Experiential Therapy: How I Work With Emotion, Creativity, and Insight
- Cody Thomas Rounds
- Nov 29
- 6 min read
PsychAtWork-Pro Magazine
Experiential therapy sits at the center of my clinical work because it allows people to move in ways that traditional talk therapy often cannot. Over the years, I’ve worked with college students trying to find a sense of direction, executives carrying unspoken pressure, founders caught in the emotional undertow of their own ambition, and neurodivergent adults whose lives have been shaped by masking and internalized tension. Each arrived with a different story, but they shared one thing in common: talking about the problem only took them so far.
Experiential therapy gives people something talk therapy alone rarely does—a direct, lived encounter with their own emotional world. I rely heavily on expressive tools like structured drawing, guided imagery, and expressive writing because these methods access a layer of experience that is too often managed, suppressed, or over-intellectualized. When a person finally shifts from describing something to actually feeling it, insight becomes usable. The work becomes real.
My approach is not about producing artwork or polished essays. It is about accessing what is otherwise out of reach. And in a culture that trains people to stay composed, productive, and “fine,” this shift toward emotional honesty is often the turning point.
Why Experiential Therapy Matters in Mental Health
In my practice, experiential therapy is the bridge between emotional understanding and emotional change. Mental health conditions—anxiety, depression, trauma responses, eating disorders, chronic stress—are rarely rooted in a simple inability to think differently. Thought-based approaches such as cognitive therapy can be useful, but many clients arrive after years of knowing exactly what they “should” do, yet still feeling stuck.
Experiential psychotherapy changes the terrain.
Instead of analyzing emotions from a distance, clients enter their emotional experience directly. Through creative expression, symbolic work, drama-based techniques, or even sensory-focused drawing, the emotional system becomes accessible in a way that talk therapy alone cannot accomplish. Research suggests that experiential approaches help people process negative emotions more effectively, develop emotional regulation, and achieve positive changes that feel grounded rather than theoretical.
I see this every week. A college student who intellectually understands their anxiety suddenly recognizes its physical presence on the page. A founder sketching the “shape” of pressure realizes that the weight isn’t ambition—it’s fear of being insignificant. An autistic adult finds emotional clarity through form and color rather than words. These moments of emotional contact reveal what has been defended against for years.
Experiential therapy brings those patterns forward so they can be worked with, not avoided.
How I Use Experiential Psychotherapy in Practice
My sessions blend emotion-focused therapy, psychodynamic insight, and creative expression. I use expressive writing, art therapy elements, therapeutic play adapted for adults, and hands-on activity as part of the experiential psychotherapy session. These tools help clients explore past experiences, emotional situations, trauma, or patterns that resist verbal access.
In a typical session, a client might map a relationship pattern with guided imagery, write through a moment of emotional activation, draw the outline of a feeling, or re-create a difficult memory in symbolic form. The goal is not catharsis. The goal is clarity.
The arts-based elements—whether drawn from art therapy, drama therapy, or other forms—function as expressive tools, not artistic exercises. They help surface the implicit, the defended, and the buried. They create a safe space for emotional processing and help clients re-enact or re-interpret experiences without being overwhelmed.
Experiential therapy allows me to meet people where they are: in the emotional language that makes sense to them. Some think best in images. Some in metaphor. Some in movement. Some in story. When emotion emerges through the medium that truly reflects it, real work begins.
Working With College Students, Young Adults, and Identity Development
College students and young adults often enter therapy feeling pressure to “figure it out”—identity, career, relationships, self-concept. They come in carrying decades of expectations without ever having learned how to experience their own internal world with honesty. Experiential therapy helps them slow down enough to understand who they are beneath the noise.
Through expressive writing and guided imagery, students often uncover motivations they didn’t know they had: the fear of disappointing a family, the belief that achievement guarantees safety, the loneliness masked by constant productivity. By recreating the emotional pattern rather than talking around it, many experience the first true sense of internal permission they’ve ever known.
Experiential psychotherapy becomes a way to build emotional literacy in a developmental stage that desperately needs it. Not by lecturing. Not by assigning tools. But by helping them experience themselves clearly.
