What the heck is Gestalt Therapy? 

And how do you even pronounce it? When I first encountered Gestalt as a modality for therapy I thought wow this is so structured and formal.

It is interesting when we do not understand a word or anything. Sometimes in this life we believe it is so foreign; so strange and so we can tend to build higher and heavy duty walls between “the thing” and us. 

That is how my relationship began with Gestalt therapy. 

And as I played around with the tools and terms I realized that Gestalt is the most relational, spiritually pulling and impactful modality I have come across. The term embodiment comes to mind. 

Gestalt therapy is a true embodiment of a therapist where they are presenting self in a therapy session is as congruent as the life a therapist leads outside that room or virtual zoom room. 

Gestalt therapy blends mindfulness-based therapy with the relational field that can happen between client and therapist quite beautifully. Gestalt therapy jolts us into the here and now and exposes heart to heart, that therapeutic relationship that is oh so important as we bravely take on the journey of our healing as a client. 

Gestalt therapy works with awareness and can also quite smoothly connect to somatic or body work if a client is ready and willing to go there. Gestalt therapy requires a therapist to be open to being changed by a client and vice versa. Gestalt therapy is interested in how to make contact and very interested in the resistance to contact.

In other words Gestalt therapy’s foundation is the waves between therapist and client and the charge between the two. 

In this western society we live it can feel a little overwhelming to be treated like a human first even when it comes to mental health care and simply put that is Gestalt in a nutshell. 

And don’t worry if you cannot pronounce it, it doesn’t even matter. ☺