Therapy
What is Gestalt therapy?
When I first started therapy, I didn’t know my therapist practised Gestalt. I hadn’t even heard of it. What I did know was that, over time, I felt less alone and more alive. My circumstances hadn’t necessarily changed, but the way I experienced them, and myself within them, began to shift.
That experience sparked my curiosity and eventually led me to become a Gestalt psychotherapist myself.
Seeing you within your world
Gestalt therapy pays attention to more than your thoughts or feelings alone. It explores what you experience emotionally as well as physically. How you relate to others, and how the immediate world you live in also shapes your experience.
What you are experiencing is connected to your circumstances, your relationships, your history and the support available to you. Together, we make room for this wider picture.
Awareness
Awareness is central to Gestalt therapy. This means noticing what you feel, sense, think and do, and what happens as you connect with others and the world around you.
Sometimes we move through life coping and reacting without recognising what we need. In therapy, we slow down enough to notice. You might find yourself smiling while describing something painful, or saying yes while feeling an inward pull towards no.
Through dialogue, we get curious about these moments together. As familiar patterns become clearer, you may begin to understand how they developed, what they have helped you manage and whether they still serve you.
We also explore the past, paying attention to how it continues to live in your present experience.
Connection matters
The therapeutic relationship is an important part of Gestalt work. Understanding can emerge through a conversation in which you feel heard, through noticing what happens between us, and through finding room to express something you usually hold back.
I bring my presence and curiosity; you bring your experience. Together, we explore what becomes possible through this meeting and connection.
Making room for change
One Gestalt principle that stays with me is that change can begin when we fully accept who and where we are.
There can be something freeing about understanding and accepting ourselves before demanding that we be different. As we become more aware of our experience and make room for it, new possibilities can emerge. Change begins with meeting ourselves as we are.