Doing Play Therapy: From Building the Relationship to Facilitating Change
394
Doing Play Therapy: From Building the Relationship to Facilitating Change
394eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781462536153 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Guilford Publications, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 06/04/2018 |
| Series: | Creative Arts and Play Therapy |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 394 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Kristin K. Meany-Walen, PhD, LMHC, RPT-S, is Assistant Professor of Counseling at the University of North Texas. She was previously in private practice, where she worked with a variety of clients who reinforced her belief in the significance of play and creative expression. Dr. Meany-Walen regularly publishes and presents on play therapy with children and adolescents. She conducted the first Adlerian play therapy study, which was instrumental in Adlerian play therapy becoming recognized as an evidence-based treatment for reducing behavioral problems in children.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
An Introduction to Play Therapy
If you are someone who loves to hear stories and have adventures and dance and tell stories and make up songs and mess around in the sand and do art, and if you might be interested in exploring ways to use play to work therapeutically with children, welcome to the world of play therapy! This is the introductory chapter, wherein we lay out the basics of play therapy. In this chapter, we have outlined multiple definitions of play therapy, danced through a brief explanation of the various approaches to play therapy, described possible clients who would be appropriate for play therapy, delineated the personal and professional qualifications of people who want to be play therapists, described various settings for play therapy, explained some ideas about how play therapy works, and defined some of the logistics involved in play therapy.
WHAT, EXACTLY, IS PLAY THERAPY?
As the title suggests, this is a book designed to teach you how to do play therapy. Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, though, we thought it would be good to explain what play therapy is. Keep in mind, though, that it is a little tricky to answer the question posited in the heading of this section of the chapter ("What, exactly, is play therapy?") because there are a lot of different ways to define play therapy.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary (n.d.) defines play therapy as "psychotherapy in which a child is encouraged to reveal feelings and conflicts in play rather than by verbalization." According to the British Association for Play Therapy (2014a), "Play Therapy is the dynamic process between child and Play Therapist in which the child explores at his or her own pace and with his or her own agenda those issues, past and current, conscious and unconscious, that are affecting the child's life in the present. The child's inner resources are enabled by the therapeutic alliance to bring about growth and change. Play Therapy is child-centered, in which play is the primary medium and speech is the secondary medium" (para. 13). Wilson and Ryan's (2005) definition focused on children and adolescents: "Play therapy can be defined as a means of creating intense relationship experiences between therapists and children or young people, in which play is the principal medium of communication" (p. 3). Landreth (2012), in Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship, suggested that play therapy can be useful for people of any age when he defined play therapy as "a dynamic interpersonal relationship between a child (or a person of any age) and a therapist trained in play therapy procedures who provides selected play materials and facilitates the development of a safe relationship for the child (or person of any age) to fully express and explore self (feelings, thoughts, experiences and behaviors) through play, the child's natural medium of communications, for optimal growth and development" (p. 11). According to the Association for Play Therapy (2017), play therapy is "the systematic use of a theoretical model to establish an interpersonal process wherein trained play therapists use the therapeutic powers of play to help clients prevent or resolve psychosocial difficulties and achieve optimal growth and development" (para. 1). (Sounds like a definition made by a committee, doesn't it ?) If we synthesize and summarize all of these definitions, play therapy can be best described as a modality of therapy in which trained professionals use a theoretically based, consistent way of understanding and communicating with their clients through doing rather than just talking.
In our very broad definition of play therapy, we would describe play therapy as a therapeutic modality that uses a wide variety of methodologies to communicate with clients, including adventure therapy, storytelling and therapeutic metaphors, movement/dance/music experiences, sand tray activities, art techniques, and structured play experiences in addition to free, unstructured play. To us, interactions in play therapy should always allow for and even encourage self-expression, creative representation, and imagination. Simply put, play therapy is a relationship in which a trained therapist creates a safe space for clients to explore and express themselves through telling stories, having adventures, dancing, hearing stories, making up songs, messing around in the sand, doing art, and playing.
APPROACHES TO PLAY THERAPY
There are many different approaches to play therapy. Some of these approaches are based on major models of counseling and psychotherapy (e.g., Adlerian, personcentered, object relations, existential, cognitivebehavioral, Gestalt, Jungian, narrative, psychodynamic, prescriptive/integrative). Other approaches were developed specifically for play therapy (i.e., dynamic play therapy, experiential play therapy, synergetic play therapy, schema-based play therapy, Autplay, Somaplay, release play therapy, ecosystemic play therapy, and Theraplay). Recently, there has been a major upsurge in the development of additional approaches to play therapy. Each of these approaches has underlying philosophical assumptions about people, how they develop their personalities, how dysfunction develops, how people grow and change, how clinical interventions can be helpful. Adequately describing all of these approaches to play therapy is beyond the scope of this book (and beyond the capacity of our brains), so we have chosen certain widely used approaches to explicate. (See Chapter 2.) We did want you to know that there are many, many different ways to approach play therapy — if you are interested, please explore ...
WHO ARE PLAY THERAPY CLIENTS?
