How Psychodrama Therapy Rewrote My Family Story

Psychodrama therapy gave me 10 years of therapy in 1 day.

I just came back from my 2nd psychodrama therapy retreat—this time in Alaska and also mixed with Ketamine. It was another life changing experience, as always.

I realized I never shared my first experience with psychodrama that I wrote about in my Psychology Today blog.

My relationship with my very patriarchal pastor father has been a huge source of trauma and grief in my life. He has been my greatest antagonist. Anything I’ve ever wanted, he has been there to stand in the way. And so I spent so much of my life avoiding and running away from him, until I just couldn’t anymore. And then psychodrama changed everything. It helped me rewrite our story—he became another victim and my heart opened for him in a way it never has before. 

Psychodrama therapy is a powerful form of group therapy and role play that was popularized in Bessel Van Der Kolk’s Bestseller, The Body Keeps The Score. Individuals process their childhood traumas in a group setting by assigning roles for each other and acting out early (sometimes even preverbal) memories together, building new attachment templates for people with deep-rooted childhood traumas who feel like they’ve tried it all and nothing is working.

Trauma says, "I need to stay hidden; I can’t be seen; I am alone." But grief says, "I need witnessing."

In one weekend, a room full of 10 strangers in an Airbnb together witnessed each other’s traumas and grief and became the ideal community I always needed. I can’t say that all my childhood wounds are completely healed but this is the closest and most whole I’ve felt in my life so far.

As Gabor Maté says, “Children don’t get traumatized because they’re hurt. They get traumatized because they’re alone with the hurt.”

Read more about my psychodrama experience here.

What’s a story you’d like to rewrite in your family of origin?