Play Therapy Principles

How Play Therapy Works

Children, like all of us, need to feel powerful and in control of their world.
Children, like all of us, need to feel powerful and in control of their world.
  • Play serves as children’s primary language and helps them organize their experience
  • Play therapy takes bits of unimaginable reality into manageable situations and provides children with an opportunity to cope, make meaning, and feel powerful again.
  • Through play, children have a chance to be in control and therefore increase their experience of security
  • Play is healthy for children’s emotional development and helps them learn to understand and therefore effectively express big emotions.
  • Adults can foster autonomy of the child by not answering their dilemmas but providing sufficient freedom and exploration so that the child has an opportunity to assume responsibility for their choices.
  • My role as a play therapist is to understand and accept your child’s world and to provide opportunities to move through life’s challenges.

 

Photo by Jes Kimak Photography

About Dr. Arielle Schwartz

Arielle Schwartz, PhD, is a psychologist, internationally sought-out teacher, yoga instructor, and leading voice in the healing of PTSD and complex trauma. She is the author of seven books, including The Complex PTSD Workbook, EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology, and The Post Traumatic Growth Guidebook.

Dr. Schwartz is an accomplished teacher who guides therapists in the application of EMDR, somatic psychology, parts work therapy, and mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of trauma and complex PTSD. She guides you through a personal journey of healing in her Sounds True audio program, Trauma Recovery.

She has a depth of understanding, passion, kindness, compassion, joy, and a succinct way of speaking about very complex topics. She is the founder of the Center for Resilience Informed Therapy® in Boulder, Colorado where she maintains a private practice providing psychotherapy, supervision, and consultation. Dr. Schwartz believes that that the journey of trauma recovery is an awakening of the spiritual heart.

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