Other experiential therapies
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Experiential therapy isn’t really a specific type of psychotherapy. Rather, the term is used to refer to different types of therapy, as well as therapeutic techniques that require engaging in some type of activity or action.
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Sometimes talking therapy alone does not help the client to get to underlying issues that may be causing difficulties. Something extra needs to be brought into the therapeutic interaction to enable the client to identify unconscious conflicts, unresolved trauma, repressed emotions or the causes of difficult relationship patterns.
Experiential therapy helps the client to get to the roots of difficulties and release buried emotions so that they can be processed in a healthy way. It gives the client greater self-awareness. Experiential therapy helps clients tap into underlying issues – such as unconscious conflicts, unresolved trauma, repressed emotions, poor problem solving skills, or maladaptive relationship patterns – that they may find difficult to identify and explore via traditional talk therapy alone.
Experiential therapy helps the client to get to the roots of difficulties and release buried emotions so that they can be processed in a healthy way. It gives the client greater self-awareness. Experiential therapy helps clients tap into underlying issues – such as unconscious conflicts, unresolved trauma, repressed emotions, poor problem solving skills, or maladaptive relationship patterns – that they may find difficult to identify and explore via traditional talk therapy alone.
The following is a list of several types of experiential therapy:
Gestalt therapy Gestalt therapy focuses on personal responsibility, living in the here-and-now, and addressing unfinished business. Experiential methods used can be role play and using the “empty chair” technique, which involves placing someone or something such as a parent, a symptom a part of the self
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PsychodramaPsychodrama – is usually done in a group setting, where members of the group take up the roles of characters in a particular difficult scenario. This enables the client to explore the roles and behaviours of the different characters, try out new behaviours, and look at situations from a new perspective
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EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing). EMDR often used in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Here the client describes a traumatic event while moving the eyes in certain ways under the guidance of the therapist. This helps to resolve the traumatic symptoms so that the experience becomes a memory which is stored in the way a usual memory is stored.
Sandplay therapy Sandplay therapy – involves the use of a try of sand and various small objects (e.g. people, houses, animals, etc.) The client creates a story or a scene with the objects, which can help to explain different emotions, and explore painful events. Sandplay is used with children but also with adults and families.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a method for facilitating the processing of unassimilated sensorimotor reactions to trauma and for resolving the destructive effects of these reactions on cognitive and emotional experience. These sensorimotor reactions consist of sequential physical and sensory patterns involving autonomic nervous system arousal and orienting/defensive responses which seek to resolve to a point of rest and satisfaction in the body. During a traumatic event such a satisfactory resolution of responses might be accomplished by successfully fighting or fleeing. However, for the majority of traumatized clients, this does not occur. Traumatized individuals are plagued by the return of dissociated, incomplete or ineffective sensorimotor reactions in such forms as intrusive images, sounds, smells, body sensations, physical pain, constriction, numbing and the inability to modulate arousal.
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Art therapy / Music therapy
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