Experiential, hands-on learning is fundamental to facilitating the deep understanding of practice that future therapists require. Faculty like Joslyn Armstrong, associate professor of marriage, couple, and family therapy at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, are taking innovative approaches to ensure their students have as much access to this crucial type of learning as possible.
In a recent elective course for counseling and therapy students, Armstrong explored experiential family therapy models. This type of therapy focuses on doing and feeling rather than just talking, using active, multisensory techniques like sculpting, role-playing, art, and guided imagery to unlock hidden emotions and dysfunctional patterns in real-time within the family system, fostering deeper connection, empathy, and authentic change.
Armstrong says the purpose of the course, in addition to learning about these therapy models, is to give students space to explore their own philosophy, worldview, and clinical assumptions, as well as treatment techniques and therapist positionality. They achieve this by engaging in role-plays as well as recording video of themselves practicing a specific technique from the models on “clients”.
Typically in an experiential therapy course, the role of both client and therapist would be played by members of the class. These mock therapy sessions are a key tool for therapists-in-training, allowing them to gain hands-on experience while practicing their techniques in a live setting. However, Armstrong has observed that when students in the class play both client and therapist, they tend to be unrealistically compassionate to one another because they do not want to cause embarrassment or make a situation too uncomfortable or challenging for a classmate.
Still, Armstrong remains a fan of this technique, but with a twist.
“I started bringing Lewis & Clark College undergraduate psychology students in to play the role of client, encouraging them to remain in character during awkward situations in the mock therapy sessions,” she explains. “When students in the class play clients and therapists, not only do they go easier on each other, but since they also all already understand the jargon and language from the course material, the therapists do not get the experience of having to simplify concepts and techniques for clients as you would in a real-life situation.”
Armstrong has been pleased with the results, noting that the undergraduates offer much more realistic client responses. Additionally, she explains, experiential therapy models support raising anxiety and having spontaneous in-the-moment processing. Working with the undergraduates has allowed the graduate students to practice navigating their own anxiety about practicing a new therapy model and conducting a therapy session where they are not already comfortable with their client.
Kim Hogan ’26, a marriage, couple, and family therapy graduate student enrolled in Armstrong’s class, says she was pleasantly surprised by how effectively the undergraduate students embodied their roles, which made the experience feel more realistic and clinically relevant.
“Playing therapist for the undergraduate students felt meaningfully different from working with members of my own cohort,” shares Hogan.
Unlike our peers, the undergraduates were not intentionally tailoring their responses to help us practice specific clinical skills. Instead, they embodied their roles more authentically, engaging in tangents, offering unexpected responses, and sometimes struggling to name emotions or present their experiences in a linear way.
Playfully smirking, Armstrong admits she has fun with this process.
“I enjoy the process of intentionally putting students in anxiety-rising situations in a safe setting, such as the role-plays, because working through that experience truly helps them to understand the modality on a level that goes far beyond just intellectual comprehension.”
Hogan confirms that the most engaging aspect of the activity and the class was the way Armstrong embodied the theory through the learning experience itself.
“Rather than simply teaching the concepts, Dr. Armstrong facilitated experiential learning in a highly attentive and participatory manner that truly reflected the models we were studying. Her passion and expertise in experiential approaches were contagious, and it would be difficult to leave this class without developing a deeper appreciation for these theoretical frameworks.”
Having taught this course for multiple years, Armstrong says she falls more in love with the model and practice every time and is always excited to “nerd out” about it with her students as they begin to explore it for themselves.
It makes my heart flutter and I am so happy when I see a student having an “aha moment” during the role play exercise. I have been able to use it to encourage students who may have some initial reservations about client care, or their own therapeutic style, to be more assertive and reach that critical place, emotionally and internally, where things or perspectives shift for them.
Associate Professor Joslyn Armstrong
Describing her students as impressive, Armstrong also notes they are passionate about social justice and care deeply about practicing from an ethically and relationally competent lens.
“Although they may be nervous, I appreciate how most are willing to be uncomfortable and take risks to make mistakes to grow and improve. I delight in being able to critically engage with them about the clinical work that we do as practitioners because mental healthcare is so important to a healthy society.”
Armstrong will teach the experiential family therapy models course again in both summer and fall of 2026, and is exploring other creative modalities, such as leveraging AI for client simulations, in order to continue providing her students with as many hands-on learning opportunities as possible.
Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy
