Top 5 Therapeutic Activities

 Hey everyone!

That was a longer break than anticipated. Life got crazy real fast. And it just keeps moving. I hope you all had a good holiday season, and welcome to the new year! I'm excited to see where things go this year. As a sort of reflection, I wanted to share my top 5 activities that have led to extremely therapeutic discussions and personal breakthroughs.

Cami's Top 5 Therapeutic Activities

1. Skiing

I already shared one of my best experiences with skiing in my previous blog post, so I probably won't share much about this activity. However, I have found that most of the best therapeutic work that I have been part of has taken place over the course of months to years. Having consistent, regular meetings with patients/clients creates a better therapeutic environment because you establish rapport, and you don't have to reintroduce yourself to anyone. You can build on what was established in previous sessions. And, as you repeat the skills that you are trying to work on, the brain is able to make connections for easy access to those skills. Skiing is great because you are developing physical skills while also developing emotional and mental skills. The mental/emotional therapy doesn't have to "front and center" to be developed.

2. Rappelling

I love rappelling, but I hate heights. I threatened to quit my job multiple times when I was doing rappelling as the therapeutic activity. I had to do a lot of emotional regulation for myself while doing this activity. Rappelling has been one of my most successful therapeutic activities because several of my clients have had profound insights into their mental health journeys. One of the adolescent girls that I worked with realized that she really didn't trust herself. She thought she was making such progress in her mental health until she realized that a lot of the things that she was doing were just superficial. She made the connection that she needed to trust herself more and have more faith in herself to make true and lasting changes for her mental health.

One of the adolescent boys that we went rappelling with graduated from the program while I was still working at the facility. And his "graduation" speech was all about recreation therapy and how he learned how to trust himself and others. He talked about how recreation therapy had led him to know how to have better relationships and that there are people who are willing to help him. He talked about how he can do hard things if he is willing to reach out to people around him. His experience with rappelling helped him have better relationships. And there is so much more. There are more clients that have had such good therapeutic insights while rappelling, but I don't want to take up this whole post on just the one activity.

3. Minesweeper

Being honest here, I don't actually know the name of this activity. I call it minesweeper because it vaguely reminds me of the computer game where you have to dodge the mines in a grid. In this activity, participants have to find a sequence of spaces by trial and error. I will plan on explaining this game more in a later post, so then you know how to truly play the game. Anyway, in this game, I have found that most people hate it and think it's dumb. Until the very end, when they finally reach the goal. Those who persist and stay to the end of the game get much out of this game. There are many ways to process this game and many skills that are used. My favorite is when my groups talk about how people make mistakes. And for most mistakes, we are allowed to try over and over again to get it right. For example, parenting is hard. You may make a mistake today in your parenting, but you get another chance tomorrow. And if you try something new in your parenting, and that doesn't work, you have another chance the next day. It may feel hard to change when others expect us not to, but we have so many opportunities. This is my favorite thing to process for this game. Participants are so hard on themselves, and this activity gives them permission to let some of that go because there is literally no other way to achieve the goal than to make errors.

4. Group Juggle

Like Minesweeper above, this game gets a lot of hate. Every recreation therapist is different, and so this game has several variations. I play this game where I have one tennis ball, and the group has to decide on the path the tennis ball is going to take and not stray from that path. Dropping the ball means a restart, and we start with just the one tennis ball and work our way up to three tennis balls. This game is so frustrating, and I love the games that make people frustrated. And I get complaints all the time such as, "You know you're in a mental hospital, right? We do bad things when we get angry" or "This isn't therapeutic; it's not calming." Well, guess what! I do activities that help people work through those emotions. I do frustrating activities on purpose because it helps people continue during those strong emotions. I process those emotions so much, especially with the adolescents. I love these emotions. At the end, there is often a cheer. And it's usually a loud cheer. The kids have so many strong emotions, and some of them are relief and excitement and pride and a sense of accomplishment. The change from misery to joy is tangible. You can see the kids change as they work on this goal. This game is one of the most therapeutic just because of the emotional changes and perseverance through the negative emotions.

5. Song Emotion Draw

This activity is all about emotions. I pick 8 songs (usually soundtrack music), and participants have to use drawing/coloring/art to express the emotions that the music evokes. It's pretty simple set up, but it gets people thinking. I like this one because I can sit back and observe without having to talk much during the activity. I can also participate by drawing. I'm not an artist, so the drawings are very kindergarten-style (and I have had people comment on the kindergarten-like drawing). This one is just a simple activity about emotions and recognizing emotions whether we can put a name to them or not. It's also about expression and uses different mediums (art and music) to express. Again, every recreation therapist is different, so the way this is done is different. I have also evolved how I do this because I used to do more songs with lyrics from famous artists, but I have found that I like to use more soundtrack music now because it is meant to make people feel something, and there is usually less bias from people because they don't know the songs.