Dance/Movement and Drama Therapy Methods to Assess Resistance in Adolescents with Low Sense of Identity and Self-Esteem: Development of a Method

Drama and Dance/Movement based therapies have the ability unlock the psyche through the mind/body connection by gaining access to innate creativity that is prevalent in childhood and often begins to diminish in adolescence. For this thesis, adolescents from a low socio-economic background participated in an Expressive Arts Therapy processing and support group, aimed to build self-esteem, strengthen communication skills, alleviate social anxiety and become part of a community. Dance/movement and Drama therapy techniques were implemented, due to their social nature which promotes embodied self-expression and strengthens verbal problem-solving communication. These two particular modalities have proven to enable deep self-awareness and understanding. Through implementation of these directives with adolescents it was discovered that they often respond in a resistant manner. The purpose of this method was to observe and examine the factors that prevent adolescents from fully participating in dance/movement and drama therapy directives in an authentic manner. It was hypothesized that the structure of the group, which prevented deep creative exploration, the imbalance of co-facilitation and the identity crisis of adolescents’ developmental stage contributed to the resistance of dance/movement and drama therapy directives