Play Therapy
Play Therapy is a highly effective technique that involves using children’s play interactions to resolve difficulties, encourage growth, and promote healing. Children often are unable to verbally express their feelings. Play is the child’s language and toys are the words used to express and explain a child’s world. Play therapy, conducted by a trained play therapist, offers children the opportunity to process and assess appropriate coping skills, behaviors, and world views.
Why Play Therapy?
Playing is a child’s natural way to communicate and cannot be taught. Children use play as their language to understand and explain their world. In play therapy, children feel free to join the therapist and play out their problems and express their feelings in a safe and trusted setting.
Benefits of Play Therapy
Extensive research has shown play therapy to be the most effective way to connect with children therapeutically and it is successful in working with a variety of populations and their diverse struggles and issues. In short, anyone can benefit from play therapy. Common uses of play therapy are for children experiencing a wide variety of social, emotional, behavioral, life-stressor, traumatic, and learning problems.
Play therapy helps children:
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Feel understood and validated in their feelings.
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Process life-stressors and events in a healthy manner.
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Become more responsible for behaviors and develop successful coping strategies.
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Develop new and creative problem-solving skills.
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Develop respect, empathy, and acceptance of self and others.
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Learn to understand, experience and express emotion appropriately.
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Manage behaviors and learn self-regulating techniques.
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Learn new social skills and relational skills with family and peers.
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Develop self-competency and thus a better assuredness about their abilities.
Play therapy is an effective treatment for a variety of issues that parents may find their child struggling with. If your child experiences trauma associated with a life change (divorce, death, new sibling, a recent move), anxiety, moodiness, or behavioral problems, such as poor peer relations, defiance, or tantrums, play therapy can help your child resolve these issues and become the happy child you long for them to be.
Child-Centered Play Therapy
Play therapy can be directive or non-directive in nature. I practice non-directive or child-centered play therapy (CCPT).
Child-centered play therapy is child-led. During sessions, I do not have a specific agenda, nor do I make recommendations or interrupt the child’s play. The child is given the full opportunity and attention to show me what they need to work through. I focus on the present and meet the child where they are in the moment.
Child-centered play therapy focuses on who the child is as an individual and their thoughts, feelings, and physical being rather than focusing on the problem or issue. An empathetic and judgment-free environment is provided where a child feels safe, encouraging them to show how they view themself and the world around them. As the therapist, I follow the child’s lead during play and reflect the emotions, content, and information I observe. When the child experiences a genuine warm and trusting relationship with their therapist, a stage for change is created and the child becomes confident in their ability to grow and self-heal.
Synergetic Play Therapy
Synergetic Play Therapy (SPT) is a researched-informed model of play therapy blending the therapeutic power of play with the nervous system regulation, interpersonal neurobiology, physics, attachment, mindfulness, and therapist authenticity. Its primary play therapy influences are Child-Centered, Experiential, and Gestalt Theories.
Although synergetic play therapy is a model of play therapy, it's also a way of being in relationship with self and others. It's an all-encompassing paradigm that can be applied to any facet of life. Synergetic play therapy is both nondirective and directive in its application. SPT aims to replicate the delicate dance of attunement that occurs between a caregiver and an infant. Since over 60% of column unification is nonverbal, it is important that the therapist verbalizations and nonverbal signals are congruent during play therapy sessions in order to transmit trust and safety to the client. In doing so, the therapist maximizes right-hemisphere-to-right hemisphere communication and acts as an internal regulator for the client's dysregulated state (Shore, 1994) as they arise in the play therapy process.
During the play therapy process, toys are used to help facilitate the relationship between the child and the child's perceptions of challenging experiences and the relationship between the therapist and the child. The therapist engages in mindfulness and models regulation strategies as the foundation for clients to learn how to manage their nervous system. With repeated observation of the therapist's willingness to stay authentic and move towards challenging emotions and physical sensations that arise in play, the child's mirror neuron system is activated and the child that it is OK also move towards their own challenging internal states. Research shows that as a client begins to move toward their challenging internal states, new neural connections are created until a critical state is reached that results in a new neural organization (Edelman, 2004, Tyson, 2002). Through the play itself, the synergetic play therapist supports the child in challenging their perceptions of the perceived challenging events and thoughts in their lives as well as getting in touch with their authentic self.
The result of synergetic play therapy is that the child heals from the inside out and from the lowest parts of the brain up.