Hi guys, welcome back to my channel and if you're new, welcome to my channel. My name is Stephanie Yates Anya Bwile, Steph Anya for short, and I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. In today's video, I'm going to be talking all about experiential therapy.
If you're curious, stay tuned. So as usual, we're going to be using AATBS as the guide to talk about key concepts. to talk about the view of the problem to talk about the goals of therapy as well as interventions and techniques that you would incorporate if you are using experiential therapy let's jump right in experiential models there are two that we are very familiar with and i thank everybody who has suggested that i tackle this model these two models were developed one by Carl Whitaker and one by Virginia Satir. Virginia Satir's model is also known as the human validation model, human validation process, human growth model that has a few different names. And the reason why I'm talking about these two together is because they have a lot of similarities.
They're both based in humanistic psychology and there are a few assumptions in both that are relevant to what we think of when we talk about experiential therapy today. These are some of the concepts that exist throughout. both experiential models, both Carl Whitaker's version and Virginia Satir's version. So the first thing to remember with experiential therapy is that the relationship between the therapist and client is extremely important for catalyzing change.
The experiential models take into consideration the actual experience of therapy, including the relationship a lot more than other models that you'll see, especially within family therapy. Number two, because the relationship between therapist and client is so important and critical for change, it is extremely important that therapists focus on being very authentic and congruent in their work with their clients. And so it's really important for therapists to be congruent with their desires, with their truths, with their areas that they need to improve on or work through in order for there to be effective change for the client. So this is another thing that is not really talked about in other models, which is that emphasis on the growth of the therapist and the authenticity of the therapist. Lastly, all people have the capacity for self-fulfillment, self-actualization.
With that understanding, then we bring in a certain hopefulness into therapy, especially when using the experiential model. Those are three assumptions within the experiential models that really make these models more similar than different. In Satir's human validation process model, there are really three key concepts that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about growth and development, We're going to talk about communication and we're also going to talk about the family system, of course, because this is a family systems theory. So you guys know I love to talk with you a little bit about the creators of the models to help you kind of make sense and remember why certain creators are associated with certain models and maybe what even led them to creating the model.
Virginia Satir was very much ahead. of her time. I even had a comment that said that and I was like, I'm so glad somebody is saying that because she was, the thing about talking about her models is that her version of experiential therapy, the human validation process, it's a very postmodern concept. And you have to consider the fact that she is one of the only canonized female theorists.
lets you know that she was definitely ahead of her time. So whenever you think about certain concepts that really like align more when I talk about postmodern models, which are view the therapist as less objective, views the therapist as basically a human being, not some observer just watching the family, those are gonna be like a little bit more of your postmodern models. But technically, this model was before.
postmodern. So we're like right before the postmodern era and I think that she kind of introduced a lot of these ideas into the postmodern era. She was very much ahead of her time with a lot of her concepts.
So we'll start with the concept of growth and development. So something unique about Satir's human validation process is that she really emphasized the importance of growth and development and she is one of the first theorists to make a connection between growth and self-esteem. And she took it even a step further in family therapy, saying that the self-esteem of each individual family member needs to be increased for a family's interactions to improve. So she was making a direct connection between family dysfunction or struggle and the individual self-esteem of each member. These are concepts that we hear about a lot now, even in popular culture, you know, where somebody is really toxic, like we'll say now.
A lot of times we are very comfortable saying that, you know, they have certain insecurities. or things that are leading them to behave in these toxic ways. But back then in the early 90s and the late 80s, these weren't necessarily topics that were just discussed by your average person. So again, Virginia Satir was very ahead of her time in making that connection between self-esteem and growth and development. The next concept is family system.
Of course, these are family systems models, or me as a marriage and family therapist, I wouldn't be talking about it. But... Satir really makes it clear in her model, the importance of the family system and that within every family system, there are certain roles and expectations that happen within the system. And that there can be problems created through those roles and expectations.
Some of the roles that she listed that can be very problematic within a family are like the roles of the martyr. We'll see the person in a family who feels they have to take on all of the struggle, all of the pain. For the family, we've got the good child, the bad child, the victim, the rescuer. There are a lot of different roles that Satir identify within the family system that can contribute to some of the problems that we'll see within a family.
And again, linking that to the first concept about self-esteem and adding my own perspective on that, what I see a lot of times is that that connection between self-esteem a lot of times lead to those roles. So for example, If you are working with a client or if you are the person who feels that it's your responsibility to nurture and take care of the family to your own demise, right? You're not eating, you're not getting sleep so you can take care of everyone else.
