What is Gestalt Therapy?
The word gestalt means a coherent whole that is understood to be more important than its components. In fact, Gestalt therapy focuses on you in the present moment and considers your relationship with the environment and others as part of you. In this treatment, instead of finding the root of your problems in the past or worrying about the future, it focuses on the present and solves it in the moment and now! This technique helps you find your value, face your emotions and take responsibility for your life!
Empty chair technique:
The empty seat technique is one of the key gestalt therapy techniques. This technique helps you to deal with your feelings or even to re-experience some of the situations that have bothered you, these situations may have been between you and others or even internally and with yourself! This treatment will help you to look at situations from another angle, re-experience them in the present, and increase your insight to perform better in future situations!
How?
You sit in a chair with an empty chair in front of you and you choose who is sitting in that chair (yes, in your imagination!), That person can be anyone you have unresolved feelings for. And you can even talk to your second half!
The interesting part of the story just starts, you are supposed to talk directly to the person you have in mind, as if he is there! And after expressing your feelings and questions, your place will change! Now you are that person and you have to answer all your emotions and questions! This process may be repeated several times, but in the end you feel liberated, maybe even if it is possible to turn that conversation into reality and face that person! Even this method may help your therapist see a new side of your problem.
Is this method suitable for me?
The empty chair technique can be useful for people with anxious, depressed, low self-esteem, bad morals, interpersonal problems, grief, personality problems, internal problems and self-loathing.
What does it help me in the end?
Eventually you will be able to work on your accumulated and unresolved thoughts and feelings and bring them to fruition, reach a compromise after a traumatic situation and end it, deal with your grief, look at problems from different angles. Reduce traumatic thoughts and ultimately improve your behavior, and restore inner peace by finding new insights into your feelings.
The last word
The empty chair technique can be stressful at times, but it can be a powerful therapeutic tool to help people who need to process past injuries, cope with grief, and experience emotional distress.
Finding support for your mental and emotional health is the first step to improving your general condition, and talking to a trained and experienced therapist or mental health professional in the vacant chair technique is often the best place to start your treatment.
Do not forget that this technique must be done under the supervision of a therapist and it is better to avoid doing it without the help of a specialist!