Key details
Date | Friday 21 August 2026
Duration | 9.30 am–4.30 pm
Location | Elie, Gestalt Centre Training Campus, 27 Royal Parade Parkville, VIC 3052
Fees | $350 (includes GST)
Facilitators | Tom Trikojus and Nicole Van Os
PACFA Endorsement | Category A (6 hours)
About this workshop
Clients often arrive caught in an impasse.
Perhaps they're repeating the same conflict in their relationship, unable to move forward yet unable to leave. Perhaps they're facing the possibility that a relationship is ending, caught between hope, grief, fear and uncertainty. Or perhaps the relationship has already ended, and they're trying to make sense of what comes next.
These moments can be some of the most challenging—and potentially transformative—we encounter as therapists.
As practitioners, it's easy to feel pulled towards finding solutions, offering reassurance or helping clients make decisions. Yet impasse often asks something quite different of us: to slow down, tolerate uncertainty, stay with complexity, and trust the creative possibilities that emerge when we don't rush to resolution.
This experiential workshop explores how Gestalt therapy understands impasse and ending—not as problems to eliminate, but as meaningful thresholds that invite awareness, choice and transformation.
Drawing on years of clinical experience, the facilitators will share practical wisdom, case examples and experiential exercises that participants can immediately integrate into their own therapeutic work.
During the workshop we'll explore
- Why impasse is a normal and often necessary part of intimate relationships.
- How to recognise when clients—and therapists—have become stuck.
- Working with stuckness as a creative adjustment rather than a problem to solve.
- Supporting clients when one partner wants to leave while the other wants to stay.
- Remaining present with grief, relief, fear, ambivalence and uncertainty during relationship endings.
- Working with the practical realities that often become foreground during separation, including children, finances and changing family structures.
- The paradoxical Gestalt approach of moving towards impasse rather than away from it.
- How endings invite transformation, meaning-making and the possibility of a different future.
Participants will have the opportunity to
- deepen their understanding of impasse from a Gestalt perspective
- explore the therapist's own relationship with stuckness and endings
- work with clinical case material and facilitated discussion
- participate in experiential exercises that can be adapted for therapeutic practice
- leave with practical approaches for supporting clients through some of therapy's most challenging relational moments.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop will be particularly valuable for psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors, social workers and other mental health practitioners working with individuals or couples.
Whether you're experienced in relationship work or looking to build confidence in working with impasse, grief and endings, you'll leave with practical insights grounded in relational Gestalt practice.
A certificate of completion is available upon request.
What can you expect?
These experiential workshops are designed for therapists, counsellors, and anyone interested in deepening their relational awareness.
You’ll explore key gestalt principles—contact, awareness, dialogue, and creative adjustment—through direct practice and reflection.
By the end of the series, you’ll have a richer appreciation of how intimacy, conflict, and change emerge in relationship, and how to meet them with curiosity and compassion.
Is this for me?
Ideal for counsellors, psychotherapists, social workers, psychologists, and students in helping professions who wish to:
- expand their relational skill set
- integrate gestalt concepts into their work
- explore their own relational patterns and growth edges.
The workshops also welcome anyone curious about how gestalt practice can illuminate personal and professional relationships.
About your facilitators
About the Gestalt Centre
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.
Refund policy
Refunds are available up to 7 days before the event.
Please note:
In the unlikely event that this workshop is cancelled or postponed, registration fees will be fully refunded. Please note that the organisers are not responsible for any travel, accommodation, or other costs incurred by participants.
