Gestalt - More than just "talk therapy"
The Mental Health Expedition interview with Psychotherapist Pavel Pijacek Forte - parts 1 & 2
Psychotherapist Pavel Pijacek Forte
- In this conversation, Alison Burnard joins me to explore her personal and professional journey into psychotherapy. She begins by sharing how turning forty became a turning point — a realization that life’s ambitions couldn’t wait any longer. Alison reflects on her early exposure to mindfulness through yoga with her mother, her move to Ireland, and how those experiences gradually led her toward Gestalt therapy, a modality that immediately resonated with her lifelong curiosity about self-awareness and meaning.
- Throughout the interview, Alison delves into the principles of Gestalt therapy — mindfulness, awareness, creativity, and the “here and now.” She explains how Gestalt’s experiential and holistic nature distinguishes it from traditional talk therapy, emphasizing the importance of the therapist–client relationship, presence, and the idea that “anything that gets in the way of the work is the work.” Alison discusses how awareness of both the therapist’s and client’s inner experience creates a living, collaborative field for transformation, where even subtle moments — a pause, a breath, a shift — become meaningful.
Psychotherapist Pavel Pijacek Forte
- In this episode of The Mental Health Expedition, I sat down with Gestalt psychotherapist Alison to explore what truly shows up in the therapy room today — anxiety, anger, disconnection, trauma, and the deep human longing to feel at home in ourselves. We speak openly about solitude, ageing, courage, and what it means to sit with another person in honesty rather than technique.
- We move into powerful territory: how men are conditioned around anger, why mindfulness doesn’t mean “stopping thoughts,” and how Gestalt therapy works with the body, awareness, and relationship. Alison shares her lived experience of ecotherapy, trauma work in nature, spirituality without dogma, and how healing often emerges when we stop forcing change and allow experience to complete itself
