GSA is a phenomenon of familial bonding that has been delayed until adulthood.

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Change Your Focus

By Julie DeNeen

I am a piano teacher. Twice a week, every week- I sit in my big comfy blue chair and help little fingers master the likes of Twinkle Twinkle, Fur Elise, and Row Your Boat. I'll admit, it can be extremely frustrating. Kids get stuck on a measure of a song and we must review it over and over again.

It's a strange phenomenon that I have noticed with beginner piano players. When they sit down to play, each note is looked at in it's separateness. Oftentimes tricky rhythms, unknown notes, and strange rests confound the best of my students. Their brains and fingers refuse to work together to make music.

It is then that I ask them to remove their hands from the keys, and look at the whole song. Stop staring at that tricky note, bring your eyes back and scan all the notes, measures, and beats. Once they have done that, patterns emerge.

When I point them out, they quickly see that measure one is the same as measure four, line two is a transposed version of line one, the fingering at the end matches the fingering at the beginning. We start to make out these patterns, circling the similarities and lining up the cycles. All of a sudden, a piece with 64 bars and an overwhelming amount of notes, becomes a song with three distinct patterns. Learn each one and the song plays itself.

When the child sits down to play the song again after our "vision change" exercise, they are amazed at the simplicity of the piece. Why was that so hard to figure out? Why didn't I see it?

Sometimes it's all about your focus.

GSA causes us to focus in on one relationship. We see it in extraordinary detail, often stumbling over the unprecedented emotions, feelings, and even inappropriate actions. We reason that because this is "GSA" it is not going to bear any similarity to other situations, other relationships and relational habits. We fail to take a step back, observe the patterns of our behavior against past relationships, the other person's habits and tendencies, and the tried and true building blocks that make relationships work. We see the "note" not the music. Our peripheral vision starts to narrow until we've put every hope and dream onto this one person. We lose sight of all the other "notes" in our life.

Eventually, that note will trip us up. As imperfect humans, our weaknesses come forward in due time. Then we are stuck. It's usually only when there is a painful explosion in the relationship that we are forced to take a step back. Why not look at the music first? See how that note fits in with all the others?

Think about it.