by Ellen Butterfield

Relational Gestalt is a very “user friendly” kind of contemporary therapy – one that treats where you are, without assuming that you are “sick,” and that the therapist is “well.” Your experience, as you tell it to a therapist, is no less true, or “right” or “well” than the experience of the therapist.

Humans perceive things in the world differently, each according to our own mental-filtering process – what you experience is different, and as valid, as what someone else experiences, even if you’re both in the same place at the same time. Gestalt therapists believe that everything in one’s environment – events, objects, people – affects that person, and, that everything in that environment affects everything else. In other words, we don’t live in a vacuum, and everything affects how we perceive the world.

A Gestalt therapist “dialogues” with you. As a professional, she expresses feelings, shares perceptions and ideas, and is truly present and involved in what’s going on in the room. Being understood by the therapist, all the while trusting that the therapist is maintaining his or her own sense of self – is considered to be paramount in helping you heal – by being truly “met,” allowing you a more expansive sense of reality, and more choices in how to live your life.