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the bristol therapist

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Contact Me

the bristol therapista gestalt therapist in bristol Close

Home
About Me
- Training & experience
About gestalt
Therapies
Getting started
Blog
Contact Me

the bristol therapist

Simon Stafford-Townsend
28 Orchard Street
Bristol, BS1 5EH

simon@thebristoltherapist.co.uk

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thebristoltherapist

Gestalt therapist in Bristol focusing on anxiety, depression, trauma, and ADHD support.

"Self-sabotage or self-protection?" Self-sabotage

"commitment is easiest when the limitations are im

“contact is the recognition of ’otherness’,

"the acute awareness of discrepancy between suppor

"knowing other people is intelligence, knowing you

"what are you aware of now?" Here and now awarene

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The Bristol Therapist

Gestalt psychotherapist, practising in Bristol, in-person & online.

The Bristol Therapist

5 months ago

"Self-sabotage or self-protection?"Self-sabotage is an interesting example of therapy speak that has entered everyday use. I think it's also been picked up by a lot of people's inner critics as a way of legitimising critical self-talk. Talking about ways in which you sabotage yourself might just be another way of your inner critic chastising you. In gestalt terms, you could be stuck in a topdog/underdog conflictWhen clients talk a lot about self-sabotage, I offer an experiment: what if you reframed this self-sabotage as self-protection? Just make some I statements about how you self-sabotage ("I self-sabotage by ....") and switch out self-sabotage for self-protection. Importantly, pay attention to how you respond to yourself when you make the self-protection statement.This doesn't mean you're making excuses for not changing behaviour that needs to change. In fact, you'll usually find it easier to change behaviour when you understand its function than when you attack yourself for doing it in the first place. #therapistsofinstagram #psychotherapy #gestalttherapy #therapythoughts{background image of humanoid figures created by Canva's AI} ... See MoreSee Less

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The Bristol Therapist

6 months ago

I wanted to put on record my thoughts about what is going on at UKCP in relation to conversion therapy and the tacit endorsement of gender critical views. Silence after all is often taken as assent, and a gestalt therapist has no business being confluent with injustice. So here is my thinking at this time. ... See MoreSee Less

A very British transphobia - some initial thoughts on UKCP's withdrawal from the MoU

thebristoltherapist.co.uk

UKCP has withdrawn from the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy. This is my response and current thoughts.

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The Bristol Therapist

6 months ago

"commitment is easiest when the limitations are imposed by the actual circumstances... if you can’t or won’t take a way out, the commitment to what is possible within the confinement is life saving and life enhancing, even until death" - Laura Perls (Living at the Boundary)Laura Perls on commitment is interesting and can be a bit of a struggle I think. Within the context of Gestalt, the idea here is to accept the current situation in order to navigate it most effectively. Which can lead us into the thorny territory of potentially arguing for the acceptance of what is unacceptable. Because why should I? Surely if I accept a situation of injustice, I collude with it and become part of the problem. Well not quite. Whilst, "commitment to what is possible within the confinement", does require accepting the existential facts of the situation, it does not mean endorsing them. This is the Gestalt observation that in order to deal effectively with their current situation, a person must be able to orient themselves. And orientation depends on being able to make contact with what actually is. No one ever escaped prison by imagining they were already free.#womenshistorymonth #therapistsofinstagram #psychotherapy #gestalttherapy #lauraperls #commitment ... See MoreSee Less

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The Bristol Therapist

6 months ago

“contact is the recognition of ’otherness’, the awareness of difference. It is the boundary experience of ‘i and the other’”Contact is fundamental to Gestalt therapy. It goes right to the heart of how Gestalt therapists understand the self. "Self is the system of contacts at a given time" is the formulation in our founding text (Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the human personality). Self = contact. In the absence of any sense of something different, there can be no self. "I" and "other" arise simultaneously, mutually necessary. This is the essence of co-creation. My environment creates me as much as I create my environment. We can't be aware of everything all at once, so the ways in which we modify this contact with our environment is meaningful. That is the rationale for the kinds of awareness work Gestalt therapy engages in. Make a habit of periodically noticing what you are aware of and how you become aware of it. Then consider what it means that you become aware of the things you become aware of. #womenshistorymonth #therapistsofinstagram #psychotherapy #gestalttherapy #lauraperls #difference #otherness ... See MoreSee Less

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The Bristol Therapist

6 months ago

"the acute awareness of discrepancy between support and contact functions is experienced as anxiety" - Laura Perls (Living at the Boundary)This encapsulates for me the bodily experience of anxiety, which is usually present for people before a cognitive understanding that the experience is anxiety. It emphasises for me that anxiety is a barometer for a certain kind of support. This helps to explain how anxiety can be so confusing; the gap between what we know immediately in our bodies and what we understand cognitively is disorienting.Contact functions refers to all the ways in which the human organism makes contact with its environment. The concept is deliberately broad in order to encompass the full complexity that comes with being human. My most obvious contact functions are the physical senses. But social roles can also be contact functions mediating how I make contact in particular social contexts. Anxiety can arise from a felt sense of disruption in these roles as much as in intuiting that something is off in a specific relationship.Following bodily experience without rushing to interpret. Allowing anxiety to function as a barometer showing us where anxiety rises and where it lowers. This can lead to important insights. #womenshistorymonth #therapistsofinstagram #psychotherapy #gestalttherapy #lauraperls #anxiety ... See MoreSee Less

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