Gestalt therapy operates through two mechanisms: "awareness" and "experiencing."
Awareness
Typically, a person is not fully aware of their role in creating the problem. For instance, it might seem that unpleasant feelings arise on their own or that unsatisfactory relationships develop by themselves. In such cases, I help to identify the very quick and unnoticed automatic reactions that contribute to creating an unsatisfactory situation. When a person becomes aware of these automatisms, they gain the ability to respond differently.
Experiencing
Often, human problems result from holding onto negative emotions from the past. It works like this: internally, there is strong tension associated with situation N => the person unconsciously seeks to relieve this tension => without realizing it, they create situations similar to N so that these feelings can find an outlet => the drama of their life repeats in a new cycle. Experiencing serves to break this repetitive pattern.