“Fawns in Gorilla Suits”— Play Therapy Strategies with Children Who Act-Out with Aggression or Violence

Presenter: David A. Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, RPT-S; Rhinebeck Child & Family Center, LLC (www.childtherapytechniques.com )

Clinical Director, Children’s Home of Poughkeepsie

Prerequisite Training Needed by Audience: This workshop will be geared to practitioners with a wide range of experience from beginners to moderate and even advanced levels of experience and training in play therapy.

Overview: The play therapy strategies presented in this workshop are designed to engage severely aggressive children in a meaningful and productive ways in child therapy, to address their neurodevelopmental deficits, and in some cases their invisible, but very real, emotional wounds due to sociocultural trauma.

Abstract: The workshop will explore key concepts rooted in an integrative theoretical model called Child Responsive Therapy (CRT) with roots in psychoanalytic and attachment theory, relational therapy and informed by neurobiological and developmental psychopathology research. The specific practical play therapy strategies presented will be grouped under the following main goal-directed headings: 1) creating a safe place; 2) modulating affect and anger expression; 3) teaching the language of feelings; 4) accessing the inner world of the child; 5) “tickling’ the self-observer; 6) addressing the invisible wounds including when indicated trauma work; 7) facilitating hope; 8) preparing for therapeutic termination.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Participants will be able to describe at least three specific play therapy strategies to modulate affect and anger.

2. Participants will be able to describe at least 3 specific play therapy interventions to address the invisible emotional wounds.

3. Participants will be able to describe at least 3 specific play therapy strategies to prepare children for termination.

4. Participants will be able to describe the delicate balance and clinical sensitivity required to facilitate hope without trivializing suffering within play therapy.

Needs Assessment: Children at all levels of the care continuum are presenting with more serious and severe levels of aggression that are a source of great worry and concern on the part of the parents, the schools, the court systems, and the mental health professionals called on to treat them. The severity of the aggressive acting-out is often in proportion to the disconnection that kids feel in their relationships to the important people in their lives. The problem of youth aggression needs to be better understood and play therapy interventions must be planned based on this more complex understanding not only of neurobiological, genetic, and psychodynamic factors but also the sociocultural context in which the seeds of violence are sown.

Exam questions:

1.  What is the distinction between anger and rage?

2.  What are the differential consequences of shame and guilt?

3.  What are 3 distinctive forms of hidden emotional wounds?

4.  Name the 5 elements of the cycle of violence.

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