Closing Unfinished Business: Remembering Laura Perls on the tenth anniversary of his death

Abstract

One of the main sources of psychological discomfort in people is caused by "unfinished business," which appear when a person feels hurt, angry, or resentful of another person and can't find a way to resolve these feelings. As a result, the experience is incomplete. Withholding the incomplete experience or avoiding closure a person invests a large part of their energy, which makes them low energy available to deal with new situations.

Unfinished affairs are basically the product of past situations or unresolved unresolved untrapsiquical conflicts. Some manifestations of unfinished situations are resentment or anger not expressed to parents, siblings, partners, and other significant people. Moreover, unfinished affairs are a consequence of uninterated love, unresolved guilt, uncons accepted past actions, etc. Non-resolution can involve other people or some aspects of yourself. When people do not act properly to make a closure, when they cannot forget the actions that have occurred in the past, or when they do not accept situations as they are, then they are unable to function in a healthy and energetic way. I remember once seeing in psychotherapy a young woman who had applied to be admitted to a university. When her admission was denied, she entered a deep depression. Psychotherapy found that her emotional reaction was based on the belief that if she failed she did not deserve to be loved. In her childhood, this young woman, the only times she received shows of affection from her father was when she got good school grades and now, by not getting into college, she felt that the same thing that happened to her father would happen to her with other men: no man could love her. That's where his desperation came from. The intensity of his emotion was provoked by unresolved feelings toward his father.