TraumaPlay

What is TraumaPlay?

The TraumaPlay Model is a ‘flexibly sequential play therapy model, for treating children age 3-14 who have experienced: extreme stress related to chronic maltreatment; discrete traumatic incidents; interpersonal trauma; or attachment disturbances due to caregiver disruptions’ (Goodyear-Brown 2021).

The TraumaPlay model offers children and young people a means to safely and effectively work through their traumatic experiences. 

The starting point is developing a safe and trusting therapeutic relationship, enhancing the child’s sense of safety. Soothing the physiology, assessing and augmenting coping skills and developing new strategies. We dip in and out of looking at emotional regulation and emotional literacy on the journey to self discovery.

As much as possible parents are incorporated in the journey to healing, ensuring that caregivers are facilitative partners in the therapeutic process and effective co-regulators. 

TraumaPlay helps to create a coherent narrative of the trauma, that integrates the linguistic narrative with somatosensory content.  This allows for restructuring of  cognitive distortions, installing and practicing adaptive thought processes, and ultimately making positive meaning of the post trauma self.