Welcome to Gestalt Psychotherapy
with Shuwana
When the mind stops churning, when you can give yourself a break from the rush hour of life, from everything that feels so important and urgent, from the endless devices that take up your attention, or perhaps the responsibilities that make you feel trapped, that rob you of connection with yourself and your loved ones, when it all just seems too much… take a breath.
Let’s just sit together for a moment, and give you the time and attention to discover or rediscover your true nature, the preciousness of your existence, and the innate wisdom that resides within you, that can see you through all of life’s challenges.
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change” ~ Carl Rogers
From a Gestalt psychotherapy perspective, everything is a creative adjustment based on the whole situation/context of the person. We seek to understand how it makes sense that a person shows up the way they do in a particular context without judging them for being a certain way.
The creation of a safe relational space for people to rest in, allows them to relax into their body, which facilitates a more heightened awareness of their process.
With more awareness, the possibility emerges for increased clarity for problem solving and decision-making, increasing resilience and self-compassion, and a capacity for holding more of life’s complexity, as well as embracing with dignity those aspects of life that cannot be changed.
Discovering these new perspectives can bring relief, and more choices in moving forward, fostering a greater sense of inner peace and well-being.
We were wounded in relationships, therefore healing is through relationships. Understanding the relational nature of development, helps us value the importance of the therapeutic relationship as a medium for healing experiences. Gestalt psychotherapy is deeply relational in nature …
“For me, therapy is no longer about tools and theories. Now it requires that I turn inward and that I seek to become the highest expression of who I am as a person, as one human soul relating to other souls” ~ Ron Kurtz
Entering the World of Another
“To really enter the world of another in an accepting way does create a very special kind of bond that is not matched by anything else I know”
~ Carl Rogers
In the book, Between Person and Person, Richard Hycner writes:
“In meeting another in therapy we are confronted by one of the major dilemmas of human existence, that we are all unique and yet we are all alike. Woundedness has arisen in us principally because other people (important to us) have not been able to understand, appreciate and value us or our experiences.
As a consequence we have not felt confirmed and have therefore found it difficult to value and appreciate our own experience for ourselves. None of us, it seems, ever received the full confirmation and acknowledgement that we needed. The therapist, therefore, is faced with a client who’s principal need, in this new therapeutic relationship, is to feel, deep in their heart, that the therapist understands or is at least making their best human effort to understand.
In order to be able to enter the world of the client the therapist must first be fully present. Presence is the one essential ingredient of therapy. Presence cannot be a technique. It is a recognition of the mysteriousness and inter-penetration of our existence. It is the awareness that all categorization and labelling interferes with the genuine unfolding of what is most vulnerable, real and essential in the human being”.
It is one of our greatest existential need to be deeply understood by another human being. We hide so much and put up so many protective walls, because we don’t feel understood – in fact we may feel that nobody can understand us. To pre-judge is to crush the emergence of new possibilities, for us to show up in new ways. To stay in open curiosity, to be truly responsive to the needs of a person, moment to moment, we suspend all prior knowing and are willing to step into a new universe of the other, in wonder and with a willingness to discover who this person truly is.
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We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which we live, and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We bear witness to their diversity and resilience, and honour their continuing connection to culture, land, knowledge and community. Sovereignty was never ceded.