Change Happens at the Speed of Trust: Not Urgency
- Katie Mead
- Jan 15
- 3 min read
A Gestalt & Relational Perspective
In therapy, change does not come from pressure or persuasion. It comes from contact.
Despite our best intentions, urgency is often mistaken for motivation. We want symptoms reduced, behaviours shifted, insight gained quickly. But both neuroscience and relational psychotherapy converge on the same truth:
Change happens at the speed of trust, not urgency.
From a Gestalt perspective, change is not something we do to a person; it is something that emerges between people.
Urgency Disrupts Contact
Urgency pulls us out of relationship and into agenda.
When clients feel pushed toward outcomes, the therapeutic field narrows. The nervous system registers threat, not possibility. In Gestalt terms, contact becomes distorted, through compliance, withdrawal, deflection, or resistance.
From a neurobiological lens, urgency activates survival responses:
Fight (argument, opposition)
Flight (avoidance, distraction)
Freeze (shutdown, dissociation)
A nervous system in protection cannot stay in contact.And without contact, change cannot occur.
What the Science (and Gestalt) Agree On
Psychotherapy research consistently shows that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is the strongest predictor of outcomes across modalities.
Gestalt therapy has always held this truth:
Awareness arises in relationship
Regulation is co-created
Change emerges from present-moment contact
We do not create change by fixing what is wrong.We create change by fully meeting what is here.
This aligns with neuroscience: when a client experiences attuned, non-judgmental presence, the nervous system settles, the prefrontal cortex comes back online, and integration becomes possible.
The Paradox of Change
Gestalt therapy is grounded in the paradoxical theory of change: change occurs when a person becomes more fully who they are. Not when they try to become who they are not.
Urgency asks clients to move away from themselves. Trust invites them to arrive.
Presence creates movement. Pressure creates resistance.
Trust Is Active, Not Passive
A relational approach is often mistaken for “slow” or “soft.”In reality, it is precise and intentional.
Trust-based Gestalt work involves:
Tracking moment-to-moment experience
Attending to the relational field
Naming what is happening between us
Respecting resistance as meaningful self-support
Resistance is not the enemy of change. It is the organism protecting itself.
When resistance is met with curiosity rather than urgency, it transforms into information...and then into choice.
Why This Matters Even More for Teens
Adolescence is a period of profound neurological, emotional, and relational reorganization.
Teens are exquisitely sensitive to power dynamics and relational safety. Urgency (especially from adults) often registers as control, judgment, or mistrust, even when care is the intention.
From a Gestalt lens, teens are in the process of forming:
Identity
Autonomy
Relational boundaries
Self-support
For teens, pressure fractures contact. Relationship restores it.
What Gestalt-Based Teen Therapy Looks Like
Change with teens happens through relationship, not instruction.
Gestalt-oriented teen therapy prioritizes:
Authentic presence over performance
Emotional attunement over behaviour management
Experience over explanation
Relationship before goals
The therapist becomes a regulating other: offering consistency, curiosity, and clear boundaries within a trusting relational field.
Teens don’t need to be managed into change.They need to experience themselves safely in relationship.
The Long-Term Impact: Skills for Life
When teens experience trust-based, relational therapy, they are not just resolving current challenges: they are developing lifelong capacities.
Gestalt work supports teens in building:
Emotional awareness and literacy
Nervous system regulation through contact
Self-trust and internal authority
Relational competence and boundaries
Flexibility under stress
These capacities shape how they show up in:
Adult relationships
Work and leadership
Parenting
Mental health across the lifespan
When we support healthy contact in adolescence,we alter the trajectory of adulthood.
The Takeaway
Urgency may soothe adult anxiety, but it rarely supports lasting change.
Gestalt therapy reminds us:
Change arises from awareness
Awareness arises from contact
Contact requires trust
Change does not need pressure. It needs presence, relationship, and time to integrate.
When therapy honours the speed of trust - especially for teens - it doesn’t delay outcomes. It deepens them.
And those outcomes extend far beyond the therapy room.
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