Personal Development

Personal development is inherent within all of the programs and workshops offered at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto. Gestalt is a therapy that takes into account the whole individual and is concerned with both mind and body. Gestalt psychotherapy, in its purest application, addresses only what is happening in the moment. Individuals who have been accustomed to talking about themselves, their past, their problems, their dreams, their ideas about themselves and others, etc., may find the method very frustrating in the beginning. The comfort of confining these issues in one’s thinking and fantasy is not so easy for the individual to sacrifice.

The Gestalt approach is to bring into awareness, in the moment, the more obvious discrepancies in the person’s presentation of themselves and response to others. Here the anxiety becomes available to the individual to experience or to resist. These occurrences are a vital part of the change process.

In contrast to many other therapies, Gestalt therapy includes the neurosis as a necessary element in the change process. The behaviours or symptoms that are deemed undesirable or unsatisfactory are essential elements in the therapy process, both in individual and group therapy. The Gestalt therapist is trained to address these moments with the client or group participant with skill and creativity. How the individual resists contact in the here and now, or how they resist change, is the rich resource from which the therapist draws interventions that are original, efficient, and effective.

The basic premise is that life happens in the present – not in the past or the future – and when we are dwelling on the past or fantasizing about the future we are not living fully. Through living in the present we are able to take responsibility for our responses and actions. To be fully present in the here and now offers us more excitement, energy, and courage to live life directly.