Angela Cavett

During my doctoral internship year, I had moved to New York just a month before 9-11 when the World Trade Center buildings were hit by planes during a terrorist attack. During that year, working in residential treatment and watching my own 3 and a half year old daughter, it was evident that play was the way children processed trauma. They reenacted and processed their understanding of this life-changing event.

ANGELA CAVETT, PhD is the clinical director and psychologist at Chrysalis Behavioral Health Services and Training Center where she provides individual, play, group and family therapies for children and families as they heal from trauma, anxiety and mood disorders. Learn more at chrysalispc.com.

Erin’s and my examples are of dramatic experiences, COVID-19 and 9-11, which have impacted the whole world. Play is not only healing in those situations. There are also daily examples of how children process experiences through their play. In therapy with children, we witness children expressing their experiences through play every day as well as using play to learn and process their feelings and beliefs. Play allows us a view into the child's experiences. This is why play is the instrument through which children may communicate in therapy. Garry Landreth said, “Play is the child’s symbolic language of self-expression.”

Play therapy is a developmentally-appropriate way for children to heal. How play is used in therapy is determined by the concerns of each child, adolescent or adult. Based on the concerns, di erent models of play therapy will guide treatment. Play can be used for narratives or to teach a skill. A child may use puppets of an otter momma and baby to learn otter breathing to increase relaxation. A child may play out a recent experience of ghting with a sibling or anxiety about an upcoming medical procedure and together with the therapist create, through play, ways to react. Drumming in a social or emotional play therapy group can promote positive thinking and improve coping. There is evidence that the movements and rhythms when art, play and music are included in therapy improve learning over standard talking (and sitting) therapies. Play can even be used with babies. FirstPlay includes playful storytelling and massage of the baby by the parent which can improve mood for the parent and attachment for the baby. Another play therapy, Theraplay, replicates what happens with securely attached children through interactive play between the parent and child. There is joy in this parent-child play and joy is indeed necessary for attachment. Even treatments such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing have integrated play into their models because play helps facilitate positive changes and decreases symptoms.

Play is not only healing for children. How grief, trauma or depression feel can o en be shown more through symbolic means such as sandtray or art therapy. For adults as well as children, this allows for deeper processing. Play o ers a window into the world of others and a means to help make change.