Transpersonal Gestalt Therapy
Learning to Identify a Polarity in Gestalt Therapy
A polarity is comprised of two seemingly opposing qualities of a client's personality that cause an inner conflict. When a clinician becomes present with their client, we begin to see the way the client disrupts contact with the present moment and turns off the light...
Mapping Your Client’s Inner World
Clients are multidimensional beings with a unique map of how to relate to themselves and the world. When a clinician takes a map (i.e. a framework) and places it onto the client, the fullness of the client's innate wisdom and inherent movement towards health is often...
What is Transpersonal Counseling?
Transpersonal counseling is a sacred approach to psychotherapy, where the therapist integrates concepts of spirituality, consciousness, and modern psychology to create a truly holistic container. A transpersonal counselor sees their clients as whole, while also seeing...
Thank you, Transpersonal Counselors
https://youtu.be/y27i2L09JwM Dear Transpersonal Counselors, I'm writing this to you because I know sometimes it can seem like we don't fit into the world of counseling and psychotherapy. At agencies and with insurance billing, the medical model and CBT are lauded as...
5 Steps to Confronting Incongruence in Psychotherapy
When a client is incongruent, there is a mismatch between their ideal self and their authentic experience, leading to feelings of discomfort or anxiety. Trying to be something that they are not, a client simultaneously expresses and perpetuates their patterns of...
Working with trauma through a spiritual lens
With a genuine desire to offer a truly sacred place for clients to heal, a therapist can put a lot of pressure on themselves to know exactly what to do when working with a client who presents with symptoms of complex trauma. Many therapists take multiple trainings on how to work with trauma, and yet they still feel ineffective in their ability to offer deep repair and healing to clients. Because each client is so different, there are so many unknowns when working with trauma. Linear models and frameworks designed to “heal” a client overlook the vital role of a client’s own innate spirituality as the Source of their healing.
The old paradigm in psychotherapy, where the therapist needs to be the expert who holds the answers to their client’s suffering, can actually interrupt the therapeutic process and distract from the healing potential available for clients. There are three main problems with this old paradigm: 1) When the therapist holds the answers to a clients suffering, this model perpetuates the trauma response of a client giving their autonomy away, 2) when the therapist is the expert, they treat their client as an object to be fixed, and 3) when the therapist controls the steps to healing, the client’s success is dependent on them fitting into to someone else’s map.
Why is subtle energy useful in therapy?
Seemingly beyond the scope of our physical eyes, we can feel, sense, and even see the expression of subtle energy, which is the expression of a person's vital force. While counseling and psychotherapy focus on a person's mental and behavioral health, honoring a...
11 Sentence Stems to use in Gestalt Group Therapy
When the principles of gestalt therapy are brought into a group setting, the potential for transformation increases exponentially. The present-centered approach of gestalt is akin to a relational meditation, which allows for a client's delusions, misbeliefs, and...
8 Reasons why the Body is Essential in Psychotherapeutic Practice
Gestalt therapy is a body-based approach to counseling that offers mindful attunement to the here and now. As the first approach to counseling that honored the wisdom of the inner mind-body connection, gestalt is a highly intuitive system of psychotherapy. Recognizing...
Disrupting Homeostasis in Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt therapy is a mindfulness-based, transpersonal therapy theory that is based in holism, where we honor the wholeness of a client and do not try to reduce them down into distinct “parts.” As we stay in the present moment, here and now with a client, we attune to...
Questions to Ask in Gestalt Therapy
Finding your wording and language as a gestalt therapist can take some time. Discovering how to allow your authentic engagement, awake awareness, and present moment centeredness to be reflected in the words you use is a process of trial and error. Seeing the impact of...
Tending to Borderline Personality Disorder
It can be a confusing experience to be in any kind of relationship (personal or therapeutic) with a person who has borderline personality disorder (BPD). At first, the relationship can seem deep and connecting. People with BPD can be extremely empathetic and...