We believe play therapy is for everyone ... for people of all ages and in any configuration that works best for clients and their families: individual, family, and group. It's for children, teens, and adults who've experienced loss, divorce, sadness, anxiety, guilt, anger, fear, or hurt. It's for people who are uncertain. It's for people who have been abused or neglected. It's for individuals, groups, or families. Play therapy is for people who are having a hard time at school or work, struggling with their families, or spending a lot of time in hospitals. It's for scared people, brave people, lonely people, loved people, artsy people, shy people, and anyone else who has goals of living a more fully alive and functioning existence.
While play therapy is often done with children under the age of about 12, there is a growing body of literature that supports the use of play therapy and play strategies with clients who are older (sometimes significantly older) than 12 (e.g., Ashby, Kottman, & DeGraaf, 2008; Frey, 2015; Gallo-Lopez & Schaefer, 2005; Gardner, 2015; Green, Drewes, & Kominski, 2013; Ojiambo & Bratton, 2014; Schaefer, 2003). Because we believe play therapy is appropriate for all ages, we made the conscious decision to broaden the scope of this book to include skills, strategies, and techniques you can use with children, adolescents, adults, and families.
WHO DOES PLAY THERAPY?
There are some specific personal qualities that are important in being a play therapist, and there are professional training and experiences that are essential in preparing people to become play therapists. The British Association for Play Therapy (2014b) has provided a list of personal characteristics desirable for play therapists. They believe play therapists must be empathic, sincere, honest, respectful, ethical, knowledgeable, self-aware, self-responsible, congruent (authentic and genuine), compassionate, critically reflective, and committed to personal and professional development. According to Kottman (2011), effective play therapists should like children and treat them with respect and kindness, have a sense of humor and be willing to laugh at themselves and with others, be fun-loving and playful, be sufficiently self-confident not to depend on positive regard from other people to bolster their self-worth, be open and honest, be flexible and able to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, be accepting of others' perceptions without feeling vulnerable or judgmental, and be willing to think of play and metaphor as vehicles for communication with others. They should also be relaxed and comfortable being with children and have experience building relationships with them, be capable of firmly and kindly setting limits and maintaining personal boundaries, be self-aware and able to take interpersonal risks, and be open to considering their own personal issues and the impact of those issues on what transpires in play therapy sessions and relationships with clients and their families (Kottman, 2011).
In general, we think it's important for those who practice play therapy or want to become play therapists to be creative, cognitively flexible (physically flexible is nice and not a requirement, especially since only one of us is physically flexible — that would be Kristin, not Terry), fun, passionate, caring, trustworthy, and responsible. This isn't a whole lot different from counselors or therapists who do other types of therapy. We think an important consideration for professionals who do play therapy is a willingness to enter into the creative world of the client and to think symbolically. These qualities are important because your primary "tool" in play therapy is you — the person who loves to play — the person who loves to listen to stories and have adventures and dance and tell stories and make up songs and mess around in the sand and do art.
If you have already been trained as a traditional counselor, social worker, psychologist, or other mental health professional and you want to be a play therapist, it is also essential that you are open to thinking about the play (or what the client does), rather than words (what the client says), as the healing channel — the path for communication and facilitation of movement and growth. You must be willing to jump the chasm of the paradigm shift from focusing on talk as the vehicle for building relationships, exploring dynamics, helping folks gain insight, and facilitating them in making changes to the understanding that play can be an effective medium for those same therapeutic processes — in play therapy, the play is the therapy.
The Association for Play Therapy (APT) also has some important (okay, okay — necessary) standards as well. (The APT is the national professional society founded in 1982 to foster contact among mental health professionals interested in exploring and, when developmentally appropriate, applying the therapeutic power of play to communicate with and treat clients.) APT has defined a set of standards and requirements for a professional helper to become a registered play therapist (RPT). They have recently added the option for school counselors and school psychologists to become registered as well. (See Appendix C for the rules for becoming a registered play therapist, a school-based registered play therapist [SB-RPT], and a registered play therapist-supervisor [RPT-S].)
APT provides detailed information about each of these points and the biannual continuing education requirements of RPTs. Because the credentialing process is subject to change, we don't want to provide you with specific nitty-gritty details that might be outdated as you read this book. A major area to note is that the RPTs and SB-RPTs are licensed professionals before they are RPTs. That is, they must be licensed in their state before they can hold the RPT designation. We recommend that you clarify the expectations required of you to become an RPT and continuously review them as you start your journey so that you will not get blindsided with changes.
Recently, the Center for Play Therapy at the University of North Texas also established standards for becoming certified in child-centered play therapy (CCPT) and in child–parent relationship therapy (CPRT). The certification in CCPT involves two levels. Both levels have specific requirements that include licensure as a mental health professional, specific hours of education related to CCPT, an examination over CCPT, supervised experience conducting child-centered play therapy sessions, and self-evaluation papers. There are three levels to the certification for CPRT, and they have similar requirements. The details of these requirements can be found on the website for the Center (http://cpt.unt.edu). We are in the process of developing a certification program in Adlerian play therapy, and we suspect that other approaches to play therapy may have similar evolutions in their futures.
