Anna Gabryjelska-Basiuk about becoming a process worker: “It just happened, I just couldn’t stop it.”

An interview with Anna Gabryjelska-Basiuk by Kazimiera Kazijevaitė 

Anna Gabryjelska-Basiuk is a Processwork teacher, Deep Democracy facilitator, certified psychotherapist, psychotherapy supervisor, member of the Deep Democracy Alliance and of the International Association of Process Oriented Psychology, one of co-creators of Processwork Institute Lithuania.

How did you become a process worker? Is there some story behind it, maybe a dream or anything else that comes to your mind right now?

I’ll start with something that may be unexpected to some people when they think about the fact that I’m a psychologist. The first university studies I graduated from were in econometrics. So it was not connected at all. It was mathematics, statistics, computer science. After that, I started to work in the Ministry of Finance. I was an advisor to the Minister of Finance, and I worked there for a year. During this time, I didn’t feel well there. My body didn’t feel well. I was tense, I had problems with my spine, and I didn’t feel motivated. Then I went on holiday, and somebody told me: “Oh, you would benefit from process work.”

I forgot about it for some time, and after a year in the Ministry of Finance, I was really fed up with numbers, models, computers, papers, documents. I just couldn’t digest it anymore. So this came back to my mind, and I started to look for it on the Internet. I couldn’t find anything because I only knew the acronym POP — I didn’t know the full name (Process-Oriented Psychology). Finally, I found one workshop, so I went there. It was about the so-called family myth — the dreaming structure of the family of origin — looked at from a processwork perspective. I saw the facilitators working with someone as a demo, and I couldn’t understand what was going on at all. But I thought: “Oh my God, something is really important is going on here, I totaly don’t undersand it, but I need to figure it out.” It was like a stroke of thunder.

During the break of this workshop, I heard on the radio that the Minister of Finance had resigned, which meant that I lost my job. It wasn’t a big deal because I could have stayed with the next minister, but I didn’t want to. I started studying at the Polish Institute of Processwork, although I didn’t plan to become a processworker. I just wanted to understand what I had witnessed and what had happened there.

I studied, studied, studied, and after two years, I took exams and was told: “OK, now you can practice.” I was still working at the university in the department of economics, giving some lectures there. For a while, I was a processworker and practicing processwork with people while at the same time working at the university in the field of economics and econometrics. But I felt that my engagement in economics was fading. I didn’t really have a choice. There was nothing more interesting or more important in life to do than processwork. I resigned from being an economist and continued studying processwork for 11 years toward the Diploma. Along the way, I also graduated from psychology — just to catch up with some mainstream knowledge about the human psyche.

I was working with people and doing really deep work with myself and with them, mainly individual work. After some time, I felt that I couldn’t go only like this (shows a movement with both hands close together); I needed to go like this (shows hands wide open). I was catching something that we call quantum flirts from the world — for example, walking down the street I looked at big office buildings and thought “I am super curious what is going on there”. It was like the wider world wanted to come back into my focus. Being the Minister of Finance’s advisor is very much the world channel, right? After that, I went deeply inside — like being in a monastery — and then the world knocked again on my door. I felt that I wanted to work with organizations, teams and communities. I got engaged by a training company and happened to go to a sample training that you give to organizations before they decide whether to buy the project or not.

I went there but didn’t know at all how to do conventional business training — only processwork. It was a little shocking for the other trainers — unknown, risky — but it turned out to be an advantage. We won that client even though I had no experience with organizations. The client said afterward that there was a “low bullshit factor” in the way I worked.

What do you mean by the bullshit factor?

You know, their experience was that in trainings, people sometimes tell you things that sound nice but often don’t work in real life. Processwork is really direct, really to the point, really close to the experience. So they said there was little bullshit in it. After three months in this training company, I became the leader of that project. It was pretty amazing feedback from the world, and I appreciated my 11 years of processwork training — it gave me a lot of awareness and orientation about what is going on in and between people. At first, I didn’t realize it because I had no comparison. But, for example, sitting in a meeting, I felt like I had three times more time than other people. They were in a loop, talking about something — the information wasn’t landing. They couldn’t get to the point, cycling around a hot spot.

I could see their communication was really bad — they weren’t really seeing each other. It was so clear to me, which I hadn’t noticed before because I was mainly in the processwork bubble where everybody was more aware. I didn’t have a comparison with how it is in organizations — in the “normal” world. Around that time, I also joined the Deep Democracy Institute (DDI) and started studying there. I got a lot of support and courage and saw how you don’t need to bring processwork to organizations — the process is already there, you just need to see it.

