In life, we often develop habits for how we see the world around us. It’s a necessary life skill to be able to figure out and understand what’s going on in any given situation— so it’s important to be able to “connect the dots.” But sometimes we get so used to seeing things one way, that we miss out on other possibilities.

This is where working with a therapist can be useful. Sometimes, through the process of therapy, we can start to see that there are new ways to connect the dots. It’s not always that any particular way is the “right” way. Sometimes it’s just as useful to understand that life has more options and flexibility than we often allow ourselves to see.

One of the things I particularly appreciate about working as a psychotherapist from a Gestalt perspective is that we really focus on the process of how we make meaning. I find people I work worth learn the skill of how to find a more flexible perspective that they take away from therapy and can use on their own.

I really find the following video an interesting way to think about psychotherapy. When you watch this video, what do you see?

Imagine this video as a therapy session. What we are doing is exploring different ways of connecting the dots and how the process of connecting makes the same dots mean different thing. How many different shapes did you see in the video before the lines were added? My job as a therapist is to help you figure out how you put your dots together to make the shapes of your life.

     ...Gestalt Therapy?

Gestalt Therapy stands out from classic talk-oriented therapies by focusing on the process of the experience between client and therapist in the present moment. What’s useful about that? Experience-oriented therapy offers up an immediacy and clarity that sometimes can be missing from purely talking about something. Imagine you wanted to learn to bake a cake. Which might be more helpful, for us to talk about all the steps involved, or to try to find a way, together, to experiment with making one? Experience-oriented therapy aims for the latter.

The German word “Gestalt” translates to English as “shape.” By focusing on the process of how we shape our experiences into meaning, we start to become aware of how we restrict ourselves, our bodies, our possibilities in any given moment. With awareness often comes  new capacity to be present, flexible, spontaneous, alive. Many times what we call symptoms of depression, anxiety, compulsivity, or impulsivity are the disruptions we experience when we lose our vital contact with the present situation and try to make the present fit into old, rigid shapes. Becoming aware of how we shape ourselves becomes the key to finding new shapes that more healthily fit each new experience as it comes along.

 ...Somatic Therapy?

Working somatically in therapy means including the experience of both mind and body. In our present society we have a tendency to focus on thoughts and words over sensations, feelings, and body awareness. If anything, we often have learned to do everything we can to manage away our body experiences. By including somatic experience in the therapeutic process we often bring back to awareness a treasure trove of information that is available to us as we navigate the complexities of life. In each of us lies a deep body of wisdom. Learning to include and integrate our bodies into our experience often leads to a life of greater clarity and capacity to tolerate what life throws our way.

So what does an “experiential” session look like?

Most sessions begin with an initial exploration of what’s happening for you in the moment:

• Is there a particular issue drawing your attention?

• What state are you in mentally, physically, emotionally?

• How are you wanting to shape this experience; do you want to dive in to something or avoid it?

• Does this shaping you’re doing trigger depression, anxiety, anger, frustration, etc.?

As we start to notice this process together, we devise “experiments” to clarify our experience in the moment. By doing this, we often uncover your assumptions about how the world works that might be based more on habit and history than what’s actually possible in the present moment. Over time, this can lead you to develop both a greater sense of flexibility and possibility in life and a new skill set for interacting in a more available and discerning way with the world.