Gestalt Psychotherapy

My fee is €85 p/50 minute session.

I am an accredited psychotherapist with IAHIP and registered with the Irish Council for Psychotherapy (ICP). Depending on your health insurance plan, you may be able to claim back part of the cost of psychotherapy sessions with VHI, Laya Healthcare, Irish Life Health, and Level Health. Please check your individual policy with your insurer.

CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and Gestalt therapy are both well-established approaches, but they work in different ways.

CBT is generally more structured and focused on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviours. Because it is often short-term, measurable, and supported by a large body of research, it is commonly recommended by GPs and public health systems such as the HSE.

Gestalt therapy takes a more relational, embodied, and exploratory approach. Rather than focusing primarily on changing thoughts, it pays attention to your present-moment experience - including emotions, bodily sensations, nervous system responses, relationship dynamics, and the ways you have learned to adapt within your life and relationships.

Gestalt therapy also recognises that we are not separate from the environments and relationships we exist within. Therapy may include exploring questions of meaning, identity, belonging, uncertainty, freedom, and how you want to live and relate more fully in your life.

Neither approach is inherently “better.” Different people are drawn to different ways of working depending on what they need, where they are in life, and the kind of support they are seeking.

Yes. Research suggests that Gestalt therapy can be an effective approach for supporting anxiety, depression, emotional regulation, relationship difficulties, self-awareness, and overall psychological wellbeing. Several reviews and meta-analyses have found Gestalt therapy to be comparable in effectiveness to other established therapeutic approaches.

At the same time, Gestalt therapy can be more difficult to research in the same way as highly structured approaches such as CBT. CBT often follows standardised protocols that are easier to measure through quantitative studies and symptom-based outcomes. Gestalt therapy is more relational, experiential, and tailored to the uniqueness of each person, relationship, and therapeutic encounter. Rather than applying the same intervention in the same way for every client, the work responds to the lived experience, context, and present-moment process that emerges within therapy itself.

Because of this, research into Gestalt therapy often includes more qualitative and process-oriented studies exploring people’s lived experience of change, relational healing, embodiment, self-awareness, and long-term integration. Recent systematic reviews suggest that Gestalt therapy can support meaningful and sustained improvements in emotional wellbeing, self-development, interpersonal functioning, and quality of life.

Many people are drawn to Gestalt therapy not only for symptom relief, but because it offers a deeper embodied awareness of how they live, relate, protect themselves, create meaning, and make contact with the world around them.

Relational Gestalt therapy is a embodied and experiential approach that pays attention not only to thoughts and emotions, but also to the body, nervous system, and present-moment experiences as they unfold in the therapeutic relationship.

As a relational therapeutic approach Gestalt therapists recognise that we are continually shaped by our relationships, environments, histories, cultures, and the wider contexts we live within. Difficulties are not understood simply as individual problems to fix, but as experiences that emerge within the complexity of being human and being in relationship with the world around you.

Gestalt. as a relational therapy, involves developing greater awareness of how you make contact with yourself, others, and your life — including the ways you adapt depending on each relationship or context. For example, you will start to notice how you move toward some while tensing with or pulling back from connection with others. In Gestalt therapy the work is about deepening your understanding of yourself through these adaptive patterns show up, getting clearer on how they have served you over time and, noticing how they may have been thematic in the shaping of your relationships.

Over time, this awareness can create the possibility for new choices, new and more authentic ways of relating, and a more embodied sense of connection, meaning, and aliveness.

You can be struggling with the ways you have learned to adapt to relationships, environments, expectations, and life experiences over time. Or maybe you’re in the midst of a sudden or pending change in life’s circumstances and feeling alone in that place.

You may be feeling emotionally overwhelmed, anxious, burned out, stuck in recurring patterns, or navigating grief or loss, or sensing that something in your life no longer feels sustainable or aligned.

Or you may be longing for a more connected, authentic, and meaningful way of being in your life and relationships.

Therapy can offer a space to slow down and become more aware of what is happening within you and around you — emotionally, physically, relationally, and existentially.

How do you know if therapy is right for you is something you can assess step by step - what’s important is feeling the therapeutic relationship is a good fit.

If you decide to work with me we can meet for an initial, no obligation, session to see what it might be like to work together. From there we can review again at session six and decide from there what feels right for you.

Yes - many people choose to engage in both therapy and coaching simultaneously, particularly during periods of transition, change, burnout, or personal growth.

Therapy and coaching can complement one another well when the purpose and boundaries of each space are clear. Therapy may support deeper emotional healing, relational patterns, grief, anxiety, or the impact of past experiences, while coaching may focus more on direction, identity, leadership, or navigating change in everyday life.

Both relational coaching and Gestalt therapy share an understanding that we are shaped through relationship, context, and lived experience rather than existing as isolated individuals. In both spaces, greater awareness can support new possibilities for choice, connection, and action.

What matters most is that the work feels supportive and appropriately paced for where you are right now.

Traditional talk therapy can focus primarily on thoughts, reflection, and verbal understanding. Gestalt therapy, as an embodied relational approach, recognises that your experiences are lived physically as well as emotionally and cognitively.

What this looks like, if you choose to work with me, is that I will bring your awareness to the process of emerging emotions as they arise - not just what you’re thinking and feeling but also what you’re sensing and perceiving.

This may involve noticing bodily sensations, breath, tension, emotional responses, impulses, patterns of activation or withdrawal, and how experience unfolds moment by moment within the therapeutic relationship itself.

Our bodies are understood not simply as something we carry around, but as an important source of memory, protection, adaptation, awareness, and meaning.

This, for some, can feel like a strange and even challenging way of working at first. If, in reading this you notice yourself tensing at the thought of working in this way, preferring a more structured and methodical approach, a talk therapy like CBT may be a better fit for you.

If, on the other hand, you notice a curiosity or excitement as you read about this whole person approach a body-oriented approach like Gestalt therapy may feel like a better fit for you.

Yes, you can claim income tax relief on psychotherapy and counselling expenses in Ireland at the standard tax rate of 20%. Because I am an accredited therapist with IAHIP and registered with ICP you are eligible to claim tax relief (up to 20%) on psychotherapy fees paid (though any portion reimbursed by your health insurance cannot be claimed).