Learning to understand and interpret our past experiences can be a vital part of effective behavioral healthcare. Our perceptions of ourselves, our relationships, and our place in the world significantly shape our emotional affect, decisions, and quality of life. Experiential therapies help examine these perceptions and release deeply held, longstanding negative feelings, and restore our ability to experience positive emotions like acceptance, love, and belonging. Because experiential therapies are effective at accessing and processing negative experiences, they are a powerful tool in treating trauma.
Experiential therapies are a powerful clinical tool, especially when used in conjunction with talk therapies and holistic treatment programming. At Rise, experienced clinicians use art therapy, music therapy, psychodrama, and mindfulness as effective experiential therapies. Experiential therapy sessions are typically conducted in a group setting. Patients may interact with one another, like acting out a psychodrama scenario or work independently, as in art therapy. As patients use the experiences of art, music, acting, and meditation to explore their experiences and emotions, clinicians help them identify critical insights that can be more deeply addressed during individual therapy sessions.
At Rise, the patient’s entire care team coordinates to maximize the value of discoveries made during experiential therapy, adventure therapy, and traditional psychotherapy sessions. When each member of the patient’s care team understands the past events, traumas, and memories that are sources of negative self-perception, they can work in tandem to help patients process and reinterpret these experiences to develop a more positive and productive outlook that supports recovery and overall health.