Gestalt therapists aim to meet and understand the patient rather than to move the patient in any particular direction. The Gestalt therapy version focuses more on the immediacy of how the patient functions moment-to-moment.
The main awareness of Gestalt is to realize deeply that the only powerful moment that we all have is the now. Life is a series of the present moment. And all the pain and agony we receive in life is as we disconnect with our present and either look into the past or future and the pain arises from the resistance to the things you cannot change. You can free yourself from pain by constantly observing your mind and not judging your thoughts.
The characteristics of dialogic contact are inclusion, confirmation, authentic presence, and a commitment to what emerges between therapist and patient. The journey into the now we will need to leave our analytical mind and the false created self, the ego behind. With the help of dialogue, the therapist helps their client to step into the now. The patient is taught how to be aware, including awareness of the awareness process, facilitating autonomous use of the method by the patient. The journey into the now we will need to leave our analytical mind and the false created self, the ego behind. With the help of dialogue, the therapist helps their client to step into the now.
The logical mind always comes between the real experience of the present moment by awakening the thinking mind. The complete goal of the Gestalt therapy is making the person whole again in the present moment.
The presence is manifested verbally and or non-verbally it is revealed by word, gesture or movement, the patient is made to demonstrate all the emotions, the sentiment that is stored inside the patient from the past or future events or maybe just through the person’s introjection.
Presence requires the therapist to recognize, feel, understand, accept and take responsibility for their feelings in the therapeutic contact. When patients identify with what is interrupted and also with the interrupting process itself, stalled growth is reactivated.
When people fully identify with what they think, feel, desire, choose, and how they behave, the stuckness of self-rejection and denial are replaced by a new felt sense (Gendlin, 1981) of responsibility, possibility, expanded awareness and greater capacity for learning from their experience. . They can be who they are —and who they are becoming–– by increased awareness and by increased honest and respectful contact with the therapist and others in their lives.
Enlarge your own awareness to include the patient‘s experience rather than trying to find a causal explanation or to change the patient.
Start where the patient is. Consider the patient‘s ―reality as valid. What does the patient experience and how do they experience it? Try to understand patients from their own frame of reference. Instead of asking ―why, ask questions like ―how do you experience that?
Pay careful attention to each moment. As patients talk about their present or past life, give special attention to what is present in the room at the very moment.
What does the patient feel while telling their story?
Does the demonstrated effect match the story?
How are you affected emotionally?
The here-and-now in the therapy session often mirrors or exemplifies a general characterological pattern and presents an opportunity to work on the general theme first hand.
"People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?"
- Thich Nhat Hanh
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