Trauma and Play Therapy Helping Children Heal

Trauma and Play Therapy synthesizes new developments in the study of children?s trauma recovery to assist clinicians in combining play therapy with other powerful ways of addressing the needs of hurt children. The TraumaPlayTM model, formerly known as Flexibly Sequential Play Therapy, equips practitioners to manage and adapt aspects of the play therapy place and process in order to help children tell their stories while draining the emotional toxicity from traumatic experiences. Chapters explore the neurobiological and developmental foundations of play therapy as well as strategies for navigating children?s trauma in relation to specific aspects of play therapy such as sensory integration, metaphor, and humor. Enriched by a tapestry of illustrative case examples and tools for therapists, this is a vital new book for clinicians working at the intersection of play and children?s trauma.

List of Figures. Foreword, Eliana Gil. Preface. Acknowledgments 1. Titration in Trauma Work: Using the Play Therapist’s Palette 2. The Neurobiology of Trauma and Play: Understanding the Playroom as a Neurochemical Boxing Ring 3. Need Meeting to Enhance Regulation: Feeding, Touch, and Sensory Integration 4. Bigness, Smallness, and Containment: The Use of Space and Presence in Play Therapy 5. Metaphor and Medium 6. Playing the Affective Accordion: Titration in Aspects of Emotional Literacy 7. The Nature of Play 8. Humor, Novelty, and Shared Delight 9. Holding the Hard Story: Narrative Nuance Index.

Paris Goodyear-Brown, LCSW, RPT-S, is the founder and clinical director of Nurture House, a treatment center serving families in middle Tennessee, and the creator of TraumaPlayTM, a flexibly sequential play therapy model targeted to help children heal from trauma. She is an adjunct instructor of psychiatric mental health at Vanderbilt University, trains and consults for organizations around the world, and is the author of multiple books, chapters, and articles on child therapy, including the Handbook of Child Sexual Abuse and Play Therapy with Traumatized Children: A Prescriptive Approach.