hi guys welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome to my channel my name is stephanie yates anyabuila 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 [Music] so as usual we're going to be using aacbs 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 think everybody who has suggested that i tackle this model these two models were developed one by carl whitaker and one by virginia satir virginia's interiors 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 basic 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 satiris 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 taking 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 it's a tears 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 gonna 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 satire was very much ahead of her time i even had a comment that said that i'm like i'm so glad somebody is saying that because she was the thing about talking about her models that her version of experiential therapy the human validation process it's a very post-modern concept and you have to consider the fact that she is one of the only canonized female theorist 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 is basically a human being not some observer just watching the family those are going to be like a little bit more of your postmodern models but technically this model was before postmodern so we're like right before the post-modern era and i think that she kind of introduced a lot of these ideas into the post-modern 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 satire'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 satire 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 else me as a marriage and family therapist i wouldn't be talking about it but satire 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 you know 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 satyr 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 the 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 and the family system can work hand-in-hand and lastly communication this is something that satire 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 we can get through the video i'm just going to talk about this just a little bit so tear really emphasized communication and again we see that way more in the post-modern models like narrative therapy collaborative therapy than we would in the models that were coming out around the time when satire 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 gonna 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 satire 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 session that's always pointing the finger you know oh well you did that and you did 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 satire 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 satire but it's interesting to note that intellectualization is actually a defense mechanism and when we are overly reliant on our rationality and stressful situations sometimes we ignore our true desires and once 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 going 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 i can't imagine what it's like to be in that position that can be a way to make sure the people within your family feel seen so rationalizing you know through computing virginia satire actually highlights as a maladaptive communication stance and last we're talking about distracting this is when we think about the class clown the gesture 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 through 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 also 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 going to 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 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 satire's 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 middle school you know homeostasis is basically uh 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 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 right that is the one new thing that is disrupting this family's status quo the next day just 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 the problem and now you throw this new person into the situation it's going to result in chaos right 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 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 satire 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 it 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 satire viewed the most important intervention as the therapist's use of self right so the therapist takes on a lot of different roles into tyra'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 satire would literally have the family stand in order of their communication stance like okay so you're the placator 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 is 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 you know 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 you know 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 satire 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 therapists 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 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 thank you thank you thank you [Music]