Are your play therapy sessions filled with swords fights, battles, babies dying, handcuffs, you dying, explosions, or other highly intense play? Are you often set up to watch or be a part of play that leaves you feeling nervous, unsafe, overwhelmed, confused or just wanting to run away and hide? If so, you are not alone.

Although aggression and death are a common part of the play therapy process, many therapists don’t have a clear understanding of what to do and how to facilitate the intensity when it enters the playroom during play. The result can lead to inadvertently promoting aggression and increasing low brain disorganization. It can also lead to the therapist feeling beat up, exhausted and hyper-aroused themselves, which can over time significantly impact their longevity in the field, as well as their ability to stay attuned and present to a child in the play room.

This 6 hour workshop is designed to help play therapists understand aggression and death play from a neuro-biological perspective and a Synergetic Play Therapy lense. With the help of neuroscience, therapists will learn how to effectively work with this type of play in a way that supports nervous system regulation, reorganization of the child’s lower centers of the brain and decreases compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma.

This fun experiential workshop will take you to new possibilities as we explore a science based process for working with children at the deepest, most profound levels while staying safe and sane. You will learn the art of sword fighting, gun play, bop bag play, and more while understanding what it takes to maximize growth and integration for your clients and for you as the therapist.

Objectives: This workshop is designed to help participants:

1 Understand the link between a child’s dys-regulated states of their nervous system and their aggressive/trauma play

2 Understand the significance of authenticity and authentic expression in the play therapy process

3. Learn how to set boundaries without shaming or shutting down a child’s play

4 Understand how to facilitate aggressive play in the play therapy process without increasing or promoting aggression

5. Understand Synergetic Play Therapy's concept of "The Set Up" in the playroom

6. Learn how to keep yourself regulated in the midst of intense play/trauma play and death in the play room

Lisa is a Registered Play Therapy Supervisor, Certified Gestalt Therapist, Level II EMDR Practitioner, Parent Educator and Senior Certified Demartini Method™ Facilitator. She is an international teacher, recipient of the Association of Play Therapy’s 2015 Professional Education and Training Award, creator of “Synergetic Play Therapy”, clinical author and researcher, and is the founder and director of the Play Therapy Institute of Colorado.