Gestalt

What is gestalt therapy?

Gestalt is a style of therapy that raises our awareness of the subtle choices we’re engaged in making moment-by-moment. It is an experiential process, treating both you and me as whole people in a dynamic encounter that is rich with possibility. Gestalt recognises relationships as the central axis we use for navigating life. When things have gone wrong for us, it tends to be due to disruptions in our relationships with other people or with ourselves. Whether we’re facing anxiety, depression, trauma, overwhelm or a host of other difficulties in our lives, the ways we are used to being treated and the ways we treat ourselves and others is weaving the fabric of our experience.

The relationship we form together will therefore be the basis of the healing work we do. I invite both of us to take time to attend to how we feel while we’re in one another’s company: how open, how nervous, how grounded, how energised, how able to show our full selves as we are. We’ll offer attention to what we reveal and what we choose to hold back at different moments. We’ll get curious about these choices, and about how free we feel to try other ways of being with each other.

Working like this can give us clues to patterns of how you show up in other relationships in your life, and whether this serves you best in getting your needs met in the world. We may use the sandbox of our session to experiment with other ways of being that are less familiar or habitual, but that offer possibilities for getting different results in your life.

This may all sound a little heady. But my way of practising gestalt is very much about getting us our of our heads and into our felt sense of ourselves. For some of us, staying up in our heads keeps us protected from feelings we’re worried about feeling. This can create a kind of stuckness in us, or place limits on how free we feel. I will meet you where you are with this, respecting and relating to the resistance you may feel to moving forwards, even as some part of you does hope to progress. Therapy with me includes both empathy and challenge, as we gently extend your range of what feels safe to explore.

While some styles of therapy position the therapist as an all-knowing authority figure, in gestalt we are equal participants in an interaction. I like to ‘show my working’ in session, speaking aloud what makes me suggest a certain way of working or ask you a certain question at that moment. I aim always to empower you to collaborate with me in making decisions about the work and the direction the therapy is taking.

Gestalt therapy can work really well for: