Experiential Versus Narrative Family Therapies - Essay Sample

Introduction

Psychotherapists, psychologists or clinical social workers undertake the process of Psychotherapy, where they take families through therapy sessions to work out their communication, challenges, and problems as a family unit. Also, family therapy is administered on occasions where a member undergoes substance addiction, mental disorder, with the therapy being oriented to assisting the member with mental illness alongside supporting other family members to manage and cope up with the situation. The paper focuses on comparing two types of family therapy, narrative and experimental family therapies.

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Experimental family therapy is oriented to acknowledge and solve conflicts among family members y employing role-playing, guided imagery, drawings, props, engaging the family members in a particular situation, or experience again as it had occurred in the past (Spencer et al., 2018). Through this method, the client experiences the occasion in two ways, their perceptive and others perceptive. The methods used in experimental family therapy sessions enhance by prompting family thoughts and emotions, with the target being identifying new information and ideas to assist in the development and altering of family dynamics and units.

It is a type of therapy that occurs when the session is conducted via verbal expressions. It focuses on assigning the family members a new way to express themselves and communicate as a unit, engaging in family issues together (Spencer et al., 2018). Since the therapist is continuously available in all the sessions, the family members are guided and directed on how to suppress their emotions induced from negative responses and feelings from the past. Through that, the issues and problems in the family are reduced and lessened.

Narrative family therapy is a type of therapy where conflicts and issues experienced by a client are independent of the person. It is a form of therapy that is oriented towards prompting individuals to manage and focus their abilities and skills to lessen their conflicts and issues currently in their lives. In this type of therapy, the client acts as the expert, with the therapist's intent only being to guide or assist the client's healing and development (O'Brien & George, 2019). In narrative therapy, clients have a better understanding of themselves regarding thinking and behavior patterns.

The clients have their stories associated with the cause, meaning, and problems arising in their lives due to the issues they experience. Through that, they become in a better position to order into reality. The therapy sessions enable clients to communicate their stories; hence, it leads them to perceive their thoughts consciously, allowing them to develop family bonds again (O'Brien & George, 2019). The role of therapists becomes assisting family members to acknowledge how the problems and issues had influenced their original bond and connection. Therapists help by enabling the clients to improve on their relationship and bond with the other family members.

Comparison

Both family therapies have similarities and differences. Both methods allow family members to express their emotions and stories. Both ways strive to identify issues present among families, to improve their bonds, communication, and to solve their problems. They differ in how clients express their stories. While Narrative therapy entails the use of the verbal expression of the client's issues and story, experimental family therapy uses alternative means such as drawing, role-playing, and guided imagery (Kashanaki & Rezazadeh, 2018). While narrative therapy perceives individuals' problems should be independent of issues and challenges in a family, experimental therapy identifies suppressed emotions to be the primary cause of family problems.

The strength of experimental therapy is that emotions and someone's story is expressed respectably. By engaging in various activities during role-plays, a client can find better ways to express themselves (Spencer et al., 2018). The weakness of experimental family therapy is that clients may fail to be intent or genuine throughout the therapeutic sessions. Another drawback is that it entails the therapist to engage in subjective observation of the client's emotions and feelings (Kashanaki & Rezazadeh, 2018).

The strength of narrative family therapy is that family members are allowed to express their stories verbally; hence it enables them to have self-evaluation, which leads to positive inclination towards improving their bonds (Suddeath et al., 2017). Clients are accountable for their behaviors and actions; hence the method enables them to gain a sense of responsibility. The weakness of this method is that clients are aware that their therapists are observing them (Suddeath et al., 2017). It leads them to try to impress the therapists rather than working on actual improvement.

Experiential Therapy for a Family

Smith's family has undergone trauma following an experience that entailed a bus accident, where some of their grandparents passed on. Since then, the family has been inclined to have negative emotions, painful memories, and thoughts. Even though they have suppressed their feelings and thoughts, the incident has led to low communication dynamics within the family. Through sessions of experimental family therapy, the members will express their suppressed thoughts concerning the incident via nonverbal methods. The therapist would ask the family members questions regarding the accident while they are engaging in guided imagery to re-enact the family's experience. Through that, they would process the thoughts and emotions they underwent, to mitigate the effect of the feelings on the family. In the event where subconscious emotions emerge, the role of the therapist would be assisting the clients to understand their emotions. After the identification of the suppressed trauma, the smiths would have better control over their emotions; hence, it would lead to improving family bonds.

Reference

Spencer, T., Call, T., & Hardy, N. (2018). Experiential Family Therapy. http://springer.iq-technikum.de/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-15877-8_197-1.pdf

Kashanaki, H., & Rezazadeh, S. M. R. (2018). Experiential Family Therapy: Review Study. Rooyesh-e-Ravanshenasi Journal (RRJ), 7(2), 1-16. http://frooyesh.ir/browse.php?a_id=132&slc_lang=en&sid=1&printcase=1&hbnr=1&hmb=1

Suddeath, E. G., Kerwin, A. K., & Dugger, S. M. (2017). Narrative family therapy: Practical techniques for more effective work with couples and families. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 39(2), 116-131. https://meridian.allenpress.com/jmhc/article-abstract/39/2/116/83150

O'Brien, D. C., & George, R. (2019). Narrative Family Therapy. Intervening for Stepfamily Success: One Case, Multiple Perspectives, 87.