How To Create a Safe Environment in Play Therapy to Heal Trauma

What is the best therapy for children with trauma?

This is a question I hear often when talking with child and adolescent mental health professionals.

Other questions I often hear are …

🤔 Is play therapy evidence-based for trauma?

🤔 How does play therapy help a child with trauma?

These are great questions and very important to consider.

We know that play therapy is the “go-to” approach to helping children overcome their mental health challenges.

However 👉 there is an even more critical component of the play therapy process to consider that is the foundation of the change process.

It’s the secret sauce to facilitating the change process and navigating challenging parts of treatment.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer that you need to use a play therapy model to ground your work with traumatized children to be effective.

To use a play therapy model effectively, you need to ensure you’re able to create a safe environment for the traumatized child.

Polyvagal theory has shown us the importance of creating safety so children can engage in the play therapy process.

Creating a safe therapeutic space for children is a core competency in play therapy.

It requires the ability to demonstrate strong rapport building through your therapeutic use of self.

Join me on Wednesday, August 16, 2023, at 7:00 am Pacific time (Los Angeles)/ 10:00 am Eastern time (New York)/3:00 pm UK -London time.

In this week’s free, livestream episode, I’ll discuss three 🔑🔑🔑skills needed to develop a strong therapeutic rapport that’s necessary to create a safe environment for traumatized children to heal.

These three key skills are essential for your “therapeutic use of self” in play therapy when working with children, adolescents, and parents.


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[samanthaf]

Just left a DV situation and trying to figure out how to help my little! Thank you! Any advice?

[johnrobertd]

What if you're sixty-five years old