Chairwork is an interactive psychological method where clients use physical movement between chairs to engage in direct dialogue with an empty chair. The empty chair could represent a critical voice, a frightened younger self, a coping mode (e.g. an avoidant or perfectionist part of themselves), or a more compassionate version of themselves.
Rather than just describing a problem, the client moves between the two chairs, speaking as each part. The technique is often used to explore and resolve inner conflicts, emotional struggles, and relationship difficulties.
How we Use Chairwork in Therapy and Why is it Such a Useful Technique?
‘By shifting chairs and positions, chairwork can help people play with perspective-taking and different types of framings in a very embodied way. Need some advice? Change seats and respond to that issue as your best friend, future self, or role model! Standing up and leaving parts of the self on chairs can also be a way to begin separating from patterns of experience, thereby cultivating a more metacognitive, mindful orientation.’ – Dr Tobyn Bell, Chairwork
The basic process behind chairwork involves imagining that someone or some part of yourself is sitting in one chair while you occupy another. You then engage in a conversation between the two ‘roles’, switching back and forth between chairs to express different perspectives, feelings, or thoughts. For example, instead of talking about your inner-critic, you sit in a chair and become your inner-critic, moving to another chair in order to respond back.
It sounds a bit wacky, but I think chairwork is one of the most powerful, memorable treatment methods I use in the therapy room, and much of my client feedback attests to this.
What are the Benefits?
Chairwork can be incredibly emotional and moving. One of the main benefits is that it allows you to externalise internal conflicts, unexpressed thoughts, and emotions. It also has the power to shift you out of constant looping thoughts and enable you to externalise what’s happening within yourself. Other benefits include:
1. Increased Self-Awareness
Chairwork gives you a platform to delve deeper into conflicting emotions, thoughts, and beliefs. Through engaging in dialogue with distinct parts of yourself, you can gain valuable insights and a greater understanding of your inner experiences. This heightened self-awareness allows for a more comprehensive exploration of your personal gaols and values.
2. Improved Emotional Processing
By role-playing and engaging in dialogue, you can untangle complex emotional responses, express your feelings, and engage in the process of emotional processing. This fosters emotional growth and resilience, as well as a greater acceptance of your emotional experiences.
3. More Cognitive Flexibility
Chairwork encourages you to challenge thinking patterns and consider alternative viewpoints. By embodying different roles and engaging in dialogue, you can practice cognitive defusion which involves creating distance from your thoughts and recognising them as transient mental events. This promotes cognitive flexibility and expands your problem-solving abilities, allowing for more adaptive responses to challenging situations.
4. A Stronger Therapeutic Alliance
Engaging in chairwork can deepen the therapeutic alliance between you and your therapist. This is important because the therapeutic alliance – the trusting, collaborative partnership between a client and a therapist – is widely considered the single strongest predictor of positive treatment success across all forms of psychotherapy.
The interactive nature of chairwork can also enhance your engagement in therapy as you’re actively participating in your own healing process. As they’re expressing complex emotions, clients often describe feeling deeply heard and understood by their therapist, which further strengthens alliance.
How I Use Chairwork in My Practice
In my practice, I often use chairwork to understand and tame the inner critic. This approach allows us to discover what it’s underlying motivations are, why it keeps showing up in someone’s life, whether it represents someone else’s voice, and what it’s really afraid of underneath the harsh words it uses.
For example, the inner critic of someone who often judges themselves harshly in work situations might say things like ‘you messed that up’, ‘you’re out of your depth’, or ‘why can’t you get a grip of yourself’. At the same time, there’s another part of them on the receiving end who is feeling increasingly overwhelmed, hopeless, and ashamed. Chairwork allows us to hear what it’s like from both sides.
Through dialogue, we might discover that the critic comes from painful childhood experiences, or that underneath the anger and contempt, it’s actually really frightened. It could be showing up like this to try and motivate the person to be better or protect them from being exposed and humiliated by failing.
At this point, the client might move into a third compassionate chair to reflect on what we’ve observed. We can then speak to and support the more vulnerable, attacked part while also challenging the critic. ‘I know you’re scared, but you’re making things worse’.
I’ve also used chairwork to help clients access and embody different emotions, especially if there is one emotion that tends to dominate such as anger or anxiety. I’ve used it to help clients increase their empathy towards the inner-child, giving this part of themselves the care, support, and encouragement that was missing when they were younger, and may still be missing today. Finally, I’ve also used chairwork to help people process grief by talking to a loved one who has passed.
Is Chairwork Right for You?
Choosing the right therapeutic approach is a collaborative process that begins at our very first session. I’ll be listening for several things – what’s brought you to therapy now, how long you’ve been struggling, what’s already been tried, and how you relate to yourself. Read CBT, CFT, EMDR or Schema Therapy – Which is Right for You? to learn more about this process.
Chairwork isn’t something we’d launch straight into. There’s some groundwork to be done first in terms of assessing and building a formulation of your main difficulties, as well as building a baseline level of trust and confidence in me as a therapist.
Some clients find it a bit strange at first when I start moving chairs about, but I wouldn’t introduce anything into therapy unless I thought it was going to be useful. Almost all clients report chairwork has had a significant impact on them. In fact, it’s often one of the things they cite as being the most memorable, profound part of treatment.
Therapy to Help You Heal
With more than 18 years’ experience in the field of mental health, I help clients understand the patterns of thinking and behaving that have been driving their actions for decades. By connecting past experiences to your present struggles, we create lasting transformation.
I regularly support people experiencing specific psychological difficulties such as PTSD, OCD, panic attacks, and depression. I also help clients struggling with low confidence, excessive worry, burnout, and the sense that the same painful patterns keep repeating. If these things sound familiar, please get in touch. I also share mental health education via Instagram.
