Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Get To Know More About Sand Tray Therapy

By William Kennedy


Sand tray refers to an increasingly recognized powerful therapeutic method that facilitates healing particularly within environments that do not intimidate patients. It utilizes miniatures and sand to express the way clients feel or their reaction to certain traumas they may have experienced in their lives. The technique can be utilized both with adults and children with proven effectiveness in all instances where patients are resistant to expressing themselves because of being frightened to open up. Sand tray therapy can, therefore, be utilized for those who having verbal expression difficulties.

It is a technique often used with adolescents and children as they usually find it difficult to express themselves through words or properly articulate their feelings and thoughts. The therapist provides a sand tray, eater, and miniatures of different kinds. They include cars, human figures, buildings, trees and other natural objects, fantasy and many others. These miniatures allow the client the chance to create an entire world that expresses their creativity.

Creativity is however not the main purpose of this exercise. Sometimes a patient may voice out their inability to be creative but it has been said that there is no standard of creation that is required. The main objective is the story behind the world that has been made by the client. Once completed, the therapist helps relate it to the experiences of the client.

Not many clients are comfortable with expressing themselves verbally and may leave out vital information while trying to verbalize the images in their head. This tool allows the client to convey their feelings, perceptions, thoughts, psychological and emotional conflicts through the displaying of their own created world as they play with the soil type and miniature.

This tool aids in creating awareness of emotional conflicts that was previously not known. As these emotional conflicts are brought to light, the therapist is able to share with the client suitable ways in which they can be resolved. The use of this exercise promotes self-awareness and improves their expressive styles including verbal communication.

It is often utilized with kids who may not yet be in their stages of being able to appropriately articulate words or even those who may not be mature enough to articulate their feelings through spoken word. It becomes effective because kids are usually enlightened with the ideas of playing using toys and sand provided in some safe space.

Although it very beneficial to kids, it also offers an efficient remedy to adults and teenagers. This is since it permits clients and therapists to develop some relationships much faster compared to using words alone. In addition, it can open up avenues through which struggling adults and adolescents can freely express the events of traumas, intense family issues, unresolved loss and other emotional problems suffered in life.

It is not only used for individuals but can be applied in groups or married couples. It aids in paving a way for a discussion that a client would previously have wanted to talk about. The therapist allows a client to be in control and this creates a safe place where the client can relive the trauma and establishes a gradual healing process.




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