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Ph: (516) 474-6919 | 152 Soundview Rd, Huntington, NY 11743

Gestalt Therapy in Huntington, NY

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Gestalt Therapy in Huntington, NY

Ground Yourself in the Present

Gestalt therapy is a present-centered, body-oriented, holistic, and humanistic approach to psychotherapy that focuses on increasing self-awareness to help facilitate change and growth.
Rather than focusing primarily on why something happened in the past, Gestalt therapy looks at how you are experiencing yourself, your emotions, and your relationships in the present.

Caren Jacobs, LCSW offers Gestalt therapy in Huntington, NY via telehealth throughout New York State.

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What Is Gestalt Therapy?

Gestalt therapy is an experiential approach to therapy.

Instead of simply talking about what is happening, we pay attention to what you are experiencing as it happens.
This can help you become more aware of the ways you may be creating obstacles to healing and understand the patterns that keep you feeling stuck.
The goal is not simply to understand yourself intellectually, but to experience yourself differently.

You Can Become More Connected to Yourself

Sometimes we get so used to the ways we’ve learned to cope that we stop noticing what we actually need.
Gestalt therapy can help you slow down, become more aware, and reconnect with yourself in the present moment.
You may begin to understand yourself in ways that make it possible to respond differently, relate differently, and feel more at home in your own skin.

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Gestalt Therapy and the Mind-Body Connection

One of the ways Gestalt therapy helps you stay connected to the present is by becoming more aware of the relationship between your mind and body.

You may talk about feeling anxious, angry, afraid, or overwhelmed, but there can be a difference between talking about an emotion and actually noticing how you experience it. Interroception is a term used to become aware of your body’s ability to sense, interpret, and understand it’s own internal signals. This is an important somatic component that often gets overlooked in regular talk therapy. Maybe anxiety feels like tightness in your neck. Maybe fear sits in the pit of your stomach.
By becoming more aware of these physical sensations, you can begin to understand your emotions in a profoune and more nuanced way. It provides an opportunity to do the deeper work that is someytimes necessary to heal.

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What Are Creative Adjustments?

Gestalt therapy uses the term "Creative Adjustment" to describe the ways of coping that we had to learn in order to deal with difficult life events or circumstances.

While those creative adjustments may have helped you get through a very difficult traumatic time in your life, they may no longer be serving you now. In fact, they may be working against you in your present life. They can become rigid and limiting ways of reacting to others and the world, making you less flexible to adapt to new life-affirming situations.

An example of a creative adjustment, is having to be tough because of bullying that you may have suffered as a child. However, as an adult, it may translate that you have trouble being vulnerable in relationships because you are still holding on to that stance of toughness and you don’t have another way of relating in your repertoire because it was never developed. Gestalt therapy can help you break old cycles of relating and then assist you in developing healthier and more flexible states of being.

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what can gestalt therapy help with?

Gestalt therapy can be helpful when you feel stuck in patterns that you don’t fully understand or know how to change.

Our work may focus on:
– Anxiety
– Depression
– Grief
– Self-esteem
– Relationship difficulties
– Difficult emotions
– Repeating patterns
– Feeling disconnected from yourself

The goal is to increase your awareness, understand what may be underneath the difficulties you’re experiencing, and create new possibilities for how you move through your life.

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The Empty Chair Technique

Gestalt therapy typically involves exercises and experiments that are tailored to the specific needs of each client.

The exercises and experiments are designed to arouse both action and emotion, which are at the very core of the gestalt framework. The idea is to help the client have an experience that penetrates deeper than just telling a story about what happened to them. For instance, if a client is talking about something that happened with their boss, I might have the client imagine their boss sitting in an empty chair that is placed directly in front of them and speak to the boss like a role play instead of just telling me the story.

The “empty chair technique” helps the person really feel what they are saying, which can often enable them to resolve conflicts within themselves (which Gestalt therapy refers to as “polarities”) or another person even if the person is not available (or it would not be productive or advisable to speak to the person in real life). Gestalt Therapy seeks to teach clients how to integrate conflicting thoughts and feelings, so that they can feel more whole and at peace within their own skin.

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It's About More Than Just Resolving Problems

Gestalt therapy isn’t only about resolving emotional issues.

It’s also about growth.
As you become more aware of yourself, your emotions, your relationships, and the ways you respond to the world around you, you can begin to make different choices.
That new awareness can create space for more flexibility, connection, and a greater sense of being comfortable in your own skin.

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A Safe Space

By working with you from a Gestalt perspective, I can help create the environment and support that will foster the deeper work that is sometimes necessary in order to fully heal.

I will provide a safe space for us to explore your experiences with respect, compassion, and non-judgement.

Together, we will identify areas in your life where you feel stuck and learn new ways of being that will allow you to experience a more positive, fulfilling and joy-filled life.

Let's Have a Conversation

Maybe you’re curious about Gestalt therapy but aren’t quite sure what it would look like for you.
Let’s have a conversation about what you’re experiencing and what you’d like to change

For a free 15 minute consultation:

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Frequently Asked Questions About Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt therapy can be used to explore concerns including anxiety, depression, grief, self-esteem, relationship difficulties, and patterns that leave you feeling stuck. It focuses on increasing awareness of your thoughts, emotions, body, and experiences in the present moment.

Gestalt therapy is experiential as well as conversational. Rather than only talking about what happened, you may explore what you are experiencing in the present, including your emotions, physical sensations, thoughts, and patterns of relating.

Yes. Caren Jacobs, LCSW offers Gestalt therapy via telehealth throughout New York State.