Thank you for popping by. It is lovely to have you here after a bit of a needed pause for me. 

For those of you who may be new to the space, I’m Marta, a Gestalt psychotherapist based in London, UK with a motivation to give Gestalt its place in the world of therapy, while offering reflections on different topics with the aim of demystifying them.

On this note, my reflections are mine and anyone is welcome to ask questions or disagree with them. I welcome dialogue and curiosity and my reflections are informed by my practice and my client work. Hence, I will not be referring to articles or research, unless it has a relevant place in the post. 

My wish for this place is to be a place for community and sharing of reflections, to ask questions and to make therapy more accessible to all in one way or another. I also promised myself that I will not become a “slave” of the space by feeling the need to post every week or push myself to find inspiration from somewhere even when I may not be in the right place myself. 

In October last year I started a new training in Systemic Therapy and Family Constellations, which has stirred the muddy water of my inner pond and it is one of the reasons why I needed to take some time to let the mud settle before coming back here. If you are interested in knowing more about this form of therapy, mainly used to work through transgenerational patterns and trauma, please email me on marta@kintsugipsychotherapypractice.com and I will write a post about it and share some of my experiences. 

This training, and what it has put me in touch with so far,  is also one of the reasons that I felt the theme of this post was relevant to start the year, when there are many toxic messages about “New year, new you”, unrealistic resolutions that last about a month and the subsequent guilt and shame that follows. 

Traditionally, in my experience, January can be a slow month for new clients to arrive at therapy. Last weekend I was talking to a friend of mine, who is also a therapist, and I was reflecting on the societal message of therapy, who goes to it and when is the best time to go. 

• Therapy is for the mentally unwell ~ Pray, tell me your definition of mental wellness…
• Therapy is for the self-centred and self- indulgent ~ How so?
• Therapy is for the weak ~ Please, tell me more about your upbringing.
• I feel fine, I do not need therapy ~ let’s unpick that more later…

Thinking of my own personal history with therapy, it started from a place of curiosity and feeling that I wanted to make sense of some patterns that kept repeating in my life. What sparked my curiosity was my apparent insistence in repeating actions that made me so unhappy. Why was I so adamant in trying to make the horse drink water when it clearly was not interested!!  

From years of personal experience, I’ve come to see therapy as a tool for personal growth. In the same way that going to the gym keeps your body fit and prevents illness and injury and boosts your health, physical and mental, may I add. A balanced diet keeps you healthy but not many seem to think of how presently more people than ever suffer in some way or another with their mental health. Yet, many decide to wait until they have reached a crisis to seek support. Is this the best time? Probably not…

Why not? I hear you ask… Let me explain….

 

What Gestalt Therapy can support you with

As mentioned earlier, societal messaging about therapy may be running in the background for some people as one of the reasons not to seek it. For others, it may be a notion of an elevated sense of self that feels fine just as it is. What’s that saying again? If it ain’t broke…

Now, about that.

Sometimes we can go through life with a part, or parts, of us that feel broken or don’t feel quite right, without fully knowing it. You know, like when you don’t know what you don’t know?

It then becomes very easy to miss the very thing we don’t know and to normalise feelings such as dullness, underlying anxiety, lack of sleep, and so on, and think:
“Oh, you know, that’s just how I am… it’s been like that for so long.”

Well, it may have been like that for a long time, and that does not mean it cannot change.

This is where therapy comes in.

One of the goals of Gestalt therapy is to support the client to increase their awareness. As awareness grows, something beautiful can happen. It’s like entering a room in total darkness and slowly finding a dimmer switch, turning it on little by little.

What could not be seen before begins to appear, before your eyes and those of your therapist. You are no longer fumbling in the dark or bumping into things.

When the match between therapist and client is right, the possibilities are endless as they embark together on this exploration.

Another gain of therapy is learning to make time for yourself, time that is just for you, to talk about you, and only you.

Indulgent?
Terrifying?

For many of us, it is certainly not the most familiar thing. Making time and space for ourselves can feel like a luxury that needs to be dug out between commitments, work, and life admin.

As we begin to make time for ourselves and appreciate what this can bring, curiosity may be sparked about how we see the world, ourselves within it, and ourselves in relation to others.

Therapy may invite us to question our boundaries and where we are acting from.
Is it from fear?
From people-pleasing?
Or from a place of groundedness and awareness?

Acting from such a place can connect us to our self-energy and bring us closer to what it means for us to be ourselves in a state of flow, where, by attending to our own needs and wants, we are better able to be present for others in our relationships.

These are some of the things that can happen when we arrive at therapy as a choice rather than solely as a necessity.

In my experience, choice is often what feels absent when a person seeks therapy in crisis.

In those moments, people need first aid and regulation, and this is very different from therapy. When someone is suffering from heightened anxiety, suicidal ideation, or other deeper mental health struggles, the first need is grounding and a sense of safety.

When a client arrives in this place, their capacity to function is impaired, they are in survival mode. And in survival mode, the primary task is simply to survive. There is little space for exploration or reflection, only for stabilisation and regulation, so that other possibilities can eventually come into view with the right support.

As therapy begins to do its job, two things commonly happen.

Some people start to feel “better” once the stabilisation phase has integrated. They may then consider themselves “fixed” and leave, without much opportunity to explore what might unfold if they stayed for the next phase, the one where we return to the dark room and search for the dimmer switch.

Others, after the initial excitement of early progress wears off, may question the lack of linearity and speed and decide that “therapy is not working, so what’s the point?”

To those clients, I would say that therapy is neither a quick fix nor a linear process.

Life itself is not linear, where the only possibility is steady upward progress. Life throws things at us to test us, stretch us, and invite reflection on the areas that challenge us most, setting boundaries, people-pleasing, prioritising everyone else over ourselves, and so on.

Gestalt therapy supports curiosity to go beyond the obvious, to stay with what is, and to deepen awareness of what is happening, and our part in it. As awareness grows, so too do our response-ability and our sense of choice. The light in the room begins to shine brighter.

We do not need to go through life merely “functioning” when we can choose to take the plunge into the pond of therapy and learn to thrive and grow.

Why live life in shades of grey when there are so many colours available?

We only have one life, and how we choose to live it is our decision. We can choose to let life simply happen to us, or we can take an active part in shaping it.

Does this mean that choosing therapy before reaching crisis will make everything easy or colourful?
Not always.

However, having the tools and awareness to ride the waves as they come can go a long way in making life more enjoyable, as well as deepening our relationships and how we see ourselves in the world we are part of.

Think about it.

Would you prefer to let life happen to you, or to take an active role in shaping it?
Is therapy the place where you might share hopes and fears you would not dare to share elsewhere?

Imagine the adventures this could open up …