Priorities in Post-Enactment Processing
Daniel J. Wiener, PhD, RDT-BCT
June, 2026
Definition from The RfG Practitioner’s Manual:
Post-Enactment Processing (PEP)
A therapist-initiated discussion with Clients following an Enactment. A PEP includes current
reactions, observations regarding the recently performed enactment and insights linking that
performance to previous experiences.
While all RfG Therapists are given training in conducting PEP, 1 there are some persistent misconceptions
regarding the therapist’s priorities during the PEP process. Let’s use a case example to illustrate what I
am driving at:
Melody and Josh, both in their late twenties, have been living together for 20 months and are
contemplating marriage. Recently, each of them has been having reservations about this Next Big Step,
as they call it. Seeking clarification, they came to Sue for RfG couples therapy six weeks ago; they were
now in their fifth session.
Sue had interviewed the couple and obtained a brief history of their backgrounds as well as a
description of their quarrels. Prior to offering the couple any improv enactments Sue learned that
Melody, an only child who had been raised in an emotionally restrained household, was feeling stressed
when around Josh’s boisterous family. Josh, the middle of three brothers, was entirely at home with
animated, loud arguing; when disagreements arose between Melody and Josh, Melody criticized Josh’s
confrontational style, judging him as intimidating and insensitive. Josh maintained that he was merely
being emotionally congruent in expressing himself in his habitual way, and stated that he didn’t want to
be “walking on eggshells” to be around Melody.
In the course of therapy Sue offered the couple a few simple enactments (One Word at a Time story and
Mirrors) which had played out uneventfully. However, their enactment of Tug of War went differently.
When they began, Josh “hammed up” the struggle, loudly groaning and pretending he was striving
mightily to keep from being pulled over the line, only to lose in the end. Melody’s body language, by
contrast, appeared stilted; while she moved her arms in-sync with Josh’s movement to maintain the
illusion of an actual rope, she appeared to be making minimal effort to win. At this point, Sue had the
couple leave the stage and began the PEP.
To her first question, “What was your experience?” Josh answered that he had really enjoyed letting
Melody win. Melody’s reply was that she was relieved that the game was over, that she had felt
uncomfortable with this competition that felt “too real.” When Sue asked Melody to say more, Melody
replied that she disliked the competitive element of their interaction, that this wasn’t what she “signed
up for.” Sensing Melody’s upset, Sue tried to persuade her to try another round of Tug of War, but
Melody refused. Sue spent the next ten minutes explaining that this exercise wasn’t a real contest, that
the couple could learn to tune into one another, and that their contrasting histories with conflict
contributed to the outcome, but it was of no use.
Commentary: Clients are often vulnerable to the unexpected impact of enactments and always benefit
from having their experience validated. While Sue could not have fully predicted Melody’s reaction, she
could have seen that Melody’s discomfort resulted in her dropping out of the playspace, meaning that
this was no longer a game for her, but an unpleasant, even frightening ordeal. Accordingly, Sue could
have invited Melody to associate further to her experience at the end of the enactment, including what
life events the enactment had reminded her of, and praised Melody’s courage to try something that had
elicited such a strong negative experience. Getting clients to attempt further enactments is part of the
therapist’s agenda and is never as important as honoring the clients’ experience in the present moment.
The improv experience is, in essence, an open-ended experiment; while therapists will likely have
expectations concerning how an enactment will play out, they should remain open to themselves having
a new experience should clients react in unexpected ways. In essence, the Survival Mind thinking of the
therapist can become a barrier to meeting the client in the immediacy of the moment. A compounding
factor is that the client may be looking to please or satisfy the therapist rather than discovering through
their own experience; aligning with such a familiar social transaction (“I’ll do what you ask to get your
approval”) undermines the spontaneity of discovery-in-the-moment. Even though I have extensive
experience with presiding over client enactments, I have, and expect to continue to have, the challenge
and novelty of sharing the unexpected moment of my clients. This has led to my occasional
disappointment that a client reacted in a predictable way—I’ve come to relish the unexpected!
1 The RfG Practitioner Manual enumerates 16 types of questions that might be posed by the therapist during PEP, as well as offering a discussion concerning the optional duration of the PEP process.
