Why Gestalt Therapy Helps When You Feel Stuck
The Gestalt approach is a therapeutic style that works with feeling stuck. Gestalt includes the body, mind, and environment in the therapeutic relationship. This is where you can see patterns, beliefs, areas of avoidance and or connections. Useful information to be aware of in all relationships, whether that be intimate, work or friendships. Importantly, it’s the relationship you have with yourself, what’s going on from the inside.
On the outside, it seems you hold it all together, but inside you feel anxious, stuck or overwhelmed. This is painful to experience both within yourself and in your relationships, where your needs feel invisible. It’s normal to cycle between states of overthinking, pushing emotions down or people-pleasing. Gestalt’s unique way raises awareness from a space of curiosity so feeling stuck has a voice, a body style, a thought pattern. When there is awareness, there is often a link to a belief or a memory from the past. It’s liberating when there is a movement from the unknown to the known. Better decisions and empowered choices become your new way of being.
Why Sensitive and Empathic Women Feel Stuck in Overthinking?
Being empathic and sensitive in relationships has its challenges. The relational dynamics of a power imbalance can feel like being out of control. This causes people stress and worry to the point of overthinking, and an attempt to fix or change the situation.
Loss of connection to your true nature leads to confusion of your own needs, and what’s replaced is making up something about yourself. Beliefs about who you are run deep and often take charge and are in the driver’s seat when under stress or threat. It’s common to feel ‘not good enough’, ‘invisible’, ‘anxious and exhausted’, ‘not valued’ when the environment cannot meet you or you don’t understand your needs.
Over time, the buildup of layers of lack and misattunement can take its toll by reaching breaking point, and there’s a realisation that something has to change. It’s not sustainable for overall health, both physically and mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, to maintain the same pattern in place. This is where you get to know your authentic self.
What Is Gestalt Therapy and How Does It Work?
This is where the Gestalt approach originates, blending mind and body, relationships, and environment, asking questions such as
What’s happening right now in your thoughts and body?
What are you noticing as we sit here together therapeutically?
Where did the origins of what just emerged come from?
A safe space to explore with curiosity the emergence of your thinking and communication styles, and an awareness of how your body responds to a question, can help uncover hidden patterns of people-pleasing or self-silencing to keep the peace.
When there’s safety in the room, you connect with an embodied sense of safety within yourself. How liberating it is to understand how your nervous system responds and what needs and values emerge from the therapeutic relational connection. You can experiment with a new way, like speaking up or asserting a boundary where you feel supported.
How Gestalt Therapy Helps With Anxiety, Overthinking and People-Pleasing
Anxiety and overthinking. Gestalt helps bring awareness to the present moment, connecting you with your body through sensations. There’s a sense of feeling grounded that interrupts the looping or spiralling thoughts.
People-pleasing and suppression. When you understand your nervous system, you are in contact with your needs and can meet them or request support in your relationships. Trusting the connection within yourself reinforces your confidence.
Relationship stress. When you have an awareness of relational dynamics and patterns, you can choose to respond instead of react from a painful place. How you see yourself changes when the focus is on the behaviour rather than your sense of worth or value.
Not being enough. When confidence develops, you experience yourself differently. You now firmly refuse what you once tolerated because you value yourself and your contributions in relationships. There’s a firm stance in that your sense of value or worth is not up for negotiation, as beautifully put by Brené Brown: “Worthiness does not have pre-requisites; it is a birthright, and we are all worthy.”
How I Work as a Gestalt Therapist
I ground my work in Gestalt therapy, a present-focused and experiential approach that lets you explore how you relate to yourself, your relationships and your environment. As a team, together we raise awareness of your thoughts, emotions and body sensations that support your understanding of behaviours that are just outside of your awareness.
Importantly, our therapeutic relationship is equal, and I collaborate with you to support reconnection to yourself and make meaning from your experience. I support sensitive, empathic women to realise their strength and intuitive knowing, trusting themselves and confidently making clear, confident and grounded choices.
Overwhelm and loneliness can keep you separate and hinder connection with yourself and the relationships you value. I hold the light of hope and possibility as I’ve seen women change. When you chip away and raise awareness of what’s not real, connection to your authentic self feels like home. You’ll feel aligned, authentic, free and, most importantly, confident to be yourself and have your needs expressed and met.
Ready to Start Your Journey
If you’ve read this and can relate, you don’t have to keep up appearances of strength. Reach out to book a free 15-minute consultation and learn how Gestalt therapy can support you.