What is Gestalt Counselling?

Some styles of Counselling involve the client talking a lot and the counsellor saying very little. Gestalt therapy is not really like this.

In Gestalt the dialogue between the client and the therapist is seen as a potent and lively factor in the therapy, and one of the ways in which discovery and growth happens.

Gestalt therapy was founded by Fritz Perls, a german psychiatrist. Fritz was influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis, but also by Zen and eastern philosophy. He was interested in how people’s adaptations to their early experiences influence their personality and also how those very same adaptations can cause limitations in adult life. This he called our unfinished business. Often the problems we experience in the present are the products of our unfinished business coming back to haunt us, and in ways that we’re not aware of. Gestalt therapy is about helping you discover more about your unfinished business so it has less of a hold on you. In Gestalt there is a high value placed on awareness, and making the unconscious conscious and of making the kinds of discoveries about yourself that increase your capacity to live your life now.

People often find that one of the things that comes from Gestalt work is a greater ability to be aware of their feelings and their experience without being overwhelmed by it, which in turn allows for a greater sense of freedom.

Gestalt is really about helping people get out of their own way so they can live fuller, richer lives and bring their own creative talent to solving their own problems. It has been said that Gestalt is about helping people wake up into the aliveness of the present.