About Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy is an experiential, humanist, and person-centred psychotherapy. It supports focusing on the present and becoming aware of what is really happening ‘here and now’, rather than looking at our perceptions. It invites to live the experience.
The word ‘Gestalt’ can be described as ‘the Whole’. Gestalt therapy was developed in the 1940s by Fritz and Laura Perls, based on the principle that human beings are best comprehended as a whole entity consisting of body, mind, and soul.
Gestalt therapy explores unresolved blocking emotions and feelings such as anxiety, pain, and anger, supporting their expression in the here and now and raising awareness about oneself, enabling envisioning changes and making choices.
Some essential dimensions of Gestalt therapy
Acknowledging pain can help
Because we crave - very naturally - to leave our pain behind, to overcome or simply survive painful experiences, we also try hard to shut down our emotions, the hurt, and the experiences. Gestalt therapy is a space where that path does not need to be so hard.
Healing being aware
Gestalt therapy is intrinsically connected to the notion of awareness. Awareness of what pushes, what calls, what is present, and even what is to come.
As said earlier, standing still can support awareness. Not in the sense of simply receiving, but of wholeheartedly listening to what ‘pushes’, emerges and welcoming it. As Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet, wrote: 'there is a voice that does not use words. Listen’.
A phenomenological approach
As much as we try, no one can be totally objective. What we perceive and understand is constantly influenced and impacted by our environment, the situation, and our experiences. We rely on the traces of our previous stories, they colour our beliefs, which in turn impact our way to relate. Yet, trying to remain as close as possible to what is really happening, what is really felt, and holding judgment and interpretations is extremely important in Gestalt therapy.
In the end, you shape and walk that path yourself.
It can seem very hard to accept our experiences. It is, in some cases, easier to blame the rest of the world. This disempowers. It takes away the capacity to act, own the process, face the patterns, and generate change. A Gestalt therapy is a co-constructed path. Yet, in the end, it will be yours.