Sandtray spirituality and therapy

Clients reveal their inner worlds through litter tray scenes and humanistic therapists attempt to enhance this clients experience through the verbal part of litter tray therapy. Humanistic approaches emphasize the importance of relationship and believe in the importance of core conditions. It is very valuable to create a climate for clients where they can take their time, tell their story, feel their feelings and explore the fascinating and mysterious inner world of themselves. Good therapy is about the relationship. The relationship is the most important factor in any therapeutic approach: far more important than any technique, knowledge or experience. Meta-analyzes of counseling outcome studies have shown that the therapeutic relationship is highly correlated with positive treatment outcomes, regardless of theoretical orientation or techniques (Frank & Frank, 1991; Hansen, 2002).

However, meaningful relationships are rare in people’s everyday lives. Many clients who come to therapy do not have relationships in which they can suffer losses, struggle with ambivalence, and question self-limiting assumptions and concepts. Others come to therapy with questions about the meaning of their lives. They may feel empty, disappointed, or doubtful due to the recent awareness that they have focused their lives on something meaningless. Hope eludes many clients as they struggle with discouraging circumstances or counterproductive habits. Therapists who tackle big questions like, “What should I do with the rest of my life?” Help clients rediscover meaning and hope.

Myers and Williard (2003) argued that spirituality is about meaning, growth, and relationships. They defined spirituality as “the capacity and tendency present in all human beings to find and build meaning about life and existence and to move towards personal growth, responsibility and relationships with others” (p. 149). Myers and Williard noted that spiritual experience is “any experience or process in an individual’s life that creates new meaning and fosters personal growth, as evidenced by the ability to go beyond previous frames of reference and risk change. “(p. 149). Myers and Williard noted that their definition of spirituality is broad enough to include religious beliefs and secular ideologies.

Sandtray therapy allows clients to focus on the nitty-gritty. When clients create scenes in the sand that focus on what their lives are like now, they take the time to stop living on the periphery and focus their attention on the core. Clients are good at being distracted by work, entertainment, and activity, but distractions only help clients cope; they do not help clients find meaning in life. Obviously, work can be meaningful and having fun is important, but for many people, work is meaningless and time off can be unsatisfying.

Humanistic litter tray therapy promotes healing and spirituality by helping clients reconnect with their true selves. Fear is the main factor that prevents us from reconnecting with who we really are and being real. In fact, according to Kagan and Kagan (1997), people learn to fear each other in childhood and this fear tends to persist into adulthood. Kagan and Kagan noted that people are afraid of being hurt or hurting others and afraid of being engulfed or engulfed in other people. Most of our fears are vague and seem irrational.

Although we fear people, we also need them. According to Kagan and Kagan (1997), this approach-avoidance conflict characterizes most of human interaction. “People seem to move toward and away from direct and simple intimacy with others. This approach-avoidance syndrome appears to be a cyclical process: intimacy is followed by relative isolation, followed by new offers of intimacy” (p. 298) . Given this approach-avoidance conflict, people establish a psychologically “safe” distance that is unique to each person. People tend to find a distance in which they are somewhat intimate and safe (Kagan and Kagan).

If sandbar humanistic therapists build a therapeutic relationship in which clients feel safe, they can help clients overcome fears that hinder their ability to be who they really are and to develop meaningful relationships. This process of finding meaning can restore a sense of balance and peace and re-awaken the spiritual nature of clients who have struggled to experience it.