Expressive Therapies: Healing Trauma Through Play, Art, Movement & Storytelling

CPD

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Janet Courtney, PhD, LCSW Related seminars and products

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Janet A. Courtney, PhD, LCSW, is Founder of FirstPlay Therapy®, an Infant Mental Health & Developmental Play Therapy model and Founder and Editor of FirstPlay® Café: An e-magazine for parents (womb to six Years). She is a Registered Play Therapy Supervisor, TEDx Speaker and presently Chair of the Association for Play Therapy Ethics and Practice Committee and past President of the Florida Association for Play Therapy and former Chair of the Viola Brody Award Committee. Awarded Third Place overall in the Best Practices Showcase for FirstPlay Therapy at the First 1000 Days Infant Mental Health Summit (Sept, 2018) along with the Children’s Healing Institute.

She is author and editor of Infant Play Therapy: Foundations, Programs, Models and Practice, and Healing Child and Family Trauma through Expressive and Play Therapies: Art, Nature, Storytelling, Body & Mindfulness, and Touch in Child Counseling and Play Therapy: An Ethical and Clinical Guide. New York, NY: Routledge, and her research into practitioner experiences of training in touch and Developmental Play Therapy is published in the American Journal of Art Therapy and the International Journal of Play Therapy. She is a contributing author for the chapter, “Touching Autism through Developmental Play Therapy” inthe book, Play-based Interventions for Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders; and has a chapter in the book, Environmental Expressive Therapies (2017), titled: “The Art of Utilizing the Metaphorical Elements of Nature as ‘Co Therapist’in Ecopsychology Play Therapy.” She is also published in the Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture. She offers a certification in FirstPlay Therapy® (including FirstPlay® Infant Massage Storytelling) and provides training to professionals in the Ethical and Clinical Competencies of Touch, FirstPlay® Therapy, Ericksonian-based StoryPlay®, Expressive Therapies, and Ecopsychology Play Therapy.

She has been invited to speak nationally and internationally including Bali, Indonesia, theCayman Islands, England, Ireland, Morocco, Russia and the Ukraine. She is a provider through the Florida state boards of Mental Health and Massage Therapy, and an approved provider through the Association for Play Therapy. She specializes in Infant Mental Healthand Infant Play Therapy, Attachment, and Trauma related issues. Dr. Courtney’s new form of Kinesthetic Storytelling® can be found in her children’s book, The Magic Rainbow. Website: www.firstplaytherapy.com and www.firstplaycafe.com

Speaker Disclosures:

Financial: Janet Courtney is founder of FirstPlay™ Therapy. She is in private practice and an adjunct professor at Barry University. Dr. Courtney receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.

Non-financial: Janet Courtney is a member of the National Association of Social Workers.

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Objectives

1. Determine the neurobiological and clinical implications of using play and art therapies with clients.
2. Describe how expressive therapies can reframe a client’s trauma experiences, increase self-regulation, and connect to a mind-body awareness.
3. Articulate a minimum of three ways to assist clients in developing innner resilience, courage, creativiety and tenacity to reduce trauma symptoms.
4. List the seven steps a clinician would take to create and design multi-sensory theraputice storytelling for a theraputic session.
5. Appraise the ethical implications of using play and art therapies in clinical practice.
6. Articualte how to intergrate clay and drawings into clinical practice to promote a positive sense of identity and self-worth in clients.

Outline

The Right-Brain—Home of the Expressive Self

• Advances in neuroscience
• Integrating rational and emotional brain processes in trauma
• The Expressive Therapy edge to heal trauma
• Engage the sensory self: touch, visual, listening, smell
• The therapeutic alliance—creating a foundation of empathetic compassion, safety, and trust

Assessing & Healing Trauma through Drawing Art Processes

• Tapping into right brain processes—the drawing speaks louder than words
• Overcome resistance and build safety and trust
• Draw upon the resiliency of humor
• Assessment individual and of family resiliency and strengths toward treatment planning and intervention

Healing Trauma through Song, Movement, & Dance

• Promote mind-body awareness and overcome resistance
• Cultivate interpersonal connections and a sense of safety & trust
• Release trauma, cultivate mind-body awareness through a sense of a “felt-self”
• Build a sense of self-worth through interpersonal connection with others by being “heard”

Releasing & Healing Traumatic Experience through Clay

• Promote a sense of identity and self- worth
• Create a sense of safety, boundaries & containment
• Cultivate mindful attention and multi-sensory awareness
• Release unexpressed emotional and somatic trauma (anger, frustration, depression, grief, loss, loneliness, confusion)

Therapeutic Storytelling to Reframe the Trauma Narrative

• Growing self-confidence through tapping the “Storyteller Within”
• Release unexpressed trauma through raw writing
• Create therapeutic stories for children and adolescents through the Child Interview
• Storytelling Grid ~ (building blocks of creating therapeutic stories):
• Build skills of self-regulation, resiliency, and reframe the trauma story

Nature as Co-therapist in Overcoming Trauma

• Create healing metaphors from nature
• Learn simple ways to bridge nature into the therapy room
• Overcoming trauma through “stepping stones to resiliency”
• Build self-regeneration and heal trauma through nature-based rituals of healing
• Cultivating mindfulness in nature—plan a nature therapy field trip

Ethical and Clinical Considerations

• Ethics of expressive therapy interventions
• Informed consent
• Countertransferences
• Issues related to touch and boundaries
• Create client action plans to bridge therapy work into daily-life experiences

Target Audience