Gestalt Therapy

What is Gestalt Therapy?

Gestalt therapy is a humanistic approach developed in the 1940s and 50s, largely through the work of Fritz and Laura Perls. The word "gestalt" comes from German and refers to the idea of the whole — understanding your experiences, feelings and patterns in the full context of your life rather than in isolated fragments.

Unlike approaches that focus primarily on past events or future goals, Gestalt therapy places particular emphasis on the present moment — what is alive and happening for you right now. The belief is that by increasing awareness of what we are experiencing in the here and now, we become more able to respond to life with greater choice and flexibility, rather than reacting on automatic.

Gestalt therapy pays particular attention to:

Present-moment experience — what you are noticing in your body, your emotions, and your thoughts right now.
Contact and boundaries — how you make connection with others and where you might pull back, shut down or hold yourself apart.
Unfinished business — unresolved experiences from the past that continue to draw your energy in the present.
Self-interruption — the often unconscious ways we stop ourselves from feeling, expressing or getting our needs met.

How I use this in my practice

Gestalt therapy brings a quality of aliveness and curiosity into the work. Rather than only talking about your experiences in the abstract, we might pay attention to what is happening between us in the room — noticing shifts in feeling, body sensations or the way something lands as you say it aloud. This kind of present-moment attention can reveal things that talk alone sometimes misses.

In practice, a Gestalt-influenced approach might involve:

Slowing down to notice what is happening for you as you speak — not just what you are saying, but how you are experiencing it
Exploring what you do when difficult feelings arise — do you minimise, explain away, change the subject?
Working with the body as a source of information about your inner experience
Bringing awareness to patterns in how you relate — including in the therapeutic relationship itself
Creating space for feelings or experiences that have not yet had room to be fully acknowledged

Gestalt therapy respects that you are the expert on your own experience. My role is not to interpret or analyse you from a distance but to be genuinely present with you — curious, engaged and willing to notice what is happening between us as part of the work.

What is Gestalt Therapy?

How I use this in my practice

Curious about this way of working?