Thanks to DDI, I learned to see process in any situation. In psychotherapy, you often need to use tools — and these tools aren’t easy for people who aren’t used to them. So, for example, in business, it’s not easy to apply them. But in the Deep Democracy Institute, I learned not to use tools, but to see the process and accommodate to the style and culture of the organization. So, what I was doing was just talking with people, but by seeing the structure of the process, I could facilitate it in a way that was process-oriented — without looking strange.

It sounds to me like a path of least resistance.

Yes, exactly. I was very lucky. Usually, I don’t have much choice in life. Because if I don’t follow my process — if I don’t follow my energetic feedback — I get really low, I get depressed. I feel no sense in life. So I need to look for something that makes me really alive. When I’m excited, I’m ready to take challenges and do unusual things, and then it leads me somewhere further. I go over my edges. Sometimes I go over the edges for the organization, for example. And then it pays off — people see that what I do brings value, novelty, or aliveness. I cannot do otherwise — otherwise I get bored and low. So I’m lucky to be like this. I noticed that I don’t hesitate when I feel my energetic response — I just know it’s the way to go, and I do it.

Wow, it is like a gift.

Yeah, a gift and a curse. I cannot push myself. But when I get into the energy flow, I have this hyperfocus and can go really far with it. This is how I’ve survived in life, I would say. Now I know it about myself. Before, I didn’t — but like they say about your fate: you either follow your fate (or what we more precisely call your life myth) or it drags you. In the beginning, life myth just dragged me. Then I noticed what was going on, started to trust it, and followed it. But very often it was like going blindly somewhere — for example, that’s how I got to know the Deep Democracy Institute. I went to a conference in Switzerland — I don’t know why. I don’t even remember how I got there. Then I met Max and Ellen Schupbach (internationally acclaimed trainers and facilitators, co-founders of the Deep Democracy Institute). I hadn’t planned it, but I stayed one day longer for their seminar, and they gave me a scholarship for it. They were amazing — when they saw someone interested, they invited them in. They were very generous — financially, it was totally beyond my possibilities. Later, they also gave me a scholarship to a seminar in Kyiv. Then I knew: OK, I’m in — this is it. It wasn’t logical how I found it. Or rather, it found me. And then I went to almost every seminar that happened in Europe — in Moscow, Amsterdam, Kyiv — and to every annual Intensive. It was like my first meeting with processwork — I just couldn’t stop.

So I guess this is the way you appeared in the Processwork Institute Lithuania, isn’t it?

Yes, yes! The same. Of course, it started with Zbyszek’s work in Lithuania and his impulse. There was a need to create an institute, and Zbyszek, Stephany, and I just looked like the perfect trio to do it. When Zbyszek proposed it, it suddenly looked obvious. From the very beginning, it was innovative because we didn’t want to directly follow what we knew from the Processwork Institute in Poland, and we also didn’t want to do it exactly like DDI. We wanted to do it in a way appropriate for the Lithuanian community and the local field, combining our styles. We wanted to bring our experience, but not copy something — rather figure it out along the way. I really like how our styles mix. Of course, we had some creative tensions, but we could always come to a good solution, including everybody’s impulses. We’re still on the way. Now, we’re going for dual studies with DDI International, which is another innovation. It was proposed by DDI Int., and again we were like: “Are we doing it? Sure, let’s do it!” It’s a great adventure. I’m curious where it’s going — I feel it has a life of its own.

Before I started to be a processworker professionally, and after leaving the Ministry of Finance, I also went to midwifery school. I had this idea that I needed something more grounded, more connected with the body. When I saw a baby being born, I thought: “Oh my God, this is real life!”

That school was really great — I loved it. And processwork has a lot to do with midwifery — like being a midwife to the process, helping what is emerging to be born. That’s how I feel about the Lithuanian Institute as well. We are midwifing something that wants to happen. We’re not doing it — we’re helping it to be born. Of course, we bring our competences and give it some direction, but it’s like being in relationship with a process that is alive and creating it together with the students, with the energy that is there. I have a lot of respect for the whole process.

When I listen to you, I think about your background — the job in the Ministry of Finance, the midwifery, then processwork — it all makes sense and is somehow connected.

Yeah, it all makes sense in terms of my life myth. One day I found my early thesis that I wrote while studying economics, and it was about Joseph Schumpeter (For readers unfamiliar with economics: Joseph Schumpeter was an Austrian economist who wrote about how innovation drives development. He described the process of creative destruction — how new ideas and forms of life emerge by transforming or replacing the old ones. His work was about understanding change itself — how creativity, crisis, and renewal are at the heart of progress.) So my interest from the very begining were novelty and transformation, how new things emerge and change the system, how crisis is essential for creative processes. 

