THE GESTALT PRINCIPLE & HEALING
Dr. Krista Coombs, DrAc, IFMCP
October 17, 2025
For the past few months, I’ve been experimenting with a new painting method called Paint Pours. There are like 50 types of pain pours! For weeks I embarked on a learning spree to understand the ins and outs of how to mix various acrylic paints with different types of mediums and water to get the textures I was looking for and then started playing around with the different paint pour techniques.
Gosh, it was loads of fun!
⬇️Here's one of my first paintings of a seascape!
But paint pours are a WAY different painting style to the style of artwork I use to do, which was realistic sketching.
Drawing an image, trying to make it as close to real as possible, was a very stressful endeavor for me. So stressful, I stopped doing it years ago. It was just too structured and invited too much internal and external criticism, and so destroyed much of the fun for me.
But paint pouring has been so different for me!
Every pour I did couldn’t be controlled.
Every painting was a one-of-a-kind, despite the choices of paints, tools and pour style.
My brain was given freedom to explore and play rather than be so structured. The internal and external criticism stopped. SO liberating!
And you know what happens when I and others look at my newest paintings?
We all see different images in them.
Each person’s brain creates pictures based on what the person has witnessed in their own past. Every person’s perspective creates different images.
All that recent paint pouring reminded me of this cool theory called the GESTALT PRINCIPLE OF CLOSURE which describes how our brains react to familiar patterns even though we have received incomplete information.
So, the varied patterns in the paintings – which are by nature, completely random - remind each of us of something we’ve seen before. The brain simply fills in the gaps of information to make the painting make sense and feel more familiar.
TRY THIS ⬇️
Imagine drawing two sides of a triangle.
Even if you don’t add the third line to complete it, you’d know it had the shape of a triangle, right?
Well, that’s your brain filling in the gap; the missing information; the missing knowledge – the third line of the triangle.
We do this every moment of every day!
Every interaction in your life involves your brain filling in knowledge gaps so that the interaction makes sense and hopefully keeps you feeling safe in the “known”, even if the situation is uncomfortable.
Familiarity is based on your personal experiences. So when we are experiencing something, we automatically try to make it seem safe by filling in the knowledge gaps with ideas that are familiar or make the situation feel more familiar.
HOW THE GESTALT PRINCIPLE APPLIES TO YOUR HEALTH
I run up against people’s knowledge gaps daily in my medical practice. Here are three scenarios that I’ve seen play out in the clinic that might help make this GESTALT PRINCIPLE concept stick.
SCENARIO 1
Imagine a friend has recommended you try Acupuncture therapy to help manage the intense neck pain causing headaches after a recent fender bender. But you’re afraid to try Acupuncture because needles are involved.
You are afraid of needles because in your past, getting a blood test was a frightening and painful experience. Your brain has not yet been given all the relevant information about how Acupuncture works and the different type of needles used or skill required to practice it safely.
Yet, your brain automatically fills in the gaps in your knowledge based on your past experience with giving blood using hypodermic needles, and assumes it’ll likely be a similar experience.
So, in the end, you don’t book an Acupuncture appointment and continue to suffer needlessly with headaches instead of learning more about Acupuncture first.
SCENARIO 2
Now, imagine you’re 38 years old and perimenopause is knocking on your door!
You know from hearing your mom complain about her experience that perimenopause is a horrible time, filled with hot flashing, night sweats, forgetfulness, losing your libido and gaining belly fat. A nightmare!
Your brain starts assuming, from past exposure to hearing your mom complain, that your perimenopausal experience will be like hers and you start bracing for the hormone storm. Your brain believes you must be like your mom since you share some of her genes. And it doesn’t realize that your body has had its own experiences throughout its journey so far that were likely quite different from your mother’s experiences which in many ways negate the impact of genes.
If you got exposed to that knowledge through expert advice about the newest science, you could then set yourself up for a different experience, without all the symptom intensity.
But, instead, your brain has assumed you’ll have a similar experience to your mom and you brace for an equally nightmarish perimenopause, suffering needlessly.
SCENARIO 3
Imagine going to your family physician for the umpteenth time, begging for support to help you manage the autoimmune condition you’ve developed, and the only offer is for medications that suppress your immune system, putting you at high risk for developing infections. You are terrified you’ll have to suffer for the rest of your life because this is all the physician had to give you.
Your brain is assuming that a family physician should have all the answers for managing autoimmunity, and if he doesn’t know, it must mean science doesn’t have the answers. Your indoctrination to believe a physician is the elite knowledge reservoir of science means your brain assumes the knowledge isn’t available to you and doesn’t go searching for it and trust that other practitioners might know of new information to help you thrive.
Again, you end up suffering because you don't have more information.
EVERY ONE OF US AUTOMATICALLY DOES THIS FOR EVERY SITUATION IN OUR LIVES!
We might assume a friend is mad at us when they don’t text us back within an “appropriate” amount of time because that’s what we’ve done in the past to others or had done to us.
We might assume our husband is cheating on us when he’s home from work late five nights in a row because we experienced being cheated on many times in our youth and this seems the same.
We might assume we will always be overweight because we always have been, so keep eating the same way and not moving enough.
We might assume our teenager will skip school because that’s what we did growing up, so play helicopter mom to try to prevent it from happening even though all we are doing is pushing our child away from us.
And so on…
♥️I can’t help but wonder about all the situations I’ve been in over my lifetime so far that could have turned out more happily if I hadn’t assumed knowledge and instead sought out more clarifying information before reacting.
I think about all the fights I would have missed.
All the time I’d have saved to do more fun things.
All the money saved for things I truly need and want.
All the heartache I’d have missed out on…
Remember what ASSUME really means, my friend 😊 (I hate making an “ass out of you and me"…)
Invest in new experiences that make you a more knowledgeable person, not just a busier one.
Invest in the course. The health service. The trip. The book. The conversation.
The returns on investment will be measured in changes in perspective, clarity and growth.
That knowledge is the true wealth in life.
Stop filling in so many gaps of knowledge based solely on your past experiences. The current situation you’re in CANNOT be exactly like your past ones!
Instead…
PAUSE, then ask better questions and listen to the answers before responding, not reacting.
I promise, practicing this level of awareness will change your life!
Hugs,
Dr. Krista xx
DrAc, IFMCP
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