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December 23, 2019 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

Why do I do that? A Dramatherapist looks beneath the surface

I am a dramatherapist and I am talking today about one of my favourite subjects. I am going to explain the benefits of working with creativity in the therapy room.

When we are being creative we are using a part of our brain which does not relate to logic or linear time. This part of the brain thinks in pictures, metaphor and symbols. It is representational rather than objective. It endows personal subjectivity to our experience. It is what makes us human and unique. It records and remembers everything that has ever happened to us, every thought, every sensation, every feeling, every hope, every dream. What a storehouse of information waiting to be revealed!

But here’s the thing. Whereas we can easily access the logical part of our brain, so we know to carry an umbrella when it’s raining. We have learned this, it’s logical. Our creative brain thinks in pictures, sensations and emotions. Experiences and memories are recorded and stored in a different way which means they’re not always readily available for us as information because they reside outside of our awareness.

So for example: you’re normally a reasonably polite friendly person, but behind the wheel of your car you rage at other drivers and you don’t know why you do this. This behaviour stems from something in your psyche that is ‘out of your awareness’. So you can’t stop yourself doing it by simply noticing it and trying to change your behaviour. The interesting thing about this type of ‘out of awareness’ behaviour is that we can’t seem to learn from it no matter how hard we try.
This is where the dramatherapist armed with a creative toolkit can help. We know from research that when the mind is engaged in a creative task, the logical mind takes a back seat. It goes off-line and allows us to tap in to the resources that are held ‘out of awareness ‘ and hidden beneath the surface of our everyday experience.

Here we can see why we behave the way we do and where/ how  it originated. We can explore the triggers. In doing this we can actually heal our past experience and recover form it. And that’s what we want from therapy, right?

One way I get my clients to tap in to their ‘out of awareness’ experience, is to use a method called hot-penning. First of all I prepare my client using relaxation techniques to enable a clear focus on the issue at hand. The client then takes pen and paper and writes whatever comes to mind. The rule book is thrown out and the pen is given free reign. The writing need not be logical or sequential, it may be a stream of words, you’re allowed to swear, it does not have to make sense. After a couple of minutes of loosening up the client will generally begin to write meaningful narrative which can be very revealing. Clients are so frequently surprised by their own articulacy and the wisdom that they express. Quite often there will be the ‘a-ha’ moment.

In my experience when the client has insights unprompted by the therapist they are more motivated towards lasting change.

Dramatherapy as a creative therapy can help the client to begin to live more fully ‘in awareness’ and be less affected by ‘out of awareness’ behaviours which formerly tripped them up.

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch with us by telephone or email. Online therapy is available.

 

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Filed Under: Psychotherapy Tagged With: mind and body, Psychotherapy, self-awareness

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