Gestalt Therapy Paper

Gestalt therapy is an approach I felt the most comfortable with as a counselor. The therapy encompasses expressing yourself and bringing about your inner feelings. Unfortunately, many people do not invest the time to connect with their inner self. A lot of people are more concerned of pleasing everyone else but themselves. Gestalt therapy focuses on satisfying clients needs and wants so that they can escape from whatever is preventing them from achieving their goal in life. Gestalt therapy teaches us their environment influences many people, so they focus on the use of empathy, understanding, and acceptance. People are influenced by the environment around them, which has a major impact on the way they perceive situations and their

Instead, the therapist and client work together to help the client understand him/herself. This type of therapy focuses on experiencing the present situation rather than talking about what occurred in the past. Clients are encouraged to become aware of immediate needs, meet them, and let them fade into the background. The well-adjusted person is viewed as someone that has a constant flow of needs they can satisfy. Gestalt developed a form of therapy that focuses on individual to medium and large groups. This type of therapy can assist with many issues and concerns; the only downside to this therapy is avoiding the past. Clients need to look back on past experiences to understand why they are having negative present

Ideally, the client identifies current sensations and emotions, particularly ones that are painful or disruptive. By applying the therapy, patients are confronted with their unconscious feelings and needs along with the assistance to accept and assert repressed parts of them. The most powerful techniques involve is role-playing is when the patient talks to an empty chair as they imagine that a person associated with an unresolved issue is sitting in the chair. As the patient talks to the "person" in the chair, the patient imagines that the person responds to the expressed feelings. This is significant so that patients’ trust their innate feelings in order to relieve suppressed stress. This technique is something I would do if I were feeling a sense of anxiety or concern about a current issue. I am a firm believer that you cannot change the past, so you should move forward and apply those life lessons learn to in the