WHERE IS PLAY THERAPY DONE?
The short answer to this question is that you can do play therapy anywhere. While this is true, it helps to have a space that is private and (in a perfect world) sound-proof because play therapy can get loud! Often it is not loud in ways that are problematic, but consider toys hitting the floor (accidentally or on purpose), lions roaring, clients (or therapists) singing karaoke, or laughing. Aside from the ethical obligation of confidentiality, any of these might be considered concerning, or disruptive, for people in adjacent rooms. Rooms that are a bit bigger than a standard bedroom are ideal. This gives you enough space for the toys and materials and you and the client. However, we have worked in a room that used to be the janitor's closet (it's a good thing we're not very tall). For several years, I (Terry) worked in a cubby outside the elevator in an elementary school and a playroom that was huge in counseling office standards (30 feet by 30 feet); now I have a corner of a (very generous) school counselor's office. What we're trying to say is that you can make any location work — remember, your clients have very seldom read a textbook describing what kind of space is needed as a playroom. As my (Kristin's) children say, "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit."
There are no "rules" about where you can do play therapy, and if you agree with the way we define play therapy, you might find play therapy taking place in locations that seem a bit unorthodox for counseling. Typically speaking, play therapists work in private practice settings, community agencies, schools (we both volunteer at schools), hospitals, camps, or clients' homes. You can also do play therapy outdoors — on nature trails, lakes or rivers, or rope courses. (We've even done sand tray play therapy on a beach!) As long as the space allows for confidentiality and/or the client (or guardian) understands the risks to confidentiality (i.e., in a park or nature trail you can't guarantee privacy), play therapy can take place anywhere. There might be some limitations or restrictions on what you can do in different settings (for instance, it's hard to play with toys or do directed art activities while you're kayaking). And we want to invite you to think creatively about location and about the "stuff" you use for the therapeutic process. (Because, remember, you, yourself, and your love of hearing stories, having adventures, dancing, telling stories, making up songs, messing around in the sand, and doing art are the only "tools" you need.)
HOW DOES PLAY THERAPY WORK?
It's important to remember that the foundation of play therapy rests on the therapeutic powers of play — the inherent powers that exist when people are in a relationship in which they are free to be creative, accepted, and safe. As a creative and artistic modality of counseling, play therapy allows for the expression of thoughts, emotions, and experiences in a variety of ways. Schaefer and Drewes (2014) delineated twenty therapeutic powers of play, which they labeled as self-expression, access to the unconscious, direct teaching, indirect teaching, catharsis, abreaction, positive emotions, counterconditioning fears, stress inoculation, stress management, therapeutic relationship, attachment, social competence, empathy, creative problem solving, resiliency, moral development, accelerated psychological development, self-regulation, and self-esteem. (If you are interested in being inspired by reading about all of these superpowers, read The Therapeutic Powers of Play: 20 Core Agents of Change [Schaefer & Drewes, 2014].)
Play, in and of itself, is a primal human activity. Brown and Vaughn (2009) described the power of play: "Most obviously, it is intensely pleasurable. It energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities" (p. 4). Young children often lack the capacity to use language adequately to describe their emotions, experiences, and thoughts required for talk therapy and are typically more comfortable expressing themselves through play and metaphor (Kottman, 2011; Nash & Schaefer, 2011). Specifically, for young clients, play has been described as children's language (Kottman & Meany-Walen, 2016; Landreth, 2012; Moustakas, 1997; Ray, 2011). For children, play therapy facilitates communication, fosters emotional wellness, enhances social relationships, and increases personal strengths (Schaefer & Drewes, 2014). For adolescents and adults, play facilitates relationships, ignites creativity, reduces resistance, deepens insight, and helps bridge abstract ideas to day-to-day situations for clients (Gallo-Lopez & Schaefer, 2005; Gardner, 2015; Green et al., 2013).
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Doing Play Therapy"
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Table of Contents
Prelude: Once Upon a Time1. An Introduction to Play Therapy
Interlude 1: Show Up and Choose To Be Present
2. Pick a Theory, Any Theory
Interlude 2: Showing Interest
3. Broad Play Therapy Strategies
Interlude 3: Being Intentional with Your Interventions and Making "Stuff" Up
4. Building a Relationship
Interlude 4: Take a Breath
5. Exploring Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Dynamics
Interlude 5: Developing a Conceptualization of Your Clients
6. Helping Clients Gain Insight
Interlude 6: Language Choice
7. Helping Clients Make Changes in Play Therapy
Interlude 7: Giving Yourself Permission
8. Working with Parents, Teachers, and Families
Interlude 8: Avoiding Judgment
9. Challenging Situations in the Playroom
Interlude 9: Continuing the Journey
Appendix A. Theory and Play Therapy Resources
Appendix B. Children’s Books
Appendix C. Professional Information
References
Index
Interviews
Play, art, and other creative arts therapists; clinical psychologists, social workers, and counselors working with children, adolescents, and adults. Will serve as a text in introductory play therapy classes.