Understanding and exploring

One of the gifts of therapy is its potential to help us figure out how personal history has shaped both helpful and unhelpful habits of living. In the Gestalt approach, our habits are called creative adaptations. They reflect a balance of protection and flourishing that changes depending on the relational environments we live in. 

Therapy aims to help us move from protection to flourishing as we explore, seek to better understand, and more skilfully engage with, these aspects of the human condition:

• Awareness. Our ability to witness and be present.

• Relatedness. The who and what we’re connecting with.

• Needs: The need-meeting process that drives life.

• Thinking. Your conscious and unconscious core beliefs.

• Feelings. Our emotions carry vital messages.

• Body process. We're embodied minds.

• Actions. The words we speak and the things we do.

Compassionate inquiry into our habits

Dr Gabor Maté is a great spokesperson for the value of counselling and other healing traditions that help us explore and break free from the deeply engrained protective habits, including addictions, that we can all use to manage psychological pain. This video introduces some important therapeutic ideas you might find helpful.