When I studied econometrics, I learned there’s an equation to predict the future that contains a part you can describe with data — and then there’s everything you can’t explain with the model, the residual which is a bit mysterious. It contains all the coincidences, unknown forces, randomness, unmesured factors — and there’s a lot of research on how that residual behaves. I felt there was the mystery of life in that part, and that started to interest me more than the part we could explain. 

Another impuls was my master’s thesis in economics which was about monetary and currency crises — again my interest went towards chaotic transition times, transformation, not the status quo. What happens when the crisis comes? What forces are in play? What comes out of it? What kind of attitude do you need to assist it? So yes, it’s all connected — my interest in all those areas was similar in essence.

My shift from econometrics to processwork was a shift from focusing on the determined part of life — the logical, structured, measurable — to exploring the residual part: the signals, the dreams, the unexpected events, the creative and seemingly chaotic side of human experience. In processwork language, we could say that I moved from describing reality with models to following the process — the living, unfolding “error term” that carries hidden meaning.

And what about your connection with Lithuania — what was your relationship with it before the Institute? Has something changed for you?

To be honest, I was pretty ignorant about Lithuania before. I didn’t know the culture. Of course, I knew that we share some history, some important people in literature and poetry, and so on. But my real encounter with Lithuania began with the Institute and with the first workshops there — and I totally fell in love. The energy of the people and the land, the nature, the amazing, alive, deep, relational, and rich atmosphere. I don’t know the language, but hearing its melody is really beautiful. So I realized how ignorant I had been — I didn’t know that such a spirit existed just across the Polish border. Now I’m really amazed, learning, and happy to relate to you. I’m very grateful to have gotten to know the Lithuanian processwork community.

It is touching to hear that. It brings up feelings of pride in my country and my land. And I also wanted to say that I’m so proud that the DDI annual Intensive this year will be in Lithuania. You spoke so warmly about DDI — could you say what it means to you to be part of it?

I would say DDI way is immersion, it’s wild — which I love. Just imagine: you put 120 people or more in one room — from more than 35 countries, from six continents — and then you ask them, “What would you like to work on?” And then you do a group process on a chosen topic. This is wild, right? And it’s amazing. It’s a full-immersion experience of learning facilitation in real time — with the best teachers and with people who also want to learn, but who come from different cultures and often struggle to understand each other. And that struggle creates a deep meeting — on a level beyond culture — while at the same time, people try to understand and learn from each other, and appreciate diversity. It’s just eye-opening.

It was totally eye-opening compared to my previous experience with group processes in more homogenious groups in Poland. Metaphorically speaking, in Poland I thought I knew what tomato soup was. My grandmother’s tomato soup — that was the tomato soup. Then you go to another country and see: there’s another tomato soup, and another, and there’s gazpacho, and so on. And you taste each of them and after a while think, “Ah, now I understand what tomato soup really is — my version was just one version.”

It’s the same with being of a certain gender in different cultures, or with different -isms. I can understand sexism in Poland, but to understand the same phenomenon in, say, Kenya or Thailand — that’s eye-opening. Only then do you start to grasp what it’s truly about. And only then can you really see yourself. When you are in your own culture, you often don’t even know what it’s about. But when you go somewhere else, you see what you bring — your background and conditioning, both good and bad. So you can understand your identity through being thrown into situations that are wild, unknown, and very diverse.

It’s an amazing training. You have seven days — and every day, there’s a group process. Each one more unpredictable than the last. You experience tensions (hot spots) transforming into cool spots — moments when people come together and understand each other on a deeper level. You can learn so much by being in situations that seem impossible to resolve at first, but through awareness and skillful facilitation, transform into touching moments of mutual understanding.

And on top of that, you get to know amazing people. It’s so moving — this network of people who are so close to you. I could go with any one of my DDI Alliance friends into a crisis situation, and I’d trust that we could handle it together. We’ve gone through so much together — it’s really something. Such a value.

The Deep Democracy Institute and Alliance is a huge resource for us, but also for the world. It has created a network of people from so many countries and cultures who are willing to meet, to understand, to struggle, and to relate to each other. It’s really amazing. It’s a big gift — one of the biggest gifts of my life, besides my family.

Oh yes, I can relate to that. For me, going to the DDI Intensive was like: “Now I really believe that life is worth living!” or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly — that humanity is still there.
I’m really grateful to Max and Ellen (founders of DDI and facilitation teachers), and to the early faculty and later the Alliance, and to everybody who carried it on — who had this idea and this vision to make it happen, and who kept transforming it along the way to meet new circumstances. And we’re all learning, learning, learning together all the time.