Laura Wood, LPC presented on expressive therapies at Castlewood Treatment Center as well as how expressive therapies can be utilized for the treatment of eating disorder

1. EXPRESSIVE THERAPIES AT
CASTLEWOOD TREATMENT
CENTER
Laura Wood, MA, RDT, PLPC, CCLS
“The body remembers what the mind forgets’”-Moreno

2. WHAT ARE EXPRESSIVE/CREATIVE ARTS
THERAPIES?
 Drama Therapy
 Dance/Movement Therapy
 Art Therapy
 Music Therapy
 Poetry Therapy

3. WHAT IS DRAMA THERAPY?
 Drama therapy is active and experiential. This approach can
provide the context for participants to tell their stories, set goals and
solve problems, express feelings, or achieve catharsis. Through drama,
the depth and breadth of inner experience can be actively explored
and interpersonal relationship skills can be enhanced. Participants can
expand their repertoire of dramatic roles to find that their own life
roles have been strengthened. (www.nadt.org)

4. “Reparative ritual activity has a magical, non-rational quality as,
for example, a child plays out his fears through decapitating a doll,
and a Vogul woman plays out her sadness over losing her husband
by embracing a doll. Their actions do not affect the empirical
world of cause and effect but rather the subjective world of
feeling…The magic of the drama is realized at the subjective level
of feeling. The players achieve a certain satisfaction by controlling
a reality which is literally beyond their control.”
-Landy, 1994

5. IMPROVISATION
 “The spontaneous individual, is the most liberated. He chooses to
behave as he does. He is aware of the social context before him, but
he is able to risk the possible disapproval of others in presenting an
authentic role of him self” –Landy, 1994

6. IMPROV AT CASTLEWOOD
 Principals of Improv: 1) Yes and…2) No apologizing
3) No red lights 4) everyone participates
 Mental flexibility, social anxiety, spontaneity, fear of judgment,
control, playfulness, pleasure, laughter therapy.
 Warm-up, Action, Closing game, Process
 What happens in the microcosm of improv becomes the trailhead
for the macrocosm in life.

7. ATTACHMENT/EXPRESSIVE
Expressive becomes a way to look at complex attachment concepts
and understand them in an embodied way
Becomes a bridge to creating cohesive narrative
Creates a container to explore the complex feelings that arise from
relationship
Provides an opportunity of mastery and moving towards earned
secure attachment embodied

8. INDIVIDUAL EXPRESSIVE
WORK
 Masks and embodiment
 Creating a self revelatory performance
 Playing different parts of ones self, opportunity for protective
parts to get airtime
 Sand tray
 Empty chair

9.  “Catharsis in drama therapy does not need to be a large outburst
of feeling, a gushing forth of tears or a paroxysm of laughter. It is
often a modest reaction, a gentle moment of recognition. Catharsis
implies the ability to recognize contradictions, to see how conflicting
aspects of ones psychic or social life, of ones thinking, speaking, or
feeling can exist simultaneously.” -Landy, 1994

10. GROUP EXPRESSIVE
 Empty chair work
 Play your eating disorder
 Play a part of you, group as compassion curiosity panel
 Family Sculpt
 Parts at the….(dinner table, family gathering, etc)
 Re-visit a scene from the past
 Family Week Expressive Work

11. Q UA L I TAT I V E R E S E A R C H AT
CASTLEWOOD ON EXPRESSIVE
F O R M AT S
“ I think emotions are more sometimes more free flowing during expressive because I think it lets
people guards down a little bit and I don’t think they feel as protective of their emotions and
umm, I don’t know there is just something about seeing things and hearing exact phrases that
maybe abusers would say or perpetrator would say or just things that have made impacts on
people’s lives that makes it so much more real rather than talking about it from a third person
stance, it really just puts you in the scene and you’re able to feel what the other person felt or was
feeling and it’s like being there with them so that can be kind of …can be…just really eye opening
and sometimes that is what they have experienced is a lot and to do that is more than to just talk
about it in third person.”

12. “and I think what makes the best expressives are clarity and like, pin
point focus, blow up something like into where they can examine it
deeper.”
“ if a person’s experience is like a tapestry, doing an expressive is like
putting a spotlight on a piece of tapestry that you couldn’t see before and
that the pieces come together and that is like an unfolding and
illuminating is the same, I would use that same metaphor, like thru
expressive umm it’s possible to see things that were not visible before.”

13.  “I got information out of that expressive that I couldn’t have
gotten just out of group or individual therapy. And it really allowed
me to get closure from an incident that happened a while ago but that
played a big role not only in my eating disorder but in my life and I
was able to glean out of it things that I hadn’t even thought of.”

14. REFERENCES
 Landy, R.J. (1994). Drama therapy: concepts, theories and practices. Springfield:
Charles C. Thomas Publishers.
 May, R. (1975). The courage to create. New York: Norton & Company.
 Moreno, J.L. (1980). The theater of spontaneity. New York: Beacon.
 Van Der Kolk, B.A. (1996). Traumatic Stress: The effects of overwhelming
experience on mind, body and society. New York: Guilford Press.
 Wiener, D. (1999). Beyond talk therapy: using movement and expressive
techniques in clinical practice. Washington, DC. American Psychological Associates.