As a teacher, therapist, and supervisor I have developed a number of enactment interventions which
serve to help clients to better connect with each other. I created many of my positive ‘attunement’ based enactments to serve 2 purposes: 1.) to create more manageable interventions for beginning therapists who may not have the therapeutic leadership skill sets to orchestrate enactments surrounding complicated subjects (infidelity, grief, resentment, shame etc.) and 2.) to facilitate positive interactions between clients that serve to build a stronger bond/attachment while increasing the emotional intelligence of the participants.
Enactments are simply when a therapist creates a space for clients to interact with each other (as opposed to the clients just interacting – communicating – to and with the therapist). Often clients have been trained by their experiences in individual therapy to speak to the therapist – it then becomes the job of the couples and family therapist to help people to interact with each other within the therapy session.
There are two main purposes of an enactment: Assessment – to show the therapist exactly how the system currently interacts with certain subjects 2.) for the therapist to assist the system in engaging in (enacting) new interaction methods. For clarity’s sake I call 1.) unguided enactments and 2.) guided enactments.
in a previous post I listed a bunch of emotional/social intelligence variables that I often try and augment with experiential interventions (https://www.thoughtsfromatherapist.com/2013/11/24/mentally-healthy-person-characteristics/). All of my guided enactments are used to facilitate self-awareness, empathy, attunement, compassion and ultimately connection. Part of my theory of change holds that these variables must be present before a dyadic interaction around a difficult subject is going to be fully reparative (when people don’t feel felt when expressing their vulnerabilities it is unlikely for resilience to awaken).
For today I will share an enactment that focuses on: Playfulness, Existential expression, and creativity. I generally use attunement enactments dyadically = I have two people face each other and participate in the exercise. This enactment is appropriate for platonic and romantic relationships.
As in all dyadic enactments I have the pair face each other and I give them a very brief and simply set of directions
Directions to both participants (mostly the listener):
1.) please look at each other and not at me
2.) I want you to pay attention and attune to the emotions that are happening in the room in this very moment.
3.) one great way to show emotional understanding is to focus with compassionate curiosity on the non-verbal language of your partner (or son or sister or dad etc – I will say partner in this post for linguistic simplicity)
4.) I will have one of you be the talker and the other be the listener
5.) the plot is not particularly important. I want you to focus mostly on the emotional significance of what your partner is telling you – its really unnecessary (and often hurtful) to correct the plot lines – for example saying something like, “well actually honey is was Saturday and not Sunday and we were driving to grandma’s and not the restaurant.”
6.) your partner will feel felt if you can ‘see’ there authentic emotional self in this moment.
Directions to the Speaker:
1.) I want you to tell your partner what comes up – what you think/feel when I ask the following question:
2.) What is the symbol of your being? what object, symbol or archetype really resonates with you in such a way that it describes a very important aspect of you true, authentic, spiritual, or core self?
3.) what makes this object meaningful to you? Maybe you have a story that comes up when you think of this object?
Directions to the listener
1.) I want you to share in the joy of this expression – really try and join with the emotion your partner is expressing.
After the Speaker has shared the therapist asks the listener (and again reminds the listener to tell the answer to their partner and not the therapist)
2.) what did you notice? what were the emotions that were shared – what are your partner’s emotions related to this object?
3.) how do you feel in the presence of your partner sharing about this object and its’ meaning – how are you emotionally impacted in this moment.
The therapist will then guide the partners in processing the meaning or purpose of the enactment with questions like:
what came up for you during this exercise?
what do you think the point may be of these positive interactions – how can you take this into your relationship and what will you gain when you do?
The hope is to create a playful connection!