Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt therapy is all about intense emotional expression and about experiencing in the now. Clients are taught to go with their present feelings and really lose themselves in what they are feeling right at that point. Through Gestalt Therapy the client discovers how certain emotions and thoughts can affect what they do and how these emotions can be controlling or even destroying their ability to enjoy life.

Gestalt Therapy challenges the client to gain awareness of moment to moment experiencing through such things as dream work, role playing, confrontation and reliving past emotional or traumatic issues. Emphasis is placed on the now and clients are taught to understand their discrepancies that take place in their mind and ultimately affect who they are.

This therapy challenges the client to accept responsibility for internal support as opposed to depending on external support. Basically, the client learns that they have the ability to help themselves rather than having to rely on other people or other things. All they really need is the know how and the motivation. Therefore, the client only truly grows in therapy emotionally when they move from environmental support to self-support.

Clients learn to deal with unfinished business, avoidance issues, personal responsibility and awareness of the now. This therapy is all about experiencing and places its importance on feelings and what the affects of unfinished business have on one’s personality development. They do so by experiencing past traumatic situations as though they were occurring in the present.

Essentially the person strives for wholeness and integration of what they are feeling and behaving in order to eliminate these inconsistencies in their behaviour and their thought patterns. The client is viewed in having the capacity to recognize how earlier influences are related to present difficulties.

The Client makes their own interpretations and assumptions based on what they are experiencing in therapy and as a result are expected to identify and work on unfinished business from the past that interferes with current way of working and functioning. The client learns to interpret his/her situation more objectively and honestly.