30 June 2025
🌿 What to Expect in a Gestalt Therapy Session
🌿 What to Expect in a Gestalt Therapy Session
with Terra Soul Therapies
Gestalt therapy is a relational, embodied, and experiential approach to healing. Sessions focus on present-moment awareness — exploring what’s happening in your thoughts, emotions, body, and relationships. You don’t need to have a script or a clear goal. We start with what’s here — now.
🧍♀️ A Focus on the Present Moment
Rather than analysing or solving problems, we explore how your experience is unfolding right now. You might be invited to slow down and notice:hat do you become aware of right now — in your body, , your feelings?”
This awareness opens space for clarity, integration, and self-support.
❓ Questions You Might Be Asked
Gestalt therapy often involves open, curious questions designed to deepen your awareness, not find quick answers. These questions are gentle invitations — never demands. Examples include:
“Where do you feel that in your body?”
“What emotions come up as you speak about this?”
“Is there an image, colour, or shape that comes with that sensation?”
“What are you aware of in your breath right now?”
“If that part of you could speak, what might it say?”
“What would it be like to try something different, even just a little?”
“What happens between us as we talk about this?”
These questions aren’t meant to push or analyse — they invite you to meet your experience with curiosity.
🤲 Embodied Awareness
In Gestalt, the body is not separate from the mind — it often tells us what words cannot. You might be gently guided to notice what’s happening physically:
You don’t have to “get it right” — it’s simply about noticing what is, without judgement.
🌬️ Being Guided Into Body Awareness
Many of us have learned to disconnect from our bodies — especially during times of stress, trauma, or overwhelm. In Gestalt therapy, we gently support reconnection with the body, not by forcing anything, but by inviting awareness at a pace that feels safe for you.
You might be guided to notice:
The rhythm of your breath
Areas of tension or ease in your body
How your posture reflects your emotional state
Subtle sensations like tingling, warmth, heaviness, or tightness
Impulses to move, gesture, speak, or stay still
This might sound like:
If you feel unsure, numb, or disconnected — that’s completely okay. You’ll never be pushed. We might simply stay with that sense of not knowing and explore what that’s like, together.
Over time, this embodied awareness can help:
Regulate your nervous system
Deepen your emotional insight
Reconnect you with your intuition and inner knowing
Allow old patterns to soften and shift
Your body holds stories, truths, and resources that sometimes words cannot reach — and in Gestalt therapy, we create space for those to gently come forward.
🌫️ Navigating Uncertainty
It’s completely normal to feel unsure in therapy. You might not know what to talk about, how you feel, or what something means. In Gestalt therapy, uncertainty is welcomed — not rushed, avoided, or fixed. It’s part of the journey, and it often holds valuable insight.
🧍♀️ What this might look like for you:
You arrive to session unsure what to talk about
You say “I don’t know what I’m feeling”
You feel blank, disconnected, or stuck in your head
You second-guess what you’re saying or feel pressure to “get it right”
You feel numb, overwhelmed, or hesitant to go deeper
There is no pressure to be clear, articulate, or emotionally open. Gestalt therapy meets you exactly where you are.
🤲 What your therapist may do:
Gently name and validate the uncertainty
Invite embodied curiosityn we notice what arises, even if it’s just a breath or a sensation?”
Slow things down
Support emotional safety and presence
Use silence as a supportive space
By bringing compassionate attention to uncertainty, therapy becomes a place where confusion, hesitation, and complexity are held — not judged. Over time, this allows clarity, emotion, and meaning to arise from within, rather than being imposed from outside.
You don’t have to know the way forward — we’ll find it together, one step at a time.
👁️ Describing, Not Diagnosing
“IThis helps bring the unconscious into awareness in a safe, respectful way.
🤸♀️ Creative Exploration and Experiments
Gestalt is experiential. Sometimes, you may be invited to try something — perhaps standing instead of sitting, using movement or gesture, or expressing something in a new way. These are always optional and collaborative.
ulnts
These moments can reveal new insights or shift old patterns.
🤫 The Role of Silence
Silence in Gestalt therapy is not awkward — it’s a space for something meaningful to arise. You won’t be rushed to fill the gaps. Sometimes, silence says more than words.Let’s just pause here for a moment aemes.”n those quiet moments, emotions can surface, clarity can form, and deepe
🛑 Honouring Boundaries and Resistance
Not every part of you may be ready to be seen or felt — and that’s completely okay. Resistance is welcomed as part of the therapeutic process. If something feels too much, we slow down and explore that too.“It feels like something pulls back — what’s it like to notice that together?
Everything that arises in the room — including uncertainty — belongs.
🌸 You Don’t Need to Know What to Say
There’s no pressure to come in with a plan. Sessions are co-created. You might start with a story, an image, a feeling, or even silence. Whatever arises is welcome.
If you’re curious about working together, you’re welcome to book a complimentary phone consultation: