Key Takeaways
- Experiential therapy involves using immersive actions and tools to express emotions.
- Types of experiential therapy include drama therapy, music therapy, art therapy, play therapy, outdoor therapy, and animal-assisted therapy.
- Experiential therapy can help treat various mental health conditions like anger management, anxiety, and depression.
When we think of therapy, talk therapy generally comes to mind. Experiential therapy, on the other hand, as the name suggests, is a form of therapy that involves immersing yourself in a certain experience.
This form of therapy uses tools like role-playing, psychodrama, music, poetry, arts and crafts, props, animal interactions, and outdoor excursions.
“Experiential therapy is distinguished by its emphasis on action,” says Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, a professor and clinical psychologist in New York City. “Action is important because when a person is bodily engaged, they have access to psychological elements they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. Action can also be a precursor to change—by acting in a new way, a person can think in new ways.”
Types of Experiential Therapy
There are several types of experiential therapy, according to Romanoff. These include:
- Drama therapy: Also known as psychodrama, drama therapy is the most common form of experiential therapy. It involves re-enacting or re-creating conflict-based situations in a safe setting to help you release any negative or suppressed emotions associated with that situation.
- Music therapy: Music therapy uses music to create positive changes in behavior.
- Art therapy: Art therapy uses creative artistic processes and tools to help you work through conflicts and become more aware of yourself. Tools in art therapy include painting, sculpting, and drawing.
- Play therapy: This form of therapy, which is usually used with children, capitalizes on therapeutic play to work through psychological difficulties that children may not be able to express through words.
- Outdoor therapy: Outdoor therapy includes wilderness therapy and adventure therapy. It combines wilderness excursions, adventure activities, and therapy sessions.
- Animal-assisted therapy: Interacting with animals and caring for them can be therapeutic. Animal-assisted therapy sessions can include animals like dogs or horses.
Psychodrama
“Psychodrama is perhaps the approach that people most associate with experiential therapy,” says Romanoff. “It involves re-creating crucial situations from past and present relationships with the goal of working on specified therapeutic outcomes in the form of a drama.”
In psychodrama, the person develops a situation that occurred in their life into a play. The situation may be one that occurred many years ago, but the psychodrama brings it into the here and now, where it can be actively dealt with.
Psychodrama gives the person the opportunity to play a role and re-enact the situation in a safe space. It creates a space between fantasy and reality, which allows the person to develop new ways of responding to the situation. With each re-enactment, the person moves toward a more adaptive and helpful response.
This method also allows the person to pause in the middle of a situation in order to process what just occurred. Participants are typically provided with clear boundaries between their reenactment and what actually occurred. For instance, an area or a rug may be used to mark the “stage.”
What Experiential Therapy Can Help With
These are some of the mental health conditions experiential therapy can help treat:
Benefits of Experiential Therapy
These are some of the benefits of experiential therapy:
- Situational resolution: Experiential therapy can help you explore or re-create traumatic or conflict-based situations from the past and understand your response to them. In addition, it can help you release any negative emotions you were harboring and promote healing.
- Emotional processing: An intensity of emotion emerges in this type of therapy that is unique and allows for more in-depth emotional processing, which involves examining your emotions and working through them, says Romanoff.
- Reduced avoidance: You may tend to avoid thoughts, people, places, or conversations related to difficult situations you’ve experienced. Confronting them can help you deal with them and reduce avoidance.
- Altered perspectives: Psychodrama allows you to experience a situation from the point of view of others involved. It can help you see their perspective and understand their motivations. Over time, it can lead to acceptance, forgiveness, and love.
- Creative expression: Creative forms of experiential therapy, such as music therapy, art therapy, and drama therapy, can help you express yourself creatively.
Effectiveness
“This form of therapy, while not for everyone, has been found to be quite effective,” says Romanoff.
Romanoff lists some factors that contribute to its effectiveness:
- The articulation of needs and negative perceptions as a pivotal step in change.
- The stages of advanced emotional processing people experience, which can include assertive anger, self-soothing, hurt, and grief.
- The idea that “emotion changes emotion,” where the emotion elicited in this type of therapy changes how one feels about an event or conflict in their life.
Things to Consider
This form of therapy may not be appropriate for people who are cognitively impaired, physically unable to participate in the therapy, or experiencing symptoms of psychosis, explains Romanoff.
“Experiential therapy can involve a great deal of intensity. Before you undertake it, it is recommended that you watch videos of typical sessions so you can form accurate expectations of what this therapy involves and make informed decisions about your participation,” Romanoff advises.
How to Get Started
If you have a preference for a certain type of experiential therapy, such as art therapy or animal-assisted therapy, look for a licensed therapist who has training and experience in that form of therapy.
You can use an online therapy directory to look for therapists who practice experiential therapy, or you could ask your current therapist, doctor, or even friends and family for recommendations.
Since experiential therapy can be immersive and intense, it is important to work with someone you can trust and develop a strong therapeutic rapport with. In addition to verifying the therapist’s credentials, you should ensure that you feel safe and comfortable working with them.
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Berdondini L, Elliott R, Shearer J. Collaboration in experiential therapy. J Clin Psychol. 2012;68(2):159-167. doi:10.1002/jclp.21830
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