Gestalt Therapy
The goal of Gestalt therapy is for the client to collaborate with the therapist to increase personal awareness by actively exploring the roadblocks that have been getting in the way until now. With increased awareness comes restoration of choice.
Gestalt is a style of therapy that is humanistic in nature. There is no need to visit the past. The approach focuses on the person and the uniqueness of their experience.
Online psychotherapy counselling using the Gestalt method, which involves dialogue with the therapist and processes such as ‘two chair work’, offers powerful tools for:
- improved communication skills
- better tolerance for negative emotions
- increased awareness of your needs
- an improved sense of self-control
- better ability to monitor and regulate mental states
- improved mindfulness
Gestalt has evolved over the past fifty years to become a therapy that is deeply respectful, holistically defined and dynamic in its promotion of self-awareness and growth. The therapeutic relationship itself is based on mutual respect and curiosity, rather than on the idea of expert and patient. In essence, it is experiential, existential and relational rather than a ‘talking about’ therapy. The client is the expert and is encouraged to access their own wisdom.
More than just an online psychotherapy consultation, a Gestalt therapy session with Karen empowers the client to explore new ways of relating and living in the present moment and invites creative experimentation to heighten awareness and explore new possibilities of authentic being.
PMR & Clinical Hypnotherapy
- MD, Dr. Bernice C. Sachs, published an article in the Stress & Health Journal in 1991, stating:
“Sixty per cent of office visits to family practitioners are prompted by emotionally induced, stress-related symptoms. How a person responds to life events, not the events themselves influences susceptibility to disease. Failure to cope well with stress can enhance illness and impair the immune system, whereas adequate coping reflects psychological strength that promotes health.
The core of stress management is teaching a patient to relax and it is here that hypnosis is of major importance. Hypnotic suggestion exerts a potent force on imagination. Using self-hypnosis with ego-strengthening suggestions enhances self-esteem and a healthy sense of control over one’s life.
Neutralizing anxiety, fear and tension through hypnosis creates a generalized decrease in autonomic nervous system activity which results in reducing the stress that contributes to disease.”
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) guided by a clinical hypnotherapist directs the mind to a state of focused attention and inner absorption, bypassing limiting beliefs, habitual thinking and outer distractions. When our minds are concentrated and focused, we are able to use them more powerfully and increase natural intelligence by harnessing unused potential.
All of us have experienced a state in which we are so absorbed in thought – while reading a book or riding the bus to work – that we fail to notice what is happening around us. While we are zoned out, another level of consciousness, our unconscious mind, takes over. These states are similar to hypnosis.
A hypnotherapy consultation with a clinical hypnotherapist involves three functions.
- The hypnotherapist may encourage the use of imagination. Mental imagery is very powerful, especially in a focused state of attention.
- The hypnotherapist may present ideas or suggestions to the client. In a state of concentrated attention, ideas and suggestions compatible with the patient’s desires seem to have a more powerful impact on the mind.
- The hypnotherapist may facilitate, with the client’s consent, unconscious exploration to better understand underlying motivations or identify whether past experiences are associated with a problem.
An online hypnotherapy treatment for anxiety, for instance, can enable you to bypass the critical censor of the conscious mind and connect you with your own deeper knowing, helping you to understand and thereby resolve the source of your anxiety on a deep level.
Family/Systemic Constellations
Constellation work is a process by which systemic influences on a person are made visible. In setting up a constellation, a participant selects people to represent his or her family members and moves them around the room until their relative positions reflect the participant’s experience of his or her family. When this movement is done silently and with respect, the representatives report experiences similar to those of the original family members. The dynamics of the family relationship can be observed. The facilitator works in a highly respectful manner to bring to awareness blocks that prevent love from flowing to all members of the system.
