Treating depression in gestalt therapy is not a quick process, but it is worth it.

Healing comes about because clients return to themselves and to deeper experience. And that takes some time.

Assessment

In gestalt the therapist does not only assess the client’s state.

They also observe with interest what happens within themselves in contact with a depressed client.

Here, for example, is how one therapist describes their own awareness:

Such an assessment is the first step of therapy.

It brings an understanding of the rigid patterns by which the client relates not only to their therapist but also to the people around them and to themselves.

THE THERAPY OF DEPRESSION

If we regard depression as a fixed gestalt, we assume that in the past the client had a way of relating that was functional and that then became entrenched.

We can therefore ask which gestalt has become «fixed» in the case of depression.

We can observe a recurring pattern of interruption at the transition to the next phase of the contact cycle.

This has to do with the fact that a depressed person lacks the energy and the motivation for contact.

Work with such clients centres on one main task — creating a safe environment, a safe field of relationship in which the capacity for self-expression can be activated.

It is important to stress that the gestalt therapist does not see the depressed client as an object to be investigated and to which therapeutic procedures are applied.

The gestalt therapist works with the relationship between themselves and the client.

The therapist’s task is to give the client the chance to express energy that is experienced inside and that, for whatever reason, the client judges to be unwanted.

It is important to find, to highlight and to value even the briefest moments in which the client mobilises their energy for an action that leads to interpersonal contact — when they look the other person straight in the eye, for instance, or voice an opinion of their own.

And then such a client gradually learns how to protect themselves in ways other than isolating themselves from their feelings, their actions or the world around them.

In the relationship with the therapist the client learns anew the capacity for flexible contact.

Later they gradually draw on the support of the therapeutic relationship to try out these new capacities in other situations as well.