Sep

8

Gestalt Play Therapy

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Fritz Perls is the person who is responsible for the apparition of Gestalt therapy. This therapy, unlike many others, aims at making the patient more aware of his own feelings and behavior from the present and not the ones from the past. The therapist and the patient make a team and they both work at the patient’s better understanding of himself or herself, the feelings, the reactions they generate and don’t focus on past experiences which the therapist interprets. The now and here are sovereign to the then and there.

The relationship that is established between the patient and the therapist during the Gestalt therapy sessions is a non-judgmental one, authentic, direct and based on dialogue. They both participate to the creation of this relationship and, at the same time, the creation of an environment in which a problem of the patient can safely emerge and be addressed. In order to gain the awareness of the experiences, the beliefs and the human contact, both verbal and non-verbal behavioral patterns are employed by the two.

An efficient way to make the patient express the feelings, emotions and thoughts, a play or art based environment can be created by the therapist. In such a safe environment, a young person or even a child can much easier express himself or herself, given the fact that no actual threats are perceived. Stories, music, games, poetry are only a few elements that are usually combined with Gestalt therapy in order to easier obtain better results.

Play therapy usually prefers to employ different playing methods in order to help the children in various aspects, rather than use domain specific terminology that is hard to understand by the little ones. It was proved over time that children make use of playing activities in order to cope with some disturbing situations and this has been once again proved during the therapy held for three children from New Zealand, Hapi, Iwi and Whanau. Besides the obvious focus of the therapy – the children – this also contained some instructions for the rest of the family in order to make them cope with the situation and help the young ones with their needs.

Unfortunately, every day therapists and counselors deal with children that had different kind of traumas, generated by all kinds of situations. Being severely damaged emotionally, the professionals have to employ the power of play therapy in order to help the young patients communicate their thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Gestalt therapy helps the therapist to liaise with his or her patients, to establish an interpersonal process and prevent potential psychologically damaging situations and also to heal if such situations already occurred in the children’s lives. Besides the resolution of some issues, play therapy also helps individuals to achieve a lot from a growth and development point of view.

In some cases, Gestalt therapy helps the therapist assess his patients, being the key that unlocks the doors to the hidden traumas and other events that the children are not able or willing to speak about. The playing patterns and their degree of cooperation are revealing in this perspective.

Category: Gestalt Therapy

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I’ve hurt myself while trying to help myself more than you can imagine, that’s why I want to scientifically analyze every popular self-help technique and ‘method’ there is.