Gestalt Therapy
‘Gestalt’ means ‘whole’. In my practice this translates to us working with the whole of you as a person, including your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and imagination. We will explore your experience together in a safe, non-judgement and confidential space, in a creative way, suited to your needs and preferences. For example, we may talk using metaphors, or describing images, or drawing, or using small objects to help us talk about your experience.
I believe in your capacity to use your natural inner strength in service of living a fulfilling life and I support you to trust and build on this capacity.
I believe that via supporting you to raise your awareness and honour what happens for you in the here-and-now, change can happen in your life. With this in mind, I will invite you to become curious about your experience ‘right now’. We might experiment with some new behaviours and ways of being. I may gently challenge you to notice your habitual patterns and in doing so I will bear in mind your preferences, personality, and learning style.
We can safely explore your feelings and relational patterns in our therapeutic relationship, and you may find them to be connected with how you feel with others in the 'real' world out there. I may interweave breathing exercises, mindfulness practices, as well as exercises involving gentle movement into our counselling sessions.
Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy
As part of my Gestalt work with clients, I weave into my work an approach called Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy (DSP). DSP is a theory developed by Ruella Frank at the Centre for Somatic Studies in the USA. I have trained with Helena Kallner, who trains therapists in DSP internationally, and who trained with Ruella.
DSP informs us how we are in the world from a perspective of early developmental movement patterns. These movement patterns can be seen to unfold as early as in infancy in interactions with our caregivers, or even earlier than that, in our mother’s womb in interactions with the microcosm of the womb.
In DSP, we assume that as we move into the world, we meet the world and the world meets us, and so there is an inherent relationality and reciprocity in these movement patterns.
As adults, through attuning to our bodies’ wisdom, we can learn to be curious about these patterns and notice how they shape our being in the world and in relationships. Discoveries about our bodies’ wisdom can be made during psychotherapy sessions.
Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy is helpful because it can inform us how we:
- feel safe in the world
- feel ourselves with an other
- can or cannot be with an other
- reach out to the world for our needs to be met
- receive support from an other or give into supportive environment
- get hold of and keep what we want as long as we want
- let go of things
Please enquire if you would like to work with me using the Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy approach.
Parts Work
Often in my work with clients I include parts work. My inspiration here is broad and includes Janina Fisher’s model of ‘healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors’, which itself includes elements of Pat Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.
A goal of therapy with parts of self is to support clients to develop curiosity about parts, who they are, what they look like, how they behave, and how they feel in our body or outside of it, what they need and the story they tell us. I support clients to develop an accepting relationship with parts of self so parts can feel safe and valued by self. Parts are valuable aspect of self which, when embraced, help us lead more fulfilling and interesting lives. Working with parts can be valuable at any stage of personal growth and development.
'Befriending [parts] means that we "radically accept" that we share our bodies and lives with these "room-mates" and that
living well with ourselves requires living amicably and collaboratively with our parts. The more we welcome rather than reject
them, the safer our internal worlds.'
(Janina Fisher: Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors)
©Katy Swoboda powered by WebHealer
Photos by Kim Manley Ort