Executives, Founders, and High-Functioning Adults Who Feel Stuck
Executives and founders arrive in therapy with a very specific kind of psychological difficulty. They have built lives on decisive action, fast problem-solving, and the ability to stay in control under pressure. These strengths become liabilities when emotional situations demand depth instead of speed.
Traditional talk therapy often feels slow or frustrating for them because their minds know how to stay ahead of discomfort. They can narrate trauma from ten thousand feet. They can describe negative emotions without feeling them. They can talk about burnout while outperforming everyone around them.
Experiential therapy interrupts that pattern.
When I ask a founder to draw what “pressure” looks like, something shifts. When an executive re-enacts the moment they lost trust in themselves, clarity emerges. When a highly overcontrolled leader writes about the sensation of failure without editing or polishing, something honest breaks through the performance.
Experiential psychotherapy allows the emotional system to speak in its real language—not in the optimized, efficient, professionally rehearsed vocabulary that success demands. This gives leaders the chance to recalibrate their internal lives, to understand their long-term patterns, and to develop emotional regulation that supports sustainable performance rather than exhausting self-control.
Neurodivergent Adults Benefit Uniquely From Experiential Therapy
Many autistic adults, ADHD adults, and individuals with complex sensory or processing profiles find experiential therapy far more accessible than traditional talk therapy. Language can be slippery, overwhelming, or too linear to capture internal experience. Creative expression—art-based techniques, guided imagery, sensory grounding, expressive writing—provides a direct channel for emotion.
Play therapy concepts adapted for adults help bypass rigid cognitive patterns and make space for authentic internal contact. Experiential therapy becomes a client-centered process where the internal world can be explored without forcing neurotypical communication styles.
This work can be especially transformative for neurodivergent adults who have spent years masking or contorting themselves to fit expectations. Creative expression allows them to develop emotional awareness and self-understanding on their own terms.
My Philosophy as an Experiential Therapist
My philosophy comes down to this: experience changes people more than explanation ever will.
I believe that therapeutic approaches must invite clients into direct emotional engagement rather than keeping them at a cognitive distance. I believe that creative artistic processes—drawing, writing, symbolic work—are not add-ons but essential tools in the therapeutic process. And I believe that experiential therapy offers a level of precision and depth that many high-functioning adults never encounter elsewhere.
My approach draws from:
emotion-focused therapy and the belief that change happens through feeling
psychodynamic understanding of how past experiences shape present patterns
gestalt therapy’s emphasis on here-and-now awareness
client-centered principles from Carl Rogers that honor autonomy, authenticity, and internal wisdom
research from psychology and clinical scholarship—Guilford Press, Academic Press, the Comprehensive Handbook of therapy methods—showing that experiential processing supports emotional regulation and personal growth
Experiential therapy gives clients the chance to explore not who they think they are, but who they actually are when defenses soften.
What Experiential Therapy Helps Create
When clients engage fully with experiential psychotherapy, something shifts—not in a dramatic, cinematic way, but in the quiet, durable way that real change unfolds. A person begins to recognize patterns that once felt invisible. Emotional processing becomes less frightening. Positive feelings become more available. Difficult emotions become more workable. A sense of self becomes more coherent.
Experiential therapy supports people with diagnosable disorders, psychological difficulties, substance use disorders, trauma histories, and chronic anxiety. But it equally supports those who have no diagnosis at all—people who are simply tired of being strangers to themselves.
Talk therapy has its place. Cognitive therapy has its value. But for many of the adults I work with—college students, executives, founders, leaders, creators, neurodivergent thinkers—experiential therapy is the approach that finally opens the door.
By drawing what cannot be said. By writing what cannot be spoken. By allowing emotions to emerge in their real form.
The work becomes not just reflective, but alive.
Additional Resources for Clinicians
A full catalog of clinician-ready interventions is available for mental health practitioners seeking structured experiential and assessment-informed tools to deepen clinical work.
Clinician Services
Supervision, consultation, and collaborative assessment or clinicians navigating complex cases. From licensure supervision to targeted training in assessment, diagnosis, and therapeutic modalities, these services offer reflective, rigorous support to deepen skill, sharpen insight, and move clinical work forward.
