A gestalt approach to working with habits and addictions

Date | 17 & 18 November, 9.30 am–4.30 pm (Mon/Tue)

Duration | 2 days

Location | Elie, Gestalt Centre Training Campus, 27 Royal Parade Parkville, VIC 3052

Fee | $700 (includes GST)

Facilitator | Noel Haarburger, BBSc, BEd(Counselling), AdvDipGestaltTherapy, ClinMGANZ, MAPS

This workshop is designed for therapists who work with clients struggling with problematic habitual behaviours, compulsions, or addictions. Workshop participants may bring their own lived experience of these challenges, offering an opportunity to explore both professional and personal dimensions of these patterns in a supportive and reflective space.

The workshop will explore how habitual behaviours—whether excessive social media use, overworking, or more severe substance-based or process-oriented addictions—emerge as attempts to manage dysregulated nervous systems, unmet personal needs, or deeper spiritual and emotional pain. These behaviours often arise as coping strategies for overwhelming experiences or unresolved trauma, yet they can reinforce cycles of disconnection—from self, others, and the broader world.

From a gestalt perspective, addictions are understood as adaptive responses—efforts to cope with life's difficulties that, over time, can solidify into rigid or chaotic patterns. These patterns often feel uncontrollable and limit emotional, physical, cognitive, and spiritual integration.

This workshop aims to equip therapists with insights and tools to work effectively with clients navigating these issues, while also offering space to reflect on their own experiences. The intention is to support participants in reconnecting with awareness, fostering health, and building deeper connections with themselves and others, while enhancing their capacity to regulate and promote resilience in both personal and professional contexts.

In this 2-day workshop, you will:

• Gain practical tools and techniques for supporting clients struggling with destructive habits or addiction through a trauma-informed and relational gestalt approach.
• Explore how addictions develop as coping mechanisms tied to unmet needs and dysregulated nervous systems.
• Learn to identify and address the underlying causes of addiction while fostering healthier ways for clients to meet their needs.
• Develop skills to create a safe, compassionate therapeutic environment that encourages emotional, physical, cognitive, and spiritual integration.
• Participate in case studies, experiential exercises, and group discussions to deepen your understanding of the complex dynamics of addiction.

By the end of the workshop, you will have new insights and strategies to help clients move beyond rigid patterns of self-regulation toward a more integrated, fulfilling way of living.

This workshop is ideal for therapists, counsellors, social workers, and mental health professionals who support clients affected by addiction. It will be particularly valuable for those looking to:

• Understand how trauma and addiction intersect.
• Develop skills in applying a trauma-informed, relational gestalt approach.

Whether you are experienced in working with addiction or new to this area, you’ll leave with practical tools and strategies to foster healing and resilience in your clients.

BBSc, BEd(Counselling), AdvDipGestaltTherapy, ClinMGANZ, MAPS

Noel has been a faculty member at Gestalt Therapy Australia since 2001. He now works in private practice as a Psychologist and Psychotherapist, working with individuals and couples, as well as offering supervision to allied health professionals. He also practices and trains Equine Assisted Psychotherapy and Nature Assisted eco-therapy at the equine psychotherapy institute in Daylesford.

Noel has worked extensively in a wide variety of counselling and psychological services since 1995, including family counselling, drug and alcohol, sexual assault, problematic gambling, and men’s behavioural change programs.

Noel has a special interest in trauma and body work, as well as integrating developmental and attachment perspectives, Buddhist psychology, and non-dual spiritual approaches into his work. He is a certified ‘Somatic Experiencing’ practitioner, which utilises highly effective and safe body awareness methods for negotiating and releasing trauma, developed by Peter Levine. He has also completed training in NA touch. Noel is also an ongoing student of the ‘Diamond Heart approach’, a Western psycho-spiritual school that integrates Western depth psychology, Sufism and Buddhist approaches to personal and spiritual development.

The Gestalt Centre is the heart of Melbourne’s Gestalt community. We offer a four-year psychotherapy training program through Gestalt Therapy Australia, staying true to the experiential roots of Gestalt while embracing cutting-edge developments in contemporary Gestalt thinking and practice worldwide.

We also operate ConnectGround, a community-based counselling and psychotherapy clinic. ConnectGround serves as both a training facility for psychotherapists and a provider of low-cost individual and group therapy for clients. The clinic emphasises the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist as a key support for building awareness and adaptability. Psychotherapy interns and volunteers gain valuable hands-on experience, enhancing their skills and professionalism through client work.

https://www.connectground.com.au/

https://www.gestaltcentre.com.au/

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