Exercises: techniques used to accomplish a purpose relevant to the client
Planned ahead of time
Client and therapist reflect on result to increase awareness of ‘here and now’ experience
Experiments: learning experiences for clients
Arise throughout therapeutic process
Individually tailored towards clients to promote their awareness and bring unfinished business to the present to be solved
Core component of gestalt therapy
Typically experiential, in the moment, and emerge from dialogue
Could be role plays, homework, activities
Should not be threatening or negative
Enactments: putting client feelings or thoughts into action
Use of Language:
Emphasis on statements over questions
What and how questions as opposed to why questions
I statements encourage ownership
Encourage responsibility: make implicit explicit
Present tense experience even when past events are brought up
Dreams:
Viewed as a ‘royal road’ to integration rather than the unconscious as Freud
Awareness happens when a client describes various roles and parts of a dream and then acts it out as though it were happening in the present
Increases integration, puts clients in charge of the process, and helps clients become aware of thoughts or emotions reflected in the dream that they might be disowning in present
Fantasy:
Therapist uses guided imagery to take people on a journey to their imagination
Asking clients what they see in a made up situation and what they might do. Can ask questions that make the fantasy more productive
Bring closure to unfinished business
Ex: you want to call and yell at someone but instead you do a guided fantasy where you yell at them and produce a more helpful solution
Empty chair Role Play
Essential tool in gestalt, but rarely uses people to play roles
Two Chair Method (inner conflict)
Helps people become aware of and resolve inner conflict and gain insight into all aspects of a problem
Reveals how people respond to self judgement and helps develop self compassion
Two chairs are used to represent two parts of the person that are in conflict
Client spends time in each chair talking from the respective perspective
Top dog / underdog mentality
Top dog tells underdog how to think and feel, but underdog is meek, apologetic and doesn't want to change
Underdog has more power
This can transfer to other people as they are the top dog and client is underdog in a way
Therapist encourages critic (top dog) to become more harsh when prompting the underdog to help surface unspoken or unacknowledged feelings
Empty Chair Method (address unfinished business)
Unmet needs manifest as unfinished business
Empty chair represented the unfinished business in the way of a person, a symptom, or something confusing
Client visualizes the person/thing and expresses their thoughts and feelings to it to complete whatever process that had been interrupted.
Hope to develop understanding, acceptance of that person/issue, and grow in their own self confidence
Assist with past issues of neglect, abandonment, abuse, or trauma
The Body as a Vehicle of Communication
Identification: therapist remains alert to bodily messages. Call attention to movements of client to ask what is that body part doing
Locating emotions in the body: ask a client where in their body they might be experiencing a feeling like anger
Repetition and exaggeration: focuses on where the energy is located and then in releasing it. “I noticed you are tapping your foot. I want you to stomp as hard as you can and notice what feelings come up”