There might be an issue there with self-worth, not feeling that you're worthy of the same attention and time that you are pouring into other people. So that's a very direct example of how that self-esteem is. and the family system can work hand in hand. And lastly, communication.
This is something that Satira is actually very well known for, are her communication stances. I have a video all about communication stances if you want to look more into which one applies to you or someone that you know. Just for brevity purposes though, so that we can get through the video, I'm just gonna talk about this just a little bit. Satir really emphasized communication. And again, we see that way more in the postmodern models like narrative therapy, collaborative therapy than we would in the models that were coming out around the time when Satir was creating her model.
So she, again, was a little bit ahead of her time when she talks about the importance of communication. She says that communication is the single factor that creates the type of relationships that we have. So it's extremely important for us to recognize how we're communicating and why we communicate the way that we do.
She talks about some communication stances that people may adopt, especially in stressful situations. Four of them are maladaptive and one of them is good. That's the congruent communication style. So we're going to focus, of course, on the four that are maladaptive. The first being placating, the second being blaming, third being computing, and the fourth being distracting.
So placating is when you are essentially agreeing to everything and the reason for doing that could be tied to fear, it could be tied to over commitment to being agreeable, it could be fighting for love and feeling like the more agreeable you are, the more a person will love you. So placating is a default response some people may have in a stressful family situation. The second one is blaming, that's the person who, you know, when we talk about communication stances, Virginia Satir was really also big on body language, again, very ahead of her time.
So when she talks about blaming, you know, it's the person in the session that's always pointing the finger, you know, oh, well, you did that. And you do that, that's a way of, you know, totally rejecting accountability, and finding a way to acknowledge that there is a problem within the family without also looking for opportunities to help decrease it through your own actions. So blaming is another stress response within the family that Virginia Satir highlighted.
The next one is computing. This is one that is going to surprise a lot of people because another word for it is being super reasonable. And that is essentially where you try to over intellectualize in communication.
This is actually also a defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms is not a concept really talked much about Satir, but it's interesting to note that intellectualization is actually a defense mechanism. So.
And when we are overly reliant on our rationality in stressful situations, sometimes we ignore our true desires and wants because maybe those things don't seem rational to us. So if someone is telling you, I feel awful, you know, or I feel so guilty and you start listing through all the reasons why they shouldn't feel guilty, you're not accepting or recognizing how they're feeling, you know, to just say, that's awful to feel that amount of guilt. yeah i can't imagine what it's like to be in that position that can be a way to make sure that people within your family feel seen.
So over rationalizing, you know, through computing, Virginia Satir actually highlights as a maladaptive communication stance. And last, we're talking about distracting. This is when we think about the class clown, the jester, the person in the family who can't take anything seriously. A lot of times they do that because the tension is so high that they're just looking to break up that tension by any means necessary.
So the way that they'll do that a lot of times is by doing something that's completely irrelevant in order to help break up that tension. And it probably is successful a lot of times. You know, kids even do this.
Babies even do this. You know, if a toddler is picking up on certain dynamics, they might do something goofy. They might go throw something on the ground.
And that's why we talk a lot about how children actually are a lot more aware than we give them credit for, for maybe the social atmosphere and environment that they are within. So a distractor is a person who cannot deal with the tension or conflict happening within the family. So they do something to completely distract the family from that tension and stress.
And the positive one, the one we all should strive towards is congruent communication. That's basically being straightforward and honest with yourself and with your family and others. So we all should be striving for congruent communication because it's the most genuine form. of expressing our feelings to the people who matter to us most and to just even the regular average person.
You know, this is what we should be striving toward with our communication style. So the view of maladaptive behavior is really just a summation of everything we just talked about. You've got low self-esteem, poor communication, poor functioning within the family system, maybe some of those maladaptive roles that we talked about. So when we're looking for problems within the family, it's probably gonna be some combination of these things.
So we need to address all of these things individually, almost. We need to help build self-esteem in the individuals. We need to help improve communication, help be more genuine and straightforward. We also need to acknowledge the roles that people are taking on and kind of challenge those a bit if they are maladaptive.
Because the overall... goal of experiential therapy, especially the human validation model, is to enhance or catalyze the growth potential. And we do that again through helping to build self-esteem, helping to teach and illustrate proper communication, and of course, solve their problems that are causing the stress more effectively.
So now let's talk about like the process and interventions of model. So there are six stages that she highlights within the model. So the first stage is the status quo. This is where the family has homeostasis.
