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What is Experiential Therapy?

Developing yourself through a hobby is not only a great learning activity but can also improve your mental health. And experiential therapy does just that. This therapeutic modality is an umbrella term for different treatments, such as art, play, music, adventure or wilderness, drama, animal-assisted therapy, etc. It also involves using expressive tools and activities, such as role-playing and using props to re-enact or re-experience certain situations from clients' past or present lives. This further helps bring awareness regarding certain feelings, thoughts, and emotions that have influenced or are currently influencing the client's overall life. With the help of a qualified mental health professional, the client can delve into their repressed feelings from the past and learn to cope with them more effectively.

Experiential therapy thus encompasses a variety of modalities and approaches that emphasize actual participation in a range of experiences, such as emotional processing, interpersonal interactions, creativity, and event reflections that go beyond traditional talk therapy. Essentially, these treatments assist in increasing a person's awareness of their internal perceptions of the world.

For example, if someone fears their anger, they may repress it so that the anger keeps accumulating within them. Such repression can cause them to get depressed. However, with the assistance of an experienced Experiential Therapist, they can learn how to be mindful of this feeling. This therapeutic approach involves listening to oneself instead of thinking about oneself. When you pause and listen to yourself, you can track down what your mind is saying about your emotions and reactions. This enables you to understand where your depression is manifesting. In this way, anger can be felt instead of being suppressed. This may include allowing yourself to feel angry in a way and space that feels safe and empowers you through re-enacting the situation that caused your anger to stem in the first place.

Different Types of Activities

You and your therapist should decide together on the different experiential activities you would like to participate in. Depending on your issues and your understanding, some of these therapeutic activities might be more effective than others. However, your ultimate decision will rely solely on your personal preferences. Listed below are a few activities that your therapist may employ:

• Art Therapy: Recreating or re-enacting an experience through art can help clients work through conflicts and become more aware of themselves. It also helps them work through distressing and negative emotions by processing them in a healthy manner.
• Drama Therapy: Drama involves the recreation of conflictual or distressing situations in a setting where the client feels safe. The aim of this activity is to help the client release any stressful or negative emotions associated with that particular situation.
• Adventure Therapy: Here, individuals work within group settings. It includes outdoor activities like rock climbing, hiking, camping, trekking, water rafting, etc. This further helps them develop self-reflection, confidence, communication skills, personal responsibility, and problem-solving skills.
• Play Therapy: Usually applied to children, this approach makes use of therapeutic play to help kids work through emotional issues that they might not be able to express verbally.
• Music Therapy: Music helps people identify and express their emotions. With the help of an experienced music therapist, the client can be exposed to music that allows them to feel certain upsetting emotions. Then, in collaboration, both can work through them together and process them in a healthy way.
• Animal-Assisted Therapy: The involvement of animals in therapy can create a safe and comfortable space for clients while they re-create certain stressful experiences.

What are the Benefits?

There are numerous benefits that experiential therapy has. Listed below are some of them:

• It gives you more flexible results and teaches you overarching skills. In this manner, it is beneficial even beyond therapy.
• It allows you more time to practice the skills you learn, thus giving you greater autonomy.
• It equips you with better problem-solving skills and helps you develop stronger relationships.
• It is more adapted to the client's specific needs as it draws on their experience.
• The change is deeper and quicker as the client gets to be in touch with their experience. It doesn't just talk about the experience superficially but allows you to recreate and re-enact it.
• People learn to release negative emotions and deal with painful memories and the guilt and shame associated with them.
• As you get in touch with your innermost needs and wants, you also gain a stronger sense of self-awareness.
• The techniques involved in experiential therapy allow you to experience the situations from the perspective of others. Over time, this leads to understanding, acceptance, and healing.
• Creative forms of this therapeutic approach, such as art and music therapy, can allow you to explore yourselves creatively.
• This treatment modality enables you to observe yourself in real-time situations. It takes you into active scenarios where you can be more proactive, learn, and heal better.

Common Techniques

Experiential Therapy employs several techniques that can be felt by the client to heal, transform, and gain insights internally. Some common techniques include:

• Chair Work: This powerful and liberating technique allows you to shift perspective on who you are and what you could become. It is based on the belief that it could heal and transform people to speak from their inner voices, parts, or selves. It can also help them reenact or re-experience past, present, or future incidents.
• Inner Child Work: This strategy involves identifying and healing childhood trauma. It acknowledges that our early experiences shape the way we behave as adults. Thus, its goal is to reparent ourselves to meet our unmet needs. Through self-discovery, we may better understand our habits, triggers, goals, needs, and motivations.
• Psychodrama: In this deep action method, clients are required to enact scenes from their lives: past, present, or the future, dreams, or fantasies. This is done to express suppressed feelings, gain new views and insights, and practice positive and satisfying behaviors.
• Guided Imagery: Based on the concept of the mind-body connection, it is a technique where your therapist will act as a narrator reciting a script while you are in a meditative state. People who try this technique might picture events and scenes that can lead them to relax and feel calm.
• Symptom Deprivation: This technique involves prompting the client to imagine a situation in which a particular symptom, such as panic or fear, may occur. The client is then asked to imagine the situation with the absence of this symptom. Depriving the client of the symptom allows the therapist to access those unconscious beliefs and logic of the mind that necessitate the symptom's existence. Thus, through re-enacting and experiencing the situation without the occurrence of the symptom, the client and the therapist can work towards resolving the core unconscious beliefs of the client.

What Conditions Can it Help Treat?

This treatment modality is usually used on individuals with no diagnosable disorders but who have trouble dealing with unhappy, painful memories. It can also be beneficial to those who wish to change the nature of their present or future relationships. Apart from that, this approach can be used to treat the following:

• Eating Disorders
• Substance Abuse Disorders
• Trauma
• Behavioral Disorders
• Anger
• Grief and Loss
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Phobias
• Compulsive Behaviors
• Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder

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As triggering and overwhelming as the therapeutic process can be, you must remember the importance of seeking help for your mental and emotional well-being. Finding the right therapist to effectively assist you in navigating your hardships is the key. And at DocVita, we make that easy!

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