How I Got Interested in Psychodrama
I would not call myself an expert in Psychodrama. However, I have spent the last 5 years exploring the topic, the last 3 towards certification. I have invested roughly 500 hours in studying and practicing psychodrama professionally.
My First Psychodrama Experience
My then partner shared that some of her therapist friends had joined a psychodrama group and it was changing the way they understood therapy. It was helping them connect to their feelings and drop into their hearts in new and radical ways.
This got my attention.
I had felt stuck emotionally for years, experiencing a super drought of tears lasting multiple decades. So, in short order, I got a referral for a psychodrama therapist.
I remember my first session vividly. My new therapist and I chatted for a few minutes and then he took me directly into some empty chair work. Before I knew what was happening, I was saying what I’d never been able to say to someone important in my life.
From the outside it looked like I was talking to an empty chair, on the inside it felt like I was finding my voice for the first time. This connected my thoughts to my feelings and unlocked a vault deep inside for which I thought I had lost the key.
As the tears flowed down my face, I turned to my therapist and asked him: “What did you do to me?!?!”
In 20 minutes my new psychodrama therapist helped me find what my previous therapist and I had been unable to recover in 2 years of searching.
My previous therapist had been an important guide at a critical turning point in my life, when I started therapy school. He helped me understand and process my anger and quit smoking.
Yet, my biggest personal therapeutic break throughs have always come through psychodrama therapy. It has helped me find the lock boxes inside that I didn’t even know I had buried years before, and could never find with traditional talk therapy. Today I do a mixture of talk and experiential therapy. They both serve their own unique purposes in my healing, but psychodrama is the modality that has helped me work through the biggest blocks that stood in the way of the life I want.
My Goal Over the Next 1.5 Years
I am working towards earning my first level of certification in psychodrama, which is an extensive process that takes an average of 5-7 years—I’m getting close. Earning all three levels takes 10+ years for most people:
Certified Practitioner (CP) is the first level and requires 780 clinical training hours
Practitioner Associate Trainer (PAT) takes at least another 3 years and an additional 160 hours of clinical training
Teacher Educator Practitioner (TEP) is the top level at which you can train other professionals in psychodrama
Because this modality has been transformational in my personal journey of growth and self-understanding, it’s become my dream to use this powerful tool to help others find their path to healing.