and if you want to find a way through it, it's going to have to get spoken somehow.
Bill Simpson:What would you say to the men listening that may be hesitant to get into therapy? I mean, you know, as a coach, you know we blur the line a little bit here, but you know it's not as maybe intimidating as, say, therapy for some men. What would you say to men who are kind of thinking about it and you know not sure what to do about it? What would you say to encourage them?
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Well, I would have to ask each person, right, what is it about therapy for you? That is like a question or a block for you, right. So to help over that hurdle. But I think, most commonly, what I understand about whether it's men or women, it's the same is it is a weakness to ask for help. Yeah, right, but especially for men who are problem solvers, solution focused fixers.
Bill Simpson:That's how we're conditioned.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yeah, absolutely it has how you're conditioned to kind of normalize that we cannot do it alone because we can't, right, we don't. We're not injured in a vacuum and we don't heal in a vacuum, right, it takes relationship to do that. But I really truly believe this that it is the greatest act of bravery to say I can't do it alone and I need help with it. And so if you can trust that it's possible that what narrative you're assigning to going to therapy means as a man is not fully accurate and maybe there's some other meaning that you can learn about what it means as a man entering a therapy and just be open, just be curious about it.
Bill Simpson:And it is hard.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:It's scary. Right, You're asking a person you don't know. You don't know me, you don't know Bill. Right, if you're going into coaching and it does take a lot of willingness to just trust enough to walk in the door Right and you know what walk in the door Right and you know what. Here's the thing If it doesn't work, if you don't like it, if the therapist or coach you have chosen isn't a good fit for you, you don't have to stay. There's another one right around the corner.
Bill Simpson:And I can speak from experience because the first therapist I had, you know we connected at first and then it got to the point where he's yawning in the middle of the room and he's looking at his watch and he's looking around the room and I'm like, oh my god, this guy, he can't wait till I get out of here, you know, and that could have scarred me from therapy for the duration of my life and thank goodness I had someone who referred me to an awesome therapist that you know helped change my life. So I'm saying that to say don't let one experience determine another opportunity to go to therapy.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Right, yeah, and you know it's kind of horrifying to hear that that happened to you and good for you for not taking that as something you were doing that kept you from opening another door, right, that had more to do with him than it did with you and I will say that if you really were that boring, right, if you really were that difficult of a patient to be sitting with, or client whichever he referred you as, then it was his job to bring that to the foreground and say you know, bill, I'm finding you talking about the same things over and over and it's been 12 weeks and I'm kind of feeling bored. What's going on here?
Bill Simpson:Yeah, and if I had heard that, I would have been open to more. Like, yeah, okay, how did I do that? Like, tell me more. Like I don't want to do that to you.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:And that could have been that value right, that therapeutic value. He missed that opportunity.
Bill Simpson:Yeah.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:If it was co-created right In this relationship. And I'm not saying that you were boring.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:But what he did could have been extremely damaging and not therapeutic whatsoever for you, right? So that's the art. That is the therapist too. Which is what I love about Gestalt is we are taught lean into that If you're bored, if you find yourself drifting off with the same person. That's coming up in the context of this relationship and that's the therapy that you need to put on the table for them to look at. And how do you do that? Right, you have to find that way so they can hear it right and be open to it. But I might find a way to bring that into session saying you know, I find myself often noticing that I get pretty distracted when I'm sitting with you, and this has happened repeatedly for me, and I'm wondering if we can look at what's coming up here together, because I normally don't do that.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:So, I'm wondering about that, and that's not easy to do as a therapist. It's scary, it's hard.
Bill Simpson:Sure, and as a coach as well. And, yeah, you meet them where they are and yet to make the change, as we said earlier, that you've got to give them something. You've got to give them some feedback, because that's how I learned was getting feedback. If I hadn't gotten it, I would have kept doing the same things and thank God I got it. And I wanted to say, you know, going back to Gestalt, you know what I'm hearing you say, and I think it's important for men to hear and anyone listening to hear, is that there's this safety that you are providing in that environment of allowing that person, your client, to be their authentic self, to create that safe space and to be able to say, maybe they can say I'm bored. You know that they're bored, you know, and be safe to give you feedback and how the session's going for them as well, yeah, so that you can make the process work.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Mm-hmm, yeah, and I invite whatever feedback. It is right, because maybe it is me right, maybe it is me, maybe it's my style, maybe it's something that I'm missing and is it something I can adjust to, because part of being in a relationship that's healthy and, as human beings, health is change right Organismically, the way organisms survive is we adapt right. The environment changes, we adapt, the situations around us change, we adapt, prices go up, we adapt right, and so, organismically and healthily, in the context of a relationship, we need to change and adapt, and so maybe that's part of something that I need to hear and look at and being willing to adapt to that particular relationship, because they're all different. No two people are alike, so I can't show up exactly alike and expect it to work.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, everyone's different and the dynamics are different.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yeah, yeah.
Bill Simpson:Going back to what you said about the art of it, it's being able to be aware and when to pivot, when to confront, and all those things. Yeah, yeah. Well, melissa, I really appreciate you sharing your story and your practice with us. Is there anything you want to say before we wrap things up?
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:My final brilliant thoughts.
Bill Simpson:Yes.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I think I would just reiterate that if you're male and you're on a path to love and you're not seeming to find it, it is not a weakness to get help from a coach or a therapist. Thank you, you know, reach out, you might be surprised.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, absolutely. Well, Melissa, if someone wanted to get in touch with you about your practice, how would they get in touch with you?
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:Yeah, you can find my website melissabennethines, all one word dot com, and you can contact me through that medium.
Bill Simpson:Okay, and I will have that contact link in the show notes so folks can access that fairly easily. Melissa, once again, thank you so much for taking the time to share what you do with us, sharing your story, sharing your soul, and hopefully we can chat again sometime.
Melissa Bennett-Heinz:I would love to Thank you so much for having me. I could talk about this stuff all day, so it's really a pleasure. I hear you yeah, thanks.
Bill Simpson:And that brings this bonus episode of the Men on the Path to Love podcast to an end. Thank you so much for listening and thanks once again going out to Melissa Bennett Hei. You can find Melissa's contact information in the show notes. Now coming up on the next episode of the Men on the Path to Love podcast, I address an age-old issue Does size really matter? Well, I get to the bottom of it and see what the research says about it. You just might be surprised with this episode. It may not be what you think, or maybe it is. Please join me for the Does Size Matter in Relationship episode. and
Bill Simpson:And remember, if you would like to contact me for any reason, you can do so now. With the new feature that's on the podcast page. By clicking the fan mail link, you can text me directly. The podcast page by clicking the fan mail link, you can text me directly. Now, as I mentioned last week, it's not set up to where I can respond to your text directly, but I will acknowledge any fan mail on or close to the following episode. Okay, and if you are all about spreading more love on this amazing planet, then I humbly ask you to please share the link to this podcast and share the love. And until next time, keep your heart open and stay on the path to love.