Despite their greatest efforts many people struggle to live their lives to the fullest and to relate well in their closest family relationships. Some describe the experience as if there are powerful forces that seem to thwart them in their lives, and feel entangled within the dynamics of their family as if in a spider’s web. These dynamics are like the wind. The wind is not visible but its presence is felt from the disturbance it leaves in its wake and its impact on our body and senses. Entanglements in family dynamics can result in relationship difficulties between partners, between parents and children, between siblings, and other important relationships. They can also contribute to other difficulties such as addictions, illnesses and negative repetitive patterns in our lives.
When we think psychologically we normally attribute these problems to negative attitudes or our upbringing. Twenty five years ago Bert Hellinger developed a method using constellations, to reveal hidden dynamics within the family, which he called “The Orders of Love”. When the natural order becomes distorted by external forces such as an early death, the negative entanglements can persist for several generations.
No matter what the nature of our family relationships maybe today, or whether we personally had contact with members from previous generations, the family we come from has bearing on who we are in the world. We carry patterns from our family system around with us like a hologram and these effect how much we feel supported and can thrive in the world, and in what circumstances we feel held back. Participants will have the opportunity to explore how ancestral and historical forces influence their own family and personal experience. Through the lens of Systemic Constellation, we may see deeper patterns in ways that allow new pathways of connections, healing and resolution.
Body Psychotherapy
Body psychotherapy and dance movement therapy have developed separately and are professionally distinct, however they have significant common ground and shared principles, including the importance of non-verbal therapeutic techniques and the development of body-focused awareness.
There is a belief that the body holds its own consciousness, and that we can heal our body and mind of illnesses if we:
- Listen to it
- Validate it
- Talk to it
Repressed memories and trauma may be held in the body. Through body psychotherapy, we can locate the trauma and give it a voice. This process facilitates healing and release.
NLP
Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) explores the relationships between how we think (neuro), how we communicate (linguistic) and our patterns of behaviour and emotion (programming). As a discipline, it uses the mind’s own language to change our internal sensory-based representations to consistently achieve our desired outcomes. In effect, NLP is a powerful change management tool that can transform the way we think and act.
The practice of Neuro-linguistic programming concerns the study of subjective experience.
Neuro refers to the mind, through which we process information gathered through the senses:
- visual
- auditory
- kinaesthetic
- olfactory
- gustatory
It is through the senses that we re-present the world to ourselves, so we never actually experience ‘raw’ reality.
Linguistic refers to language, both verbal and non-verbal systems. Language filters and alters our internal representations so they are coded, ordered and given meaning. For example, the word ‘plane’ will conjure up a different picture for each person.
Programming refers to the patterns and sequence of coded instructions in our minds, which make the programmes and strategies that we run in our neurology as a whole.
In consultation with a trained NLP practitioner, the practice of NLP can significantly:
- influence emotional and psychological states
- replace negative behaviours and habits with positive ones
- transform the way people go about everyday activities.
Session and connection call bookings……
Click the button below to find an available time with Karen Lee, or contact directly to find a time that works for you.
Sessions online or face to face and International time zones are also available.
* Concessions and discounts are available.
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“Instant access to your free PMR sleep hypnosis. Allow yourself to rest and rejuvenate with this healing sleep hypnosis. Heal your mind and body, waking refreshed for your day.”
Karen has a unique skill set which has given me results, unlike any other therapist. I highly recommend her to anybody who is ready to do the work. Every session I've walked away feeling lighter. I've found her easy to trust, nonjudgmental, and grounded.
After 20 years of seeing counsellors, I have rarely come across a therapist who specialises in such a powerful tool like gestalt. I've been seeing Karen for a few months & the results are incredible. I'm experiencing an integration of myself at significant ages with who I am now. That feels very liberating & has created more space emotionally to be able to make healthy choices.
I arrived to Karen as a total skeptic and leave as an advocate. Having a psychology degree and having worked in the counselling field, it takes a lot to impress me. She was able to get results from the first session and only 6 intensive sessions before I was happy with the progress and wanted to slow the pace to adjust. Having visited 4 other psychologists in my time to assist with grief and trauma, this has by far had the most impact.
I wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I work and live, the country of the Dharawal people. I acknowledge their continued connection to this country, water, land and community. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.