A psychodrama therapy is a form of experiential psychotherapy in which a trained psychodrama therapist, practitioner or director provides the tools for clients to utilize dramatization and role-playing to gain insight into their actions, behaviors, relationships and overall lives.
On the other hand, techniques utilized in psychotherapy, sessions include relationship building, dialogue, communication and improving interpersonal relationships. The psychodrama therapist mainly provides instructions for the group activities.
Psychodrama Definition
Psychodrama is a drama therapy and props are often utilized in therapeutic interventions, where real-life situations are created and acted out in the present.
This forum provides participants with an opportunity to review and evaluate their behavior in a given situation to more deeply understand how it has affected them.
Psychodrama group therapy activities can be conducted in both individual and group settings.
Psychodrama Therapy Techniques
Participants often explore internal conflicts by acting out their emotions and interpersonal interactions on “stage”.
The Psychodrama therapist will use techniques such as “mirroring”, “doubling” and “role reversal” to help clients begin facing and addressing their underlying issues.
Sessions often consist of a warm-up, where one prepares for the therapeutic interaction, the action itself and then a post-discussion to process the experience.
Often, through using other participants, props and the Psychodrama therapist, participants are able to work through several different scenarios, an experience that allows all involved to act out the different scenes in a reality-based way.
Through psychodrama psychotherapy, those who have suffered emotional trauma or abuse are often able to express themselves emotionally and reveal truths about these experiences that they are not able to openly address in a cognitive or verbal way with their therapist.
Psychodrama therapy allows participants an outlet to express behaviors and release emotions while finding the personal identity, recognizing oneself and recognizing others and the roles they have played, in order to expand one’s own emotional development.
This medium also draws from sociometry, or the study of interpersonal relationships and helps participants to recognize how their own behaviors and those of others shape each relationship.
Psychodrama therapy and sociometry are extremely effective mediums in working with family dynamics and family therapy. By utilizing the opportunity to act through specific situations and scenarios, participants are able to identify their behaviors and can begin to address them, to change for the better.
Interpersonal relationships can be dramatically changed for the positive by the individuals involved in the relationship not only recognizing that there is an issue with how things are currently being communicated but with implementing and maintaining a new, healthier level and style of communication.
Psychodrama therapy is not only effective inter-personally but also individually, as our clients are able to get in touch with issues buried deep beneath the surface. By doing so, each client begins to identify the contributing factors to their addiction and once identified, clients work with our treatment team through all of the therapeutic modalities to begin healing.
There have few basic differences between “Psychodrama therapy” and “psychotherapy”.
What is psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is a therapeutic process to help the client for his/her acute or chronic mental illness like depression, anxiety, phobia, PTSD, etc. Psychotherapy may be in an individual or group setting. Psychotherapist work as a facilitator in the therapy session.
The treatment techniques of psychotherapy include Art Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Music Therapy, Family Therapy, Psychodrama, Group Therapy and more.
The goal of Psychotherapy is to assist clients with increasing their sense of well-being and can be done through a variety of different therapeutic techniques.
The problems addressed through Psychotherapy are psychological in nature and don’t necessarily sway toward any particular kind or degree of the issue, but rather depend on the issues the client struggles with and the specialty of the practitioner assisting the client and their loved ones.
Psychotherapy Techniques
Psychotherapy is a form of communication include verbal techniques, written exercises, artwork, drama, play therapy, music and more. The variation of verbal, visual and kinesthetic modalities is tailored to each client’s individual needs so they can effectively understand and internalize the information and process the emotions resulting from the therapeutic modalities.
There is also an emphasis put on underlying issues and addressing the problems that have contributed to or have been increased by the breakdown of interpersonal relationships.
Process of Psychotherapy
Psychotherapeutic interventions or techniques are designed to help each client with the issues he or she is struggling with on a very internal level – this is often used to treat significant issues, rather than the day to day struggles one might face.
Psychotherapy is used for addressing areas such as trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and more.
Often these issues are significant enough to hinder clients from being able to live their day to day lives effectively and increases substance abuse as clients are looking for a way to cope with their problems and the instant gratification found in substances becomes the primary coping mechanism, though a very unhealthy one.
Clients of psychotherapy center participate in a variety of Psychodrama or psychotherapy sessions throughout their stay in our program in order to identify their underlying issues and create a plan for addressing those issues, as well as implementing that plan.
Psychotherapy is a phenomenal medium that provides for clients to deal with significant underlying issues so that each can begin the process of healing and move forward on their path to recovery.
Above all, psychotherapy and psychodrama techniques encourage clients to continue with psychotherapeutic work post-treatment and staff work with each client to schedule Psychotherapy sessions as a part of his or her Aftercare Plan.
Recommended Book: Trauma-Informed Drama Therapy: Transforming Clinics, Classrooms, and Communities