The Therapeutic Process

People  often come into therapy when they are dissatisfied with how they have  been feeling over a prolonged period of time (for various different  reasons), or when their ways of responding to others are no longer  effective and they find that they are frequently getting responses from  others that they cannot understand and that have a negative impact on  them. Attempts to resolve the dilemma they find themselves in, often  lead to the same unwanted outcome. This is because ways of perceiving  and configuring the current personal situation can sometimes become fixed, and thus, the  associated ways of responding, which may once have been effective in  earlier situations, becomes automatic and ineffective in the current and changed  circumstances. These outdated patterns of relating no longer lead to  satisfaction and fulfilment, but instead, keep the person stuck. This  can lead to feelings of powerlessness, dissatisfaction, anxiety, stress,  low self-worth and sometimes, to an intensity of emotional arousal that  can feel intolerable.

The challenge and excitement of Gestalt psychotherapy is to move beyond these habitual patterns and develop ways of relating and functioning that more accurately reflect the way in which you want to live your life.

After the initial consultation,  in which the presenting areas of difficulty will have been jointly  identified, explorations of the process by which these difficulties  occur can take place. I pay particular attention to patterns of relating  and what is evoked in the therapeutic encounter as the individual’s  story unfolds and bring these patterns to the person’s awareness, in  order that they can be explored. By working with this process, it  provides an opportunity for clients to increase awareness of themselves,  their relationships with others and to develop their range of responses  and choices, thus enabling them to try out new ways of engaging in  their relationships and supporting themselves more effectively when life  presents its challenges.