Lets Talk About Gestalt Therapy..
Our senses, especially sight and hearing, gather vital information about the world around us. But to make that information useful our minds need to make sense of it. This mental process of organizing and receiving information from our senses is known as The Perception Process!
There is a huge amount of information in what we see and hear. Our minds examine this incoming information and try to make sense of it and figure out what is important by looking for patterns. For example, when we see a square, our minds don’t just see a collection of four lines but recognize that particular arrangement of lines as a square.
Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer, were the first to notice how our minds try to see if things have a recognizable form, or “essence”—what they called, in German, a Gestalt.
Gestalt therapy is a holistic, evidence-based approach to mental health that can be effective because it helps people connect with themselves and their deeper experiences. The therapy focuses on the present moment and how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are connected. It views the individual as a whole, including their mind, body, emotions, and spirit.
Unlike other forms of therapy, gestalt therapy focuses on identifying a client’s current life challenges rather than addressing their past.
Gestalt therapy emphasizes the importance of understanding a person’s life in context rather than solely the issue at hand. It focuses on establishing self-awareness, which eventually enables a client to overcome their present life challenges.
The main advantage of Gestalt therapy is its ability to help individuals understand concepts better. By understanding concepts, you will gain insight into your surroundings and therefore become aware of things around you. You will notice patterns and relationships that exist among objects and events.
Unresolved trauma, distress, and anxiety contribute to prolonged and negative emotional, mental, and physical effects. Gestalt therapy can help to remove any physical, mental, and emotional blocks from the past while staying focused on the present moment.
It helps clients hold themselves accountable for the things they can control while simultaneously encouraging clients to let go of past experiences that seem to control their behavior today.
Clients who experience this form of therapy tend to struggle with current behaviors as they were shaped from previous traumatic experiences. Therapy sessions aim to help clients remove unwanted thoughts and pre-programmed responses that had become a habit at the cause of their past trauma.
Gestalt therapy works because it emphasizes mindfulness. When a client becomes grounded in their present moment, they can start to understand their patterns of behaviours or as I often say their way of being.
Lets Get Creative
The great thing about using the Gestalt approach is it can actually make counselling fun and something to be enjoyed rather than endured! I use mood cards, whiteboards, worksheets sand trays, and other forms of creative media.
This type of therapy works very well with creative, artistic, and the neurodiverse community as well as all the ‘out-the-box thinkers’ out there!
It can unlock the unconscious mind in a safe contained way which allows the client to process the work in their own time and space.
Awareness = Choice = Change
NTB Aug 24
