Gestalt therapy

The word Gestalt means whole, in Gestalt therapy the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In other words, all parts of the individual are considered, the body, the soul, feelings, thoughts, behaviors, and bodily sensations. The aim is to increase awareness of inner conflicts and unfinished situations and thereby heal trauma, promote personal growth and well-being. Attention is paid to the individual's relationship to the world, other people and to themself. Gestalt therapists emphasize empathy, respect and genuineness.

The therapist-client relationship strives to be as authentic and real as possible and can be very healing for the client.
We have two basic needs as humans from the day we are born: to be attached and to be authentic. In Gestalt therapy we practice being both in attachment and authentic at the same time, to arrive back to a place where we feel that we do not need to sacrifice one for the other. Through the relationship between me and you as the client we practice safe and holding relationships, where the relationship itself is a part of the deep healing.

Gestalt therapy lets you experience clarity and understanding for how past events and feelings are affecting you in the now, where you are held and guided through the process of allowing your emotions to take place, investigating them and nurture them with self-compassion. In Gestalt therapy we create a space of trust where you will be empowered to use your voice, putting words on what is happening inside of you, sharing with me while in contact with the present moment and your body. Gestalt therapy helps us integrate the emotional parts of our brain with the physical body.

Why practice attachment and authenticity?
Many children experience that they cannot be their true authentic self for example expressing their emotions such as anger or sadness, to be in their full energy or have their individual expression. If they do express anger, they might be sent to their room or told to stop, by being met this way they fear losing their attachment to the parent. When the need to be authentic as a child is not met, we sacrifice the authenticity for attachment, because as children we cannot survive without attachment. Attachment is the need to be loved, seen and accepted. That sacrifice of authenticity leads to a disconnection from our true selves.
This continues to happen in our adult life, we fear expressing our emotions and needs for the fear of being alone, cut off from a friendship circle or isolated at work. As this continues, we create a deeper and deeper disconnection from ourselves. When we lose authenticity, we do not know who we are, it is a suppression of our true self and it leads to suppression of genuine healthy emotions, for example healthy anger. The suppression of genuine emotions actually surpasses the immune system and can lead to illness in different ways.

In Gestalt therapy we will together look at where you have disconnected from yourself. By creating a safe space, we'll practice arriving back to yourself, being both authentic and attached in relation to other people.

Sarah is trained by Robert B Andersson who is a writer, speaker, and a specialized therapist in areas such as early sexual abuse on children, addiction, criminality and co-dependency. In-depth study focuses on Gestalt therapy, trauma treatment from a Gestalt perspective and lifetime-integration, family therapy, substance - and process addictions, criminality and early sexual abuse on children. If you want to know more about Robert or the education, go to:

Background to Gestalt therapy

Gestalt therapy is a psychotherapy practice that originated in Germany in the 1930s. Developed by psychoanalysts Fritz Perls and his wife Laura. The Perls broke away from Freud’s analytic theory, creating their own synthesis of ideas. Accordingly, Gestalt therapy incorporates notions from many disciplines. These include body psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, humanistic and existential philosophies, Attachment theory, cognitive psychology, family systems theory and relational psychoanalysis, together with Eastern. practices such as meditation.

The principal pillar of Gestalt therapy is Phenomenology. Phenomenology is the science of experience, developed by Edmund Husserl in year1931. It attempts to make sense of human existence and consciousness. It examines the process of awareness to distinguish between real experience, speculation, and expectations. It aims at identifying and reinforcing direct experience, by heightening the individual’s awareness and reality through the process of describing, bracketing and horizontalizing. The first baseline in Phenomenology is that you can't get closer to the truth than through experience. Secondly, you must face the world "phenomena" with openness and honesty to find the essence. Lastly, that reality must be described, not constructed or shaped.

In Gestalt therapy we see that everything we do today is based on past experiences including choices we make and patterns we have. One of the main questions in Gestalt Therapy is how we choose to live our lives and how we choose to disappear and avoid life and its dilemmas, these are of decisive importance in the therapeutic work. The therapist reflects/confronts the individual's life map. The individual is forced to decide what is important and what is not important. Change occurs through the reorganization of insights and experiences.