How Learning to Be Present Changed My Therapy Experience

Gestalt therapy isn’t about analyzing the past; it’s about fully experiencing the present. Discover how this powerful approach helps break old patterns by bringing awareness to what’s happening right now.  I walked into my first Gestalt therapy session expecting another round of “Tell me about your childhood.” Instead, my therapist asked a question that threw me completely: “What are you aware of in your body right now?” I blinked, confused. Weren’t we supposed to be digging into my problems? But as I tuned into my physical sensations, the tightness in my shoulders, the slight tremble in my hands, I began to understand what made Gestalt therapy different. This wasn’t about picking apart my past; it was about learning to be fully present with my experience in the here and now. 

That initial session set the tone for what would become one of the most transformative therapeutic journeys of my life. Where traditional talk therapy had me endlessly analyzing why I felt certain ways, Gestalt therapy invited me to notice how I was experiencing those feelings in the present moment. My therapist might ask me to exaggerate a gesture I was making unconsciously or give voice to the conflicting parts of myself. At first, it felt theatrical, even silly. But as I leaned into the experiments, I began discovering things about myself that years of conventional therapy had never uncovered. 

The power of Gestalt lies in its focus on awareness. Rather than treating emotions as problems to be solved, it teaches you to sit with them, explore them, and ultimately understand them as part of your whole experience. I remember one session where I was talking about my fear of confrontation when my therapist noticed my hands were clenched into fists. “What would those fists like to say?” she asked. The question startled me, but as I gave voice to the anger my body had been holding onto, something shifted. For the first time, I wasn’t just talking about my avoidance of conflict, I was experiencing it physically and emotionally in the room. 

What surprised me most was how this present-moment focus actually helped resolve past issues more effectively than directly addressing them ever had. By becoming aware of how old patterns showed up in my current thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, I could work with them in real time. When anxiety about an upcoming work presentation surfaced, instead of analyzing where my fear of judgment came from, we explored how it manifested now, the racing thoughts, the shallow breathing, the catastrophic predictions. Through Gestalt experiments, I learned to stay with these experiences rather than avoid them, which paradoxically made them lose their power over me. 

The empty chair technique became one of our most powerful tools. At first, I felt ridiculous talking to an empty chair as if it held someone from my life. But when I “spoke” to my absent father in this way, emotions surfaced that years of talking about him had never accessed. The technique allowed me to express things I’d never said, hear imagined responses, and most importantly become aware of how this unfinished business was affecting my current relationships. It wasn’t about rewriting history but about completing what was incomplete in myself. 

As my therapy progressed, I began noticing changes in my daily life. I became more aware of when I was physically tensing in response to stress. I caught myself more quickly when slipping into old patterns of avoidance or people-pleasing. Most profoundly, I developed a new ability to sit with discomfort rather than immediately trying to fix it. This translated into better relationships, as I could be more present with others instead of getting lost in my own thoughts and reactions. 

What makes Gestalt therapy unique is its holistic approach. It doesn’t separate thoughts from emotions from physical sensations, it works with the whole person in the present moment. My therapist helped me see how much I lived in my head, analyzing life rather than experiencing it. Through Gestalt, I learned to trust my bodily awareness as much as my thoughts, to value what I was feeling now as much as why I might be feeling it. 

If traditional talk therapy feels like you’re constantly digging without finding relief, Gestalt offers a different path. It’s not always comfortable, being fully present with our experience rarely is but it’s remarkably effective for breaking patterns that analysis alone can’t shift. The beauty of this approach is that it doesn’t just help you understand yourself better; it helps you experience yourself differently, creating new possibilities for how you engage with life moment to moment. 

References

Wheeler, G. (2014). *Gestalt Therapy*. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4317359

Brownell, P. (Ed.). (2015). *Handbook for theory, research, and practice in Gestalt therapy*. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118625392.wbecp088

Polster, E., & Polster, M. (1973). *Gestalt therapy integrated: Contours of theory and practice*. Brunner/Mazel.

Perls, F. S., Hefferline, R. F., & Goodman, P. (1951). *Gestalt therapy: Excitement and growth in the human personality*. Dell.