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Experiential Therapy
What are Experiential Therapies?
The Experiential
Therapies used at The Renfrew Center are called Creative Arts Therapies.
Creative Arts Therapies recognize the connections between the symbolic and the
actual and connect the meaning of the two with the patients' healing process.
The process of making art; moving in harmony with one's self and in meaningful
interactions with others; and dramatization, role play, and dramatic self-presentation in
the safety of a therapeutic community, make it possible to experience and express feelings
that need to be explored in order for recovery to progress.
Our Creative Arts Therapists are specifically trained to facilitate experiences that use a
woman's inherent strengths as building blocks for her growth. They may, for example,
suggest that a woman draw what she cannot say; embody what she cannot articulate; or enact
what she may not as yet understand. In the process, the woman often discovers that
awareness, insight and validation, take form spontaneously before her eyes.
- In Art Therapy, women express themselves by using their creative process to draw or shape their feelings, derive comfort from being able to create symbolic containers to hold feelings, or explore the image of their body through a body tracing. The artwork itself can also provide a record of progress made during treatment. The visual language of art, like the spoken word, is an effective mode of communication.
- Dance/Movement Therapy serves as a powerful means for women to explore their relationship to their bodies and to risk connecting to others. The tendency of many women to cover feelings through intellectualization creates the need for them to access feelings and sensations. In so doing, they may be able to form less adversarial relationships with their bodies, as well as discover that there is a connection between the meaning of their therapeutic experience and how they "move through life."
- In Psychodrama, women gain insight into situations that are problematic for them through the process of various kinds of dramatic enactments and other action methods. Patterns and behaviors that once served a good purpose may need to be transformed to meet the needs of current situations. The emphasis on the process of making choices, as well as representing and recreating an experience to gain understanding, takes form in Psychodrama.
How the Creative Arts Therapies impact on the Recovery Process as a Whole
The creative art therapies uses each woman's own unique expressive patterns to expand on
her ability to understand herself and to communicate this understanding to others.
As a result, it becomes possible for her to create an impact in other areas of her
recovery.
For example, increasing awareness on a body level in dance/movement therapy may also help
with issues related to mindful eating and awareness of physical versus emotional hunger;
an enactment in psychodrama may serve as practice for a stressful family therapy session;
and a piece of art work may assist someone who has difficulty putting feelings into words
by providing a visual symbol from which to begin a conversation.
Whether it is not knowing how to tell their story, fear of not being understood, or a
reluctance to speak the unspeakable, many women we see have difficulty expressing
themselves, and words and traditional psychotherapy alone may not be enough. In the
creative arts therapies, communication is always possible.
Experiental Therapy is offered at:
Coconut Creek, FL
Philadelphia, PA