Unlike other approaches to sandbox therapy, the humanistic approach emphasizes the here and now. After the client creates the scene, the therapist’s primary goal with the client in the processing phase of sandbox therapy is to facilitate a process of exploration, expression, awareness, and discovery. The focus is on the moment and this focus guides the therapist’s responses to the client. Awareness is emphasized over intuition because awareness is about experiencing.
Imagine that your adult client is struggling in her marriage. You’ve asked her to create a sandbox scene for your marriage. In her scene, she places the miniature representing her husband at one end of the tray and her figure at the other end. As she processes the scene, she says, “I don’t love him anymore, but I’m afraid to leave him.” If she has ever worked with couples or clients who are struggling with their marriage, I am sure she has heard something similar to this statement. In this approach to therapy, we call this type of statement a polarity. A polarity contains two parts; part of this client does not love her husband and she wants more from life. She may experience this lack of love as deeply painful and lonely. The other part of her is afraid. She may be scared for financial reasons. She may be afraid of losing the familiar. She may be afraid of not being able to live alone. Have you ever noticed how reluctant we are to part with the familiar? She may have children and be afraid of how her decision to leave will affect them.
There are countless responses a therapist could give to this client statement. How would you respond? If you wanted the client to go deeper into his awareness, what you wouldn’t want him to do is analyze her feelings. Clients cannot analyze a feeling and experience it at the same time. Let me say it again. Clients cannot analyze a feeling and experience it at the same time. Most of us like to know why we feel the way we do, and many of us are very good at analyzing our feelings. However, knowing why you feel the way you do won’t change anything. Analyzing feelings is a cognitive process. As Yalom (1995) pointed out, reflection and analysis are useful after an experience, not during the experience. In this approach to sand tray therapy, the time for reflection and analysis is after clients have done the hard work of staying with a problem or experience.
Let’s look at some possible options for responding to the client who doesn’t love her husband. It is essential to note the polarity in the client statement. One option for the therapist would be to ask the client which of the two parts (part 1-I don’t love him, part 2-fear of leaving him) she is more aware of now. She might say, “Right now, are you more aware of the part of you that doesn’t love him or the part of you that is afraid to leave?” Let’s say she says that he is more aware of the part of her that is afraid. She might ask, “Do you feel the fear right now?” If she says yes, she could say, “What does fear look like? Describe it to me.”
One assumption in the humanistic approach to clients is that the sandbox therapist works to keep the client focused on a feeling or problem. One of the advantages of the sandbox is that the layout of the miniatures and the sandbox tends to catalyze the client’s awareness and keep them more focused on their problems. Many clients will bring up a problem and go to great lengths to avoid experiencing feelings related to the problem. Why do clients do this? One possible explanation for this trend is that customers were polarized about the issue in the first place. They wanted to bring up the problem and solve it, but they didn’t want to experience the pain, fear, or other feelings associated with the problem.
By focusing on the feelings of the present, humanistic sandbox therapists optimize clients’ exploratory experience and facilitate deep awareness not possible when therapists focus on the past. The past is relevant, but unless clients have feelings about the past, the skillful therapist will have more success facilitating growth by keeping the focus on the present.