Strengths
Experiential Family Therapy is a therapy that encourages patients to address subconscious issues through actions, and role playing. Experiential Family Therapy has its strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths of this therapy is that, it focuses on the present and patients are able to express their emotions on what is happening to them presently. The client will have time to share everything about his/her life experiences one on one without any fears. As a result, it helps the client in the healing process because, he/she is able to express their feelings freely and come out of the problem. Therefore, in this type of therapy, the clients are deeply involved in solving their issues. It helps clients to scrutinize their individual connections and to start a self-discovery through therapy, on how their relationships influence their current behaviors (Gurman and Kniskern, 2014). By examining their personal relationships through experiential family therapy, family members are able to spot the pessimistic emotions that generate certain behaviors, and as a result, they are able to avoid them.
An additional strength of Experiential Family Therapy is that, it is used for the treatment of different groups of people, and not an individual. By gathering information from different family members, it is easy to determine the problem. The therapist engages the family members during each session by guiding them to express themselves more deeply and this helps in determining the problem in the family (Gurman and Kniskern, 2014). In addition, after the patient has gone through the therapy, they have an opening to triumph build up an improved self-worth, and be always ready to take a responsibility for their actions and this is strength for this type of therapy.
Experiential Family Therapy is the best to treat families. It is an effective treatment of family issues and disorders. It enhances the mental and emotional wellbeing of family members. In addition, it facilitates a meaningful change in the family members, and it helps the family to learn and grow. Moreover, it helps to uncover fears, anxieties, and deeper potentials in family members and this helps to facilitate the healing process (Thompson, Bender, Berger Cardoso, and Flynn, 2011).
Experiential Family Therapy acts as an instructor to the family element. The family members are encouraged to develop a more fruitful and adaptive methods of solving their issues through their experiences. According to Nichols and Schwartz, it encourages communication and good relation between family members (2008). It creates experiences from the family from which they learn and grow from those experiences.
Weaknesses
One of the weaknesses is that, it only looks into the ways family members can express their feelings as well as getting information from them about the problem, instead of directly tackling the main source of conflict in the family. Therefore, Experiential Family Therapy is a non-traditional therapy. According to Goldberg and Goldberg (2012), another weakness is that, the therapists who use Experiential Family Therapy only center on the family members’ experiences to come out with an outcome on the problem. Another weakness is that, in Experiential Family Therapy, the therapist pushes the clients to confront their issues, and does not offer a solution. In this therapy, the client is pushed to meet head-on their problems and find answers, as opposed to assisting them to find answers for their problems.
Experiential Family Therapy focuses on people’s relationships and their emotions. Therefore, it a therapy that helps family members to express their experiences and emotions and it helps to promote their self esteem. In addition, Experiential Family Therapy uses the present to change the current family situation. Families are able to learn how to deal with their problems as well as develop a high degree of confidence. In contrast, it is difficult for a client to find a solution to his/her problem through Experiential Family Therapy, because, this therapy does not offer a solution, but lets the client find the solution (Evans, Turner, and Trotter, 2012). Furthermore, Experiential Family Therapy does not directly tackle the conflict in the family; it uses the experiences from the family members to find the problem. This can be unsafe because, some family members can fail to honestly express their emotions or tell of their past experiences. In essence, Experiential Family Therapy is a therapy that helps family members to express their emotions to a therapist in order to solve their family issues.
References
Evans, P., Turner, S. and Trotter, C. (2012). The Effectiveness of Family and Relationship Therapy: A Review of the Literature. Melbourne: PACFA.
Goldenberg, H., and Goldenberg, I. (2012). In Family Therapy: An Overview. Boston, Massachusetts: Cengage Learning.
Nichols, M. P. and Schwartz, R. C. (2008). Family therapy: Concepts and methods. Boston: Pearson.
Gurman, A. S., and Kniskern, D. P. (2014). Handbook of Family Therapy. New York: Routledge.
Thompson, S.J., Bender, K., Berger Cardoso, J., Flynn, P. (2011). Experiential activities in family therapy: Perceptions of youth and caregivers. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 20(5), 560-568.
