Gestalt is a quintessentially creative, spontaneous, and egalitarian approach to therapy. It's humanistic in that our focus is on your experience - it's supportive of your needs/desires/decisions, and we avoid imposing rigid expectations, beliefs, theories, or dogma on your therapuetic process. The inherent flexibility of the form means that Gestalt therapy can look very different depending on who you're working with. However, what we all have in common is a focus on the existential questions of human experience - like freedom, choice, the natural and uninhibited expression of needs, power, creativity, the nature of self and relationships, and resolution of inner conflict.

My own training and interest in Gestalt lines up with my other areas of specialization in focusing on an embodied, genuine, and relational exploration of your experience, and a trust in the power of your psyche to move towards wholeness. As we make more room for your experience you will find yourself dropping into deeper levels of self-understanding, and experiencing less anxiety and tension as you become clearer about what you want and how to move forward in your life.

Gestalt is somatic in that we focus on your body and felt experience as a major source of information about the present moment, a storehouse of memory, and a vehicle for resolution of conflicts. It is relational as our relationship in the room isn't held as seperate from your therapy, and is an important part of how we both experience the work. It is mindful in our continual return to the present moment and non-judgmental acceptance of your experience, letting go of expectations that normally cloud our perception.

Gestalt is also particularly aligned with Internal Family Systems, Voice Dialogue, Psychosynthesis, and other specialty approaches through a shared understanding of your internal world. All these approaches recognize distinct and often conflicting 'parts' of ourselves that are considered a normal part of human psychology. You may recognize this in some aspect of you own life, like the 'part' of you that wants to quit your job, leave your relationship, or make some other change versus the 'part' of you that is afraid of failure, poverty, loneliness, or dissapointing others.