Healing the Core of Addiction Experiential Therapy

It can be difficult to understand or express your emotions in therapy. Expressing your thoughts and feelings is challenging when you do not know the core root of your self-destructive behaviors. Exclusive Hawaii Rehab takes a holistic approach to healing to help you uncover the roots of your distress and truly heal. Through customizable support of therapies like experiential therapy, you are empowered to build tools to restore balance in your life.

What Is Experiential Therapy?

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), experiential therapy is a collection of approaches to therapy that promotes knowing and growth by experiencing. Through experiential therapy, you can fully immerse yourself in different experiences like art, poetry, and hiking. While traditional talk therapy focuses on self-understanding and change through conversation, experiential therapy focuses on actions and movement for self-understanding. Using action in experiential therapy allows you to engage with and connect to experiences that tap into the roots of distress.

Experiential Therapies Treat Substance Use and Mental Health Disorders

As The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) notes, after trauma exposure, 25-76% of young people develop substance use disorder (SUD). Moreover, unaddressed trauma can lead to mental health disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) states that 46.4% of individuals with PTSD have co-occurring SUD. Trauma can lead to overwhelming thoughts and feelings that impair your ability to be successful in your daily life. Thus, experiences with trauma, whether in childhood or adulthood, are often at the root of SUD and mental health disorders.

Exclusive Hawaii Rehab’s comprehensive and compassionate approach to healing focuses on resolving your past traumas. Addressing the core root of your behaviors makes space to help you reprogram destructive thought patterns. Traumatic experiences can be challenging to think and talk about. Therefore, many people try to avoid thinking about those painful experiences, but avoidance only increases your distress. When your distress exceeds your stress threshold, you are more likely to engage in destructive behaviors to get through the day.

However, experiential therapy helps you explore different expressive therapies to unlock those difficult-to-process thoughts and feelings. Through the active embodiment of experiential therapy, you can break down those conscious and unconscious defenses to foster deeper self-understanding and self-acceptance to heal. Moreover, as certified primary substance abuse and primary mental health rehab, Exclusive Hawaii Rehab specializes in providing care that supports you as a whole person. At Exclusive Hawaii Rehab, you are more than your addiction.

Different Types of Experiential Therapy

Exploring a range of therapies in experiential therapy can help you find your unique path to healing. There is a wide range of experiential therapies that can help you reduce things like avoidance behavior and emotional dysregulation. Some of the experiential therapies you can explore include:

• Music
• Art
• Play
• Adventure

Exclusive Hawaii Rehab provides personalized support so you can collaborate with your care team to find the path to recovery that best supports you.

Music Therapy

According to Brain, Behavior, Immunity – Health, music therapy utilizes art-based activities to help you break down barriers to self-expression. Music therapy, in particular, supports self-expression, connection, and transformative change through the development of the therapeutic client and clinician relationship. The therapeutic relationship between the client and clinician is fostered through personally tailored music experiences.

In music therapy, you can explore a wide range of musical styles and experiment with instruments, including the voice, to make unique pieces of music. Creating your music allows you to explore, connect, and reflect on your life and the world in new and more meaningful ways. Where verbal expression of your thoughts and feelings may have felt impossible, now, through music therapy, you have an outlet to understand yourself and your experiences.

Art Therapy

As an experiential therapy, art therapy is a therapeutic approach that helps you unlock your capacity for self-expression. Through a wide variety of media, art therapy provides a space where the creative process, the action of making, and the therapeutic client-clinician relationship come together. As the Journal of Addictions Nursing states, art therapy can include an array of activities like:

• Drawing
• Painting
• Sculpting

Art therapy expands your tools for communication and self-expression of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Through art, you can improve your self-esteem and self-awareness to get to the root of your SUD.

Play Therapy

As an experiential therapy, play therapy is commonly known as a therapeutic approach to support the mental, emotional, and behavioral needs of children. However, play therapy can also be beneficial to adults to address the core root of difficulties that stem from trauma. Through play, you can move through the stages of your trauma and break through those subconscious thoughts and fears that are at the root of your self-destructive behaviors.

Adventure Therapy

Unlike some other classic therapies in experiential therapy, adventure therapy is a group-based therapy. As APA notes, adventure therapy allows you to safely engage with nature, teamwork, connection, and reflection. Being in nature helps you become more open to the therapeutic process and gives you insight into yourself as you become fully immersed in the act of doing. Through specific activities and challenges, you can set goals, problem-solve, overcome challenges, develop accountability, and lean into mutually supportive connections.

Experiential Therapy at Exclusive Hawaii Rehab

On the beautiful, private, and secluded grounds at Exclusive Hawaii Rehab, you can explore and customize different types of experiential therapy for true healing. Listed below are some of the experiential therapies and immersive nature experiences offered at Exclusive Hawaii Rehab:

• Surfing
• Hiking near waterfalls
• Volcano watching
• Botanical gardens

Through experiential therapy in the breathtaking Hawaiian setting, you can be empowered to heal and transform your life.