RPG Therapy

What is RPG therapy?

Role play game Therapy is a game-ified version of art therapy. You will use art materials and story telling with the fun twist of table top gaming added in to explore your emotions and help work towards solutions. Think dungeons and dragons but way easier and tailor made to you and your goals. This is a very fun way of doing some seriously deep emotional work. By using a character to express yourself you are able to take a step back and observe. This is a very gentle way of working on difficult things and keeps things interesting week to week.

What to expect

When you come to an RPG therapy session at Chosen Growth you can expect to spend the first bit of session talking and catching up on your week before diving into the game. The game itself is a series of art activities and narrative story telling with plenty of dice rolling. You will be both the player and the game maker as I help guide you through the process. You will create the world we play in, your character (and some others), you will have full creative freedom over decisions and direction.

How is this therapy?

RPG therapy at Chosen Growth is art therapy with a unique twist. As in talk or art therapy we will discuss your goals and therapeutic journey and use the game as a tool to accomplish them. The game setup in the first few sessions does take a little bit of time as we create the world and characters based on your needs, once we have completed these steps the real fun and work can begin.

Example: Let’s say you want to work on being less anxious in social situations. We can use the characters to role play out situations where your character is in increasingly difficult social situations as a form of modelling and practice. By doing this in the controlled environment of the game it will give you the space to practice safely and to experiment with no judgment! You can apply the skills learned in the game slowly in your real life and we will take the time to reflect and discuss this in session. This is just one very small use of the game, the possibilities are truly endless.

Materials

Similar to art therapy you will need to have a few supplies on hand in your space. The big difference is dice! We can use any dice that you have whether you have a full set or just a single 6 sided die. Character sheets and game related resources I will provide. We will need some art supplies as well, if you can get some or have some already then I suggest you have drawing paper, writing paper, pastels or crayons, pencil crayons, some markers, and if you can clay or playdough. You don’t need all of them but it is nice for you to have some options as the materials can make a difference in your emotional process with the art. We can also work with photography, digital drawing, paint, food, found objects, recycling, and so so much more. I do not want materials to be a barrier for anyone interested in RPG /art therapy at Chosen Growth.