A gestalt therapist works with what is happening right now rather than with a detailed analysis of the past, placing attention on present awareness: what someone is feeling in the moment, what their body is doing while they speak, and what they seem to be avoiding without necessarily noticing it themselves.
An experiential approach
The approach is experiential rather than purely verbal, often using techniques such as the empty chair, where a client speaks directly to an absent person, or to a part of themselves, rather than simply talking about the situation in the abstract. This can bring material into the room with an immediacy that purely conversational approaches sometimes struggle to reach.
What it suits
Gestalt therapy suits unfinished business with someone from the past, grief that has become stuck rather than moving, repeating relationship patterns that keep resurfacing, and a general lack of self-awareness about what someone is actually feeling from moment to moment. UK practitioners usually register with UKCP or BACP, and the experiential, in-the-moment style of the work tends to appeal most to people who find purely talk-based reflection a little too removed from what they are actually experiencing.