Experiential Therapy

You’ve been shaped by your experiences, good, bad, and otherwise. Art therapy is an inherently experiential and embodied way to re-work what’s not working and give you greater mastery of what’s going on inside so you can demonstrate greater mastery to the outside world. I am a board-certified art therapist and would love to help you create a new relationship with your experiences! See www.meganvanmeter.com for details about how I help helping professionals in Arizona, Indiana, and Texas.

Experiential therapy is about feeling the room and giving each client an experience that suits them best. It's basically "meeting each client where they're at", including mood, disposition and pace.

I have extensively studied the work and careers of Carl Whitaker and Virginia Satir, two pioneers in the field of experiential. Each approached clients differently, but both approached clients in a deeply human way that doesn't shy away from saying or experiencing what is necessary to affect change.

Experiential therapy is a holistic approach by which we engage the entire body in the therapeutic process. This engagement leads to the utilization of more regions of the brain which then leads to better integration.

Experiential Therapy focuses on the client’s own lived experiences and their ability to make meaning from them. This type of therapy places emphasis on the human condition as a whole, exploring human capacities and aspirations while simultaneously acknowledging human limitations. This is my primary treatment orientation.

I make use of experiential techniques often during my meetings to invite processing of emotions, feelings, thoughts, and narratives, especially those that occur between myself and the participant(s). My study and research of experiential techniques have led me to incorporate these practices with my narrative framework to spur awareness and recognition within participants.

Talk therapy alone is ineffective without experiencing your growth through applying skills to gain consciousness, awareness, and insight, along with skills and processes to work with the conditions of our lives that challenge us. One must "experience their life" to make actual change.

In Experiential Therapy, the client uses their body to recreate or create neurological pathways that eventually can override 'destructive' behaviors that at one point in time were constructive and permitted the client to survive.

Recognizing that the therapeutic relationship is itself intended to be restorative.

Experiential therapy is a body-based approach to healing and growth in counseling. Rather than just talking about issues, I integrate experiential processing into our work to help my clients gain deeper insight in an impactful way. This may involve senses or physical sensations tied to past memories.

When appropriate, I use experiential exercises into sessions. Examples are roles plays, visualizations, guided imagery. These are used to assist a person in going deeper into an experience and to bring it more to life to enable them to work through it rather than talk about it and around it, which generally does NOT lead to healing. In relationships, it deepens connection with oneself and with others.

Since artmaking is inherently experiential, my graduate training incorporated an understanding of how experiential therapy works to create shifts in people at physical, emotional, and intellectual levels. Experiential therapy involves the use of in-session experiences to initiate positive and integrative changes in the mental images that become a client’s thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. The experiences that are introduced are specific to the client’s unique nervous system patterns.

Experiential Therapy is experience based processes. It utilizes techniques such as role-playing, music, guided imagery and re-experiences of emotional situations or relationships. Through the processes clients begin to identify the emotions associated with their experiences. I empower clients with these processes to let go of negative feelings, shame, anger and hurt while recreating positive thinking patterns. Experiential Therapy is used to treat trauma, behaviors and debilitating emotions.

Talk therapy is the primary method of my counseling work. However, I maintain that there are "multiple ways to the same goal". We might talk about the content to see if that gets us there. We might also write about it, draw about it, walk about it (internet and tele-space willing*), close our eyes and meditate on it.

Hakomi and Somatic Experiencing are types of experiential therapies, which means working in the present moment experience of what is happening in your body. Sometimes it's helpful for my clients to take a break from using language in order to listen to their bodies.

A variety of experiential therapy techniques are used in one-on-one therapy as well as group therapy. Experiential techniques utilized include the use of reflective tools such as the Tarot, psychodrama and role-playing techniques, family constellations, music, meditation, and guided imagery, and expressive arts when deemed appropriate. Experiential therapies can be worked on in session or assigned as homework.

Hakomi is a type of experiential therapy, which means going beyond talk-therapy to focus on the moment.