Gestalt Therapy

I incorporate Gestalt techniques to help clients find relief from limiting relationship patterns and grief concerns.

I trained in Gestalt therapy at the Church Street Integral Counseling Center in San Francisco, with Gieve Patel and Debbie Stone. This approach incorporates mindfulness of one's own moment-to-moment experience with a belief in the individual's ability to act out of this awareness of self.

It can help you increase your awareness of what you are experiencing (psychically and emotionally) in each moment.

In my work with gender diverse folks, I use Gestalt therapy to help you stay grounded in the present while exploring your identity. Together, we’ll focus on raising your awareness of who you are right now and breaking free from judgments that no longer serve you. Therapy is political, especially for marginalized identities, and we’ll tackle the societal pressures shaping your experience. My goal is to empower you to reclaim your identity, resist harmful norms, and embrace your personal freedom.

Be here now, with me, talking. Gestalt therapy draws on the power inherent in creative dialogue grounded in embodied awareness of the present moment. This style of therapeutic interaction grows out of earlier psychodynamic styles as they encounter mindfulness traditions from Asia. After training five years, I became credentialed as a certified Gestalt therapist and psychoanalyst. Before and during that, I did a lot of meditating, retreats, and ran a dharma center. Still do, still no expert.

Gestalt Therapy is a psycho-dynamic, present-centered and relational approach to talk therapy. I believe that a person’s history colors how they experience the present, but that few are fully aware of this process in day-to-day life. We’ll work together to move from judgment to curiosity, so that we can notice what reactions are based on historical assumptions, or grounded in our actual, shared experience of one another in the here-and-now.

Gestalt is a way of understanding human experience and the process of change. According to Gestalt, change only happens when we accept ourselves exactly as we are. By paying close attention to the present moment, we discover both new and familiar aspects of ourselves and unlock new possibilities for choice and growth. I receive ongoing training through Gestalt Therapy Training Center Northwest, as well as regular individual supervision and consultation.

Gestalt Therapy is a counseling approach from Germany which centers around "emotional catharsis" and directing clients toward more authentic ways of being in the present moment. I love this approach because it is really great at surfacing blockages in a way that pushes clients to work through them. Without the focus on the "here and now," therapy can get lost in distant, hypothetical conversation that doesn't create the desired change brought people to therapy in the first place.

Gestalt Therapy focuses primarily on the mind-body connection & grounding yourself in the present moment. Most clients, despite their varying symptoms, are in someway disconnected from their physical body. This is a rudimentary defense mechanism we're all equipped with. When we feel negatively emotionally, we attempt to disconnect from that unpleasant sensation by escaping into our own mental world, or through some type of distracting/mind-numbing behavior.

“Gestalt therapy is about helping people become aware of what they do and how they do it, and to encourage living in the present, to ‘be here now,’ and make better choices.” – Violet Oaklander. In Gestalt therapy, I use talk or play to help you or your child experience, explore, and process thoughts, feelings and sensations to bring greater awareness, self-understanding and empowerment. I am not an ‘expert’ but a partner on your journey, in the process with you every step of the way.

I love Gestalt therapy because I do people that people are more than the sum of their parts. I like how it can help increase awareness of the present moment, and I use a lot of parts work to explore sides of the client that may be less frequently visible. I also use some Internal Family System ideas that are based on Gestalt parts work to help clients be in deeper relationship with themselves and their inner motivations.

Be here now, with me, talking. Gestalt therapy draws on the power inherent in creative dialogue grounded in embodied awareness of the present moment. This style of therapeutic interaction grows out of earlier psychodynamic styles as they encounter mindfulness traditions from Asia. After training five years, I became credentialed as a certified Gestalt therapist and psychoanalyst. Before and during that, I did a lot of meditating, retreats, and ran a dharma center. Still do, still no expert.

I focus on the here and now, understanding the past exists, but not allowing the to define your future.

Gestalt Therapy is all about our whole sense of self. That whole self encounters a whole world and that brings on a whole host of difficulties. Being able to understand that dialogue that is always going on within and without our selves can be helpful to increase our satisfaction with ourselves

Trained in the Laura Perls-tradition of Gestalt Therapy.

Sometimes just talking about a problem doesn't quite get the job done. By engaging in "safe experiments" in session, Gestalt therapy helps us to release ourselves from the bondage of old emotional wounds.