The AutSide Podcast

A reflection on a week where my gestalt field collapsed—and slowly returned. On losing access to meaning, memory, voice, and emotional resonance; writing myself back into coherence; and why gestalt processing shapes how I love, teach, and survive.
Writing Myself Back Into Coherence
This week’s conversation with Cathy became a kind of public processing—an attempt to name an experience I’d never encountered before, and for which no clinical language seemed adequate. What I went through wasn’t shutdown, meltdown, panic, or depression. It felt more like a catastrophic interruption in the gestalt field itself: colour draining from meaning, emotional resonance collapsing, memory flattening into inert objects. Even the plushies and keepsakes that hold entire worlds of story and attachment for me briefly became just… things.
I spoke about how, as a gestalt processor, meaning arrives whole—language, emotion, memory, attunement, love, identity—before it ever fragments into parts. When that relational field dropped out, it wasn’t simply distressing; it was existentially terrifying. There was no script, no research, no diagnostic label to cling to—so I began writing my own scaffolding in real time, retroactively discovering that earlier pieces I’d written had been quietly preparing the ground.
We explored how this lens reshapes education, therapy, and care: why I prioritise relational safety over compliance, why I don’t force children to perform when they can’t, and why my classroom is built around attunement rather than metrics. For me, gestalt processing isn’t just about language—it’s about how we love, teach, remember, attach, detach, and survive.
This episode captures a week of fear, insight, vulnerability, and slow return—a reminder that coherence sometimes isn’t restored by systems or experts, but by writing, relationship, and the quiet work of meaning-making.
Here are the links to the articles we mentioned:
* When the Field Went Quiet: On Meaning-Time, Relational Voice, and a 36-Hour Fracture in Consciousness.
* Gestalt Failure: When the Field Collapses.
* Afterglow: A Five-Dimensional Experiential Geometry.
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode explores the concept of Gestalt love, a philosophy that rejects the traditional idea of hierarchical affection centred solely on human partners. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that loving objects, animals, and locations should not be viewed as a substitute for human connection or a sign of personal deficiency. Instead, this perspective embraces distributed intimacy, where deep emotional bonds are spread across a wide field of experiences without competition. By challenging the notion of emotional scarcity, Dr. Hoerricks suggests that one’s capacity for affection is abundant and non-exclusive. Ultimately, she reframes unconventional attachments as a resilient and valid form of love rather than a compensatory mechanism.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/distributed-intimacy-why-gestalt
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode challenges the common misconception that gestalt language processing is merely a developmental phase for children to overcome. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that this cognitive style is a lifelong orientation that does not vanish with maturity but instead continually adapts as an individual grows. Rather than being a temporary delay, it represents a persistent way of making meaning that evolves during major life transitions such as adolescence, menopause, and the aging process. By centring the adult experience, Dr. Hoerricks rejects traditional milestones that frame non-analytic thinkers as unfinished or stalled. Ultimately, she advocates for a shift in perspective that views this processing style as a dynamic, permanent identity rather than a childhood obstacle.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/after-the-stages-end-gestalt-processing
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode explores soft capture, a deceptive phenomenon where institutional power adopts the terminology of empathy and attunement to maintain its dominance. Rather than authentically changing, these systems utilise mimicry to transform concepts like care and safety into empty performances of compliance. This shift creates a false sense of recognition for marginalised individuals, masking a strategic move to co-opt gestalt processing without actually shifting authority. By borrowing the language of relational sense-making, systems effectively mask their coercive nature under a veneer of understanding. Ultimately, the author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, warns that this linguistic evolution serves as a strategy for control rather than a genuine move toward human connection.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/soft-capture-when-power-learns-the
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode explores a profound psychological state termed gestalt failure, which occurs when a person's relational environment loses its coherence. Unlike traditional burnout, this experience is rooted in how gestalt-oriented minds perceive meaning through wholistic patterns rather than individual parts. When an environment demands compliance over genuine connection, the resulting field collapse forces an individual to withdraw as a means of survival. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that this phenomenon is often misidentified as trauma or exhaustion because society lacks the specific language to describe it. Ultimately, Dr. Hoerricks highlights that for these individuals, a stable and authentic context is a functional necessity rather than a preference.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/gestalt-failure-when-the-field-collapses
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe