Sticking Together: Experiential Activities for Family Counseling » (1st Edition)

Gerstein, Jackie S., EdD (Western New Mexico Univ)

Experiential Family Counseling is an action-oriented approach to family therapy. Through the use of structured games, physical challenges, intellectual exercises, and guided activities, therapists can gain incredible insight into the behaviors and responses that contribute to or perpetuate a family's identified problems. While traditional treatment methods can get bogged down in verbal sparring between family members as they attempt to isolate problematic issues in an attempt to solve them, experiential therapy calls for families to work together to succeed in overcoming obstacles placed before them.

Because the activities are designed as metaphors for the family's own problems, counselors are given the opportunity to help them practice solutions that can be utilized in their daily interactions and experiences. In Sticking Together, Jaclyn Gerstein has provided therapists and family counselors with a wonderful tool for implementing experiential therapy in their own practices. In addition to a thoughtful overview of the uses and benefits of such unique techniques, she also provides detailed plans for developing experiential counseling sessions. With an easy to use, perforated format, Sticking Together offers detailed descriptions of check-in, warm-up, and follow-up activities for therapists, plus an extensive selection of experiential family-building initiatives that will introduce "fun" into the vocabulary of family therapy.

Foreword. Introduction. Section 1: Background Information. Experiential Counseling Defined. Experiential Family Counseling Defined. Characteristics of Experiential Family Counseling. Functions of Experiential Activities. General Therapeutic Goals and Principles. Section 2: Setting Up an Experiential Program. Preparing for the Program. The Experiential Counseling Program. Follow-up Strategies. Section 3: Working with Different Age Groups. Special Issues of Young Children in Experiential Family Counseling. Experiential Family Counseling with Adolescents. Section 4: The Counseling Session. Introduction/Review General Program Goals. Physical and Emotional Safety Check. PEEP: The Creation of Safe Space as a Norm in Experiential Family Counseling. The PEEP Safety Checklist. Experiential Check-In Activities. Participant Rights and Responsibilities. Participant Bill of Rights. Participant Responsibilities. Contracts. Name Games and Warm-ups. Family-Building Initiatives. Review and Closure. Bibliography.