If you've been in any science class, even in middle school, you know homeostasis is basically the point of stabilization within any system. So we're talking specifically about a family system. And homeostasis means this is the status quo. This is what the family... does on a regular basis and at least one of the family members is what they refer to as symptomatic.
In marriage and family therapy and other models as well, we refer to this as the identified patient. The person that the family might be blaming all the problems on, but sometimes families are aware enough to know that it's not just one person, but often that's not the case. So then we have the next stage, which is the introduction of a foreign element. Most of the time this is going to be the therapist.
That is the one new thing that is disrupting this family's status quo. The next stage is chaos. So naturally, if you have been surviving with your family, doing this status quo, this person has the problem, this is how this person reacts to the problem, and now you throw this new person into the situation, it's going to result in chaos.
It's going to be tension, stress, anxiety. because everybody's trying to reconfigure their roles and understand what do they do now with this new dynamic. So this disequilibrium is what actually leads to a new homeostasis. And so that's why we are disrupting things because whatever homeostasis was before, whatever status quo was before clearly was not working, which is what brought them into therapy. Then you have the integration of new possibilities.
As the family is restructuring and establishing a new status quo, They are starting to look at the world in a different way. They have new perspectives. They're allowing that foreign element, again, the therapist, or maybe they're in a new city, whatever the situation may be, they're allowing themselves to open their mind up to new possibilities, new ways of engaging with one another, new ways of communicating, for example.
And then we move into the stage of practice. They need to continue practicing these new things that they are learning. For example, if you have now found out more information about why your mom is the way she is, learning how to maintain a certain sense of grace when it comes to her and understanding what your triggers are, for example. could be a great way for you to practice this new understanding. And then lastly, you have the new status quo.
This is where there is no more problematic or symptomatic family member, family members, family system. And so don't think of this as you graduate from one stage to the next. These six stages, Virginia Satir was very cognizant that progress is not linear, right?
So you might... go here, go back, go here, go back. You know, especially when we talk about moving, you know, having that new foreign element and then practicing. A lot of times, certain triggers that we haven't had to deal with in a while, let's say there might be a family death happens and we might revert back to that original status quo because the stress is too great for us to also worry about the tension and anxiety of the foreign element. So recognize that this is not a linear process and these stages just...
give you some sort of guide to see where your family that you're working with is right now without also feeling like there's pressure to just keep moving forward and only moving forward. Satira viewed the most important intervention as the therapist's use of self, right? So the therapist takes on a lot of different roles in Satira's model. They could be a teacher, they could be a mediator, an advocate. If you have somebody in the family who, you know, it seems like they never have a voice, maybe the therapist helps.
that person to have a voice and speak with the family. You know, the therapist is taking on a lot of different roles. She was extremely creative in her work. You know, sometimes I've seen videos where Satir would literally have the family stand in order of their communication stance.
Like, okay, so you're the placater. You're the person that's agreeable. So you stand this way. Okay, you're the blamer. So you stand this way.
You know, you're the irrelevant person. You're the jokester, you know, so you look away. over here because you're not really engaged in whatever's happening with the family. That's called family sculpting. So she's very, very directive and creative in her work with clients.
Again, very forward thinking, doing things that were not the traditional style of therapy. And she also would do role plays, reenactment. She would even do a family reconstruction. It was basically like a psychodrama where she will take the family through different eras or phases of their lives, have them replay them. That way you could see your old way of saying things.
You know, if we're talking about gaining and garnering new understanding, it's really important to distinguish the new way you're thinking from the old way you were thinking. And ultimately, Satir wanted to help the families individually learn more about themselves, develop their own personhood, become comfortable not having their entire identity be wrapped up in their role within the family. This is what helps increase self-esteem and this is what helps increase the dynamics and functioning of the family. So that is the last thing I'll talk about with this model. I hope you guys found this useful.
I personally love seeing people practice this model. I think every therapist these days is incorporating some experiential techniques into their work because we're more aware than ever about the importance of therapist. working on themselves too. You know, we always say therapists need to have their own therapist because it's so important that you're able to fully bring yourself into the room with your clients, be honest with yourself and be able to recognize in them maybe areas that you've even struggled with or are struggling with currently. So I hope you guys enjoyed learning more about this model.
If you have more questions, please feel free to put them into the comments below. And if you have requests for other models that you would like me to review, please let me know that. I appreciate you for watching all the way until the end of the video.
I ask that you like this video, subscribe to my channel, share it with a friend, share it with your cohort, share it with your class professor. If you found it useful, I thank you guys so, so much for sharing this channel. It's really what helps the channel grow. So I appreciate you all from the bottom of my heart. It's on your mind.