Gestalt Therapy - Living Here and Now – Details, episodes & analysis

What do you do when you have an open Gestalt? I begin in this episode to tell you about how I created an open gestalt by acting too fast. Sending an email without reading it twice, leaving abruptly without a proper goodbye which left some wondering if I was angry with them. Over the years I have learned to say a proper goodbye and properly close the Gestalt.

Figure of today

We humans tend to like completeness, we want to make sense of the things that are happening to us and around us. And sometimes we do not get the closure we need and we are left with unfinished business or an open Gestalt.

How is this important?

The way we deal with unfinished business is entirely personal. Everyone deals with this in a different way and it all depends on our life situation as well. How you have been brought up, how you have developed and where you are right now. Some unfinished business can’t be solved, for example when the person you had an argument with is no longer in your life. For some this can feel devastating.

I will go deeper into the individual way of dealing with an open gestalt by performing a little experiment with you, dear listener.

What’s Gestalt in all of this?

When we grow up our experiences are highly dependent on the adults in our lives. As mentioned before, we constantly want to make sense of what is happening around us and the understanding will calm us down, a sort of self-regulation. What can help us, which we so often go to in Gestalt Therapy, is our awareness.

References:

Podcast Production by Lagor Services - Laila Noort

https://www.lagorservices.com/

Web Design by Patrik Osterblad

https://www.patrikosterblad.com/

Books mentioned:

Gestalt by Rasmussen & Busk, Publisher Frydenlund, 2015

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients are directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or, any other health professional

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance

Nutrition and eating has been part of many conversations I have had with clients in my praxis. In relation to stress or burnout, taking medication that influences weight or any other causes.

Food is our fuel so I thought this was a good opportunity to invite Anne Mette Franch Brandstrup who is a Nutrition therapist.

Anne Mette is originally from Denmark, just like me, and has been living in Luxembourg for over 22 years.

In this episode we will be talking about the connection between Nutrition and Gestalt Therapy

Figure of today

The figure of today is about balance or restoring balance for women plus 40. Or as we like to say in Gestalt Therapy: “Becoming who you are” or as Anne Mette so elegantly added; “Becoming the BEST of who you are”

How is this important?

Nutrition is an important subject in many of the sessions that I have with clients. It is often related to unhappiness due to overweight or eating disorders, low energy levels, stress or major life changing situations. Anne Mette will give a bit of insight on how nutrition is important for women plus 40, the majority group of her clients.

What’s Gestalt in all of this?

Diet and providing nutritional advice is only part of Anne Mette’s strategy. She goes much deeper into finding the root cause of the symptoms to really create a profound and necessary change. This is where the connection between her work as a nutrition therapist and Gestalt Therapy is very clear.

More about Anne Mette Franch Brandstrup

Website:

Www.nutritionnhealth.eu

E-mail:

Contact@nutritionnhealth.eu

Instagram:

Nutritionnhealth_nnh

Facebook:

Nutrition N Health

The end of the year is approaching and for some, this can be a challenging time. Spending Christmas with family, travelling, consuming or any other reason why Christmas can be “testing”.

Figure of today

The inspiration for this episode came when I was doing a test for accreditation and I suddenly realised that Christmas can also feel like a test.

How is this important?

If we look at an event like Christmas as a test there is a possibility we might fail. Perhaps you already have experienced this feeling of failing when the outcome of an earlier Christmas was not as you expected it to be. Which resulted in feeling apprehension just about now, a few weeks before another Christmas is just around the corner. We might look forward to it and at the same time fear it.

What’s Gestalt in all of this?

There is a lot of Gestalt in Christmas. We have so much interaction during this time. With family, friends and loved ones. It is the perfect time to have a look at what happens to us when we are in the oldest maybe most stuck relations we have.

But what if we change our perspective and look at Christmas as an experiment instead of a test.?

This is the last episode for this season. We are taking a break in January and will be back with season 2 In February 2022. Warm regards and well wishes from me and my production team from The Podcast Journey.

RELATED EPISODES:

What is Gestalt Therapy?

What’s all the fuss about the NOW?

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients are directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or, any other health professional

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance

Stress can manifest itself in all different ways, even in our bodies. Tension in the neck, shoulders or back is one of the common problems you can experience when you are stressed. But sometimes it is not so evident that the pain you feel in your body is related to stress.

In this episode, I talk about Alma, a patient in my praxis who was suffering from severe back pains. She of course went to see her medical doctor and a physical therapist who mentioned that it might be a good idea to go see a therapist as well.

We used one of the awareness zones during our sessions to give attention to the pain, to ask it questions as to understand the message the pain is sending.

RELATED EPISODES:

What is Gestalt Therapy?

What’s all the fuss about the NOW?

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients are directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or, any other health professional

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance

We all have seen movies that profoundly moved us or had an impact on the way we view ourselves and others. That one movie that made you think about the choices you make in life or give you the feeling you are not alone feeling a certain way.

In this episode, I talk about movies in relation to therapy. Without giving away too much of the 3 movies I am discussing, in case you haven’t seen them yet, I mention some scenes and situations that are relevant and meaningful to Gestalt Therapy.

The movies are:

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, 2019, American biographic drama. Directed by Marielle Heller. Written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster

Lady Bird, 2017, American comedy-drama. Directed and written by Greta Gerwig

Inside Out, 2015, American computer-animated film. Directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Ronnie del Carmen. Screenplay written by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley adapted from a story by Docter and del Carmen.

