When Things Fall Apart…Why I will Always Choose a Gestalt Psychotherapist

Gestalt psychotherapy is my go-to for when my life feels like it’s falling apart.  When I’m in the thick of things and my lid is flipped, I need support.  

And let’s face it, learning about how we are not as ‘together’ as we first thought…or that we keep coming toe-to-toe with similar life experiences, is tough and we need people in our circle who are going to sit with us, keep us company, be real, and offer us support to uncover what’s actually going on.  

That’s why I will always choose a Gestalt psychotherapist – maybe I’m biased…but I have good reason to be and I’ve outlined them below. 

You are the expert of your life. As the therapist, my role is to guide you back to yourself. 

This is so refreshing.  During our daily lives, we are asked to give away our power so much of the time to experts; to the doctor, teacher, boss, accountant…the list goes on.  Somehow, we manage to lose our faith in knowing that we already have all of the answers.  And… I’m not talking about any kind of woowoo stuff (although I’m not adverse to that either!), I’m talking about really knowing within, what we need in our lives to unlock the type of life we aspire to live.  We just need to relearn to listen to our bodies, grow our awareness of our unique situation and befriend our nervous system – this is totally over-simplifying this beautiful journey but my point is, we are the expert of our lives and I want someone like that on my side when my life is falling apart.  And this is the type of relationship a Gestalt psychotherapist will offer – one where they respect you are the expert of your life. 

It is process driven. We focus on how you do life, not the content.  In other words, we don’t just talk about it, we look at the how and why. 

As a Gestalt psychotherapist and counsellor, I’m listening to the content of what you’re telling me and I’m also listening to other ways this may be showing up in your life.  We are so amazing, that if a life experience didn’t complete fully (for example, it was interrupted through trauma or our experience was minimised), we keep repeating it until we can bring awareness to it and make different choices…if that’s what we want at that time.  So having a therapist who keeps their focus on what our actual process in life is, rather than just the content, is life changing  This is pretty simple and powerful! Lots of ‘ah-ha’ moments with this one.  

It is based in the here-and-now. Gestalt was ahead of its time in so many things including this one, in that it brings us back to the present moment. 

Of course, everything is relevant.  Eve…ry…thing! And we look at how these experiences are impacting on our life NOW.  As a client, I don’t want to just talk about something that happened in my past; I want to understand how it is impacting on my life now so that I can make the changes to have a different experience now.  We can’t change the past after all but we can make sense of it, and how it is affecting how we do life now.  

To change, all you need to do is become more of who you are now.  

This is beautiful because too often we want to remove parts of ourselves and/or change who we are.  It’s easy for most us to not like or disown parts of ourselves, especially when we may have hurt someone we love or fallen down an emotional hole that we thought we had filled up! But, Gestalt psychotherapy recognizes that in our brilliance to protect ourselves from the sometimes overwhelming experiences throughout our lives, we have made creative adjustments.  And with support, we are able to start to integrate these parts of ourselves so we become more whole and closer to our authentic selves.  It is through this increasing awareness, that we are able to make sense of the pattern or behaviour and understand that this was an adaption to a situation that was pretty rubbish at the time, and we just got a little stuck.  It is from here, that we can make different choices and essentially make transformational change. 

If you are having a hard time, feel free to check out my website for more information or reach out to have a chat.  I’m available in person in the Cairns, Kuranda and Tablelands region for therapy or remotely via Zoom.