Clients are multidimensional beings with a unique map of how to relate to themselves and the world. When a clinician takes a map (i.e. a framework) and places it onto the client, the fullness of the client’s innate wisdom and inherent movement towards health is often missed. Instead of trying to put a map onto a client, mapping the client’s unique inner territory allows the client to increase awareness and rediscover their sovereign will. It is from this embodied place of sovereignty that their transformation transpires.
Gestalt therapists and transpersonal counselors learn their client’s map for the sake of being fully present and aware of the actuality of what is. We do not discover the client’s map in order to move around their inner territory. We do not try to fix or change the client, but rather we aim to see them accurately. Through our accurate witness, we affirm the client’s humanity and support them in finding their way through the matrix of their inner map. In this process, the client’s own awake awareness, emotional processing, breath, and autonomy guide their healing and transformation. The deepest repair of their system is made possible here.
In chapter 9 of The Awakened Therapist: Spirituality, Consciousness, and Subtle Energy in Gestalt Therapy, I offer images, such as the one pictured here, as visual representations of how to map a client’s inner world. (Kwiker, 2025).
To support this endeavor, I’ve compiled a list here of qualities that are useful in being an accurate witness. Here are 4 steps to support you in mapping your client’s inner world:
- Hold Space from Awake Awareness: When you, the clinician, allow your mind to retreat, you begin to build trust in the inherent wisdom of awareness-based knowing, also known as awake awareness. Awake awareness is that part of our inner knowing that is formless and liberated. It is the loving, welcoming quality of infinite wisdom. When alone in your meditation practice, perhaps you have touched the sacred essence of awake awareness. Here, you bring that quality with you as you hold space and allow your mind to be quite.
- Observe what is actually here: From awake awareness, the useful qualities of your mind come forth and support you in seeing clearly. When you are full present and in contact, you are aware of what is happening in the hear and now and you are not projecting your ideas, analysis, or interpretations onto your client. This makes it easier to track your client’s inner map without interpretation, analysis, or attempts at fixing.
- Name what you’re seeing: In simple and non-judgmental terms, reflect your client back to them as they actual are, not as they say they are.
- For example, if a client talks for quite some time about all the ways they are judgmental, in that time, you will reflect their words back to them to contact them as they are. However, to reflect the actuality of their expression is a different skill. Perhaps you say, “It sounds like you’re judging yourself for being judgmental” in order to reflect the map accurately. This now becomes a pin on the map–judges self for judging others.
- If your client asks you how to get rid of anger, instead of responding with conceptual knowledge about anger, reflect the actuality of what is happening in the here and now, “You want to vanquish anger.” This becomes a pin on the map–resists anger.
- If you notice a pattern is persistent in various environments, reflecting that to the client can be useful.
- If your client is talking about their partner and their meaning-making seems to be that they want their partner to be different, reflect the essence of what they’re saying. “It seems like you think if your partner was different, you would be happy.” This reflection illuminates the projection without telling the client they are projecting.
- These reflections illuminate the way a client is interrupting contact with themselves and the present moment, which is essential for their transformation.
- Invite your clients awake awareness to guide what happens next: After offering a quality reflective observation, using the awareness continuum is extremely helpful in the unfolding of the session. Asking the client, “What do you notice when I say that?” allows them to awaken to themselves as they are, not as they think they should be. Once they see themselves as they actually are, how they respond guides what happens next.
To hone these skills, join our Awakened Therapist Certification Training: https://thespirituallyaligned.com/trainings/
Check out our podcast here: https://thespirituallyaligned.com/awakened-therapist-podcast/
References:
Kwiker, H. (2025). The Awakened Therapist: Spirituality, Consciousness, and Subtle Energy in Gestalt Therapy. Routledge.