Gestalts therapy involves creating awareness for the client so that they are able to understand what they are experiencing at the present moment. Gestalt therapy is founded on the principles of choice, awareness, and responsibility (Corey, 2017). The goal of gestalt therapy is to affirm the client’s capacity for growth and healing which can be achieved through interpersonal insight, and contact. Motivational interviewing is centred on changing the client’s behaviour whereby they are assisted in exploring, and resolving their uncertainties.
Motivational interviewing is founded on humanistic principles, and was created for the purpose of intervening on the problem of drinking, and in recent times, it’s being used for clinical issues including compulsive gambling, depression, anxiety, substance abuse and eating-disorder (Mann, 2020). Karen Campbell is a female of 34 years and has been married to Joe for 17 years. Karen is a stay at home mum with two children Jacob and Kali, and works with her friend as a part time job in a house cleaning job.
The goal of gestalt therapy is to assist the client to experience internal conflicts, gain self-awareness, work through issues that prevent them from completing their tasks and resolve inconsistencies (Corey, 2017). One of the interventions I would use with Karen is the empty-chair technique where we exchange sits, and at one point she is the one in control, and at another point I become the one in control. This technique will assist Karen to get in touch with some of the feelings she may be denying for instance, she is yet to fully accept her mother’s death, and the fact that her children have grown up. The other intervention is the reversal technique where I will assist Karen in accepting and recognizing some of her positive and negative attributes for instance, I will ask her to do be nice instead of being violent with her husband and see how it works.
Karen is having difficulties in her relationship with her children and to solve this, I will use the rehearsal technique where she can share loudly with me her experiments with her new behaviour. Using the rehearsal technique, Karen will be able to become aware of her social role and the degree to which she wants to get approved or accepted. I will also train Karen on being able to stay with the feelings she does not want to accept or face and for her to dig deeper into the feeling she may be trying to escape from. Staying with the feeling technique will enable her to heal in order to experience newer levels of growth (Corey, 2015).
Motivational interviewing will enable me work with Karen as I will invite her contributions to ways she thinks will help in solving her problems, and emphasize that she is responsible for getting alternative solutions (Neukrug, 2015). I will also avoid arguing with Karen and instead offer a listening ear, and express my empathy while viewing her resistance to therapy as a healthy response. I will accommodate Karen by ensuring she becomes an ally who is a crucial part of the therapy’s success. As a motivational interviewing therapist, I will ensure that I do not judge or criticize Karen rather try to understand what she is going through and create a safe environment for her that she can experience change. Karen will additionally explain to me what areas she thinks she can change and in turn, I will drive our conversations in the directions of encouraging that change.