References:

At vaere der hvor du er, Bent Falk, Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck 2010

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients are directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or, any other health professional

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance

A lot of people are not living in the now, at least not all of the time. Why this matters is what I’ll be talking about in this episode.

The now is the only place you can actually act on things, influence anything or change anything. Something that is impossible to do in the past or the future.

Often we are all preoccupied with what happened for example a week ago, or what is going to happen in the next few months. This brings a lot of stress and worry and in some cases anxiety.

I will give you some ideas on how to practice being more in the present, more in the now.

And I will explain how Gestalt Therapy can guide you through this process by explaining the 3 awareness zones. Middle zone, which deals with thoughts, fantasies, analysis, associations. Inner and outer zones which respectively deal with  sensations in the body and using your senses like smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing. If you are like many of my clients in the praxis you will probably spend a lot of time using your head, operating a lot in the middle zone and less in the inner and outer zone.

During this episode I will explain how a flow between all 3 zones are important and what the inner and outer zones do and how you can utilize these zones to be able to live more in the now.

References:

Dubliners, James Joyce,  Prestwick House, Inc,  2006 (first published June 1914), Dublin, Irland,

The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle, New World Library, 1999 California, USA

The Mindful Way through Depression – Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness, M. Williams, J. Teasdale, Z. Segal and J. Kabat- Zinn. The Guilford Press, 2007 New York, USA

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients are directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or, any other health professional

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance

What are the personal core values you have in your life?

It is a big question, to ask yourself what your personal values are, but it is one question that can clarify some of our issues, behaviours, goals, wants and needs. And are our personal values really our own, or an adaptation of something we have grown up with?

In this episode I talk about reflecting on your life, what do you want to change, what do you want to have more of or maybe less ultimately leading to the question; how you might discover what the important stuff is in your life.

In my praxis, I see a lot of people that are not happy in their life. There isn’t a specific problem, just an overall feeling of dissatisfaction or unhappiness that they would like to change.

I will give some examples of questions I ask my clients and offer a few suggestions of books and articles to read that can help YOU in YOUR work with your core values.

As I mention; “ Our values are not static, they might change throughout our life and even if they don't, our life will change. So it's helpful to check in on the correlation between the important stuff and how we actually live our life”.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

PERSONAL VALUES PERSONAL VALUES Card Sort Card Sort W.R. Miller, J. C’de Baca, D.B. Matthews, P.L. Wilbourne University of New Mexico, 2001

https://soulsalt.com

Existential Psychotherapy, Irvin D. Yalom, 1980, USA, BasicBooks

Etik – dilemma og valg, Einar Aadland, 2000, Norge/Denmark, Dansk Psykologisk Forlag

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients are directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or, any other health professional

This podcast is produced and edited by https://thepodcastjourney.com/

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance

Menopause and Andropause, we all go through it. Next to becoming an adult, it is one of the biggest life-changing moments both physically and mentally.

In this episode, I discuss the importance of dealing with the mental challenges this transitional time brings by giving you some examples of stories that I have come across in my Praxis. From early onset menopause due to surgery for one female client to a change in energy and interests for a male client. Everyone experiences this stage in their life differently. For some, it is an exciting time for others it brings uncertainty and sadness.

I will give ideas on how we can get to grips with what is happening in our lives when menopause and andropause come around the corner so that we can accept the changes and enjoy living here and now.

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients are directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or, any other health professional

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance

We all deal with someone who is sad at some point in our lives. But how do you handle a situation like that? What do you say, or do?

We tend to try and fix the situation for that person, tell them what to do to feel better but is that what they really need? In this episode, I go into this by way of a personal experience. I myself am a fixer and an organizer and my approach was to try and take away the sadness from my kids or my friends.

Gestalt therapy has taught me that we all need to be allowed to feel what we feel, when we do. During the episode, we dive deeper to look at this from 2 sides. How it is for you to be next to the sad person and how your reactions might influence this sad person.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Books:

The body keeps the score by Bessel van der Kolk

When the body says no by Gabor Mate

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or any other health professional

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Astrid Wille Graphic Design - astridwille@outlook.com

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance

We all have had these moments in the last year and a half, you get annoyed with the people you live with or spend a lot of time with. The pandemic has caused us to be more at home, working from home, spending our free time at home, not being able to go where we please.

But what if these annoyances get to a point that they are frustrating you and your spouse or roommate?

In this episode, I will look at how these problems or difficulties might be related to the contact style called projection by giving you the example of Hugo, the same guy from episode 1.

At the beginning of our session, Hugo projects towards me by saying he feels I am irritated which I wasn’t so we dove into the reason why he perceived the situation this way.

If you want to know what was bothering Hugo, where this behaviour of projection comes from (because we all use this in some form or another), you should listen to this episode.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Hanne Hostrup – Gestalt Therapy: An introduction to the Basic Concepts of Gestalt Therapy

You can find all the needed details for contacting me to make an appointment or get more information about my praxis on my website;

https://www.willegestalt.eu/

You can follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/willegestalt/

https://www.instagram.com/willegestalt/

Just a quick disclaimer:

All case stories are anonymised and no clients directly quoted without prior written consent.

And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the willegestalt website, Facebook page or Instagram is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or any other health professional

To make sure you never miss an episode you can follow my podcast via your podcast app of choice.

Astrid Wille Graphic Design - astridwille@outlook.com

Music courtesy of TrackTribe - Longer Distance