Healing Child and Family Trauma through Expressive and

Play Therapies Art, Nature, Storytelling, Body & Mindfulness

Visit the link below to download the full version of this book:

https://medipdf.com/product/healing-child-and-family-trauma-through-expressive-a
nd-play-therapies-art-nature-storytelling-body-mindfulness/

Click Download Now

 Preface

A REFLECTION ON CREATIVITY AND PLAY:

MY FATHER

I grew up surrounded by art materials—paints, clay, paintbrushes, all types

of wood, and wood carving tools of all shapes and sizes. My father was an
artist and was known for his ability to create portraits in wood. He carved
portraits of presidents and family members and did commissioned work for
customers. His artistic skills served him well over the years. It saved his life
in World War II when he was asked at the very last minute to stay behind
and create entertainment posters for the troops as his regiment was sent to
the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest, and everyone in his unit was
killed. Later he had a successful career in advertising as a marketing
executive and was a strong advocate for ethics in business (Courtney,
1964). In the 1960s he started his own business marketing consultation
company utilizing a creativity method called “Synectics” (Gordon, 1961).
But in the end, it was his enduring ability to play—to create—that became a
stabilizing factor in his last years of life.
In 2004 my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and in the
spring of 2006, as I was completing my doctoral dissertation, he came to
stay with me for one month as my mother was overwhelmed with the
demands of caregiving and needed respite. Along with my husband, older
son (Jesse), and his wife (Stephanie) we each planned to take a week off
from work to spend time with my dad. My younger son Austin, ten at the
time, spent time with “Papa” after school. Prior to his visit, I gathered
together my art materials, and an art therapist friend advised me to have
him recopy some of his past completed art work. But it was this one
moment with my father that caused me much contemplation and I share it
here:

I drove into the hobby shop parking lot, and my father held my hand
as we walked to the door. Once in the store, he followed closely
behind me as I started to look around. Unexpectedly, he pounded his
cane hard on the floor to get my attention. I quickly turned to face
him. My father cried out, “Aren’t you going to buy me a toy?” He
looked at me searchingly in his now-familiar confused, blank stare. I
stood still a moment absorbing the question, and tears came to my
eyes as I responded, “Of course, dad, of course I am going to buy
you a toy. That’s why we are here.”

Because of my perspective as a play therapist, I valued and respected my

father’s need to play. I dug out some of my son’s old Matchbox cars and
gathered some miniature sand tray items from my office playroom.
Throughout his visit, we had creative activities planned for each day. And
he played and we played with him. We gave him back rubs and pedicures,
we sang together, we made artwork, but he particularly enjoyed playing
with toys—and to our astonishment he improved. He was calmer and more
relaxed, he smiled often, and seemed less confused. I followed through with
my friend’s suggestion and had him copy on paper some of his past
woodcarving artwork—which made for some very interesting images. We
even gave him small jobs to do such as sweeping the floor, snapping green
beans, and folding laundry. He chuckled and laughed. He was happy. And
within days, his memory became clearer—he was telling us stories from his
past that I had never heard before.
As I pondered my father’s desire to play, I realized that the inherent
drive to play and create, at any age, is so elemental. The world-renowned
psychiatrist, Carl Jung, recognized the value of play, and as an adult he used
play as an outlet to help elucidate his deep-seated thoughts and feelings. He
wrote:
 I went on with the building game after the noon meal every day. As
soon as I was through eating, I began playing [italics added], and
continued to do so until the patients arrived. In the course of this
activity my thoughts clarified, and I was able to grasp the fantasies
who presence in myself I dimly felt. (Jung, 1963, p. 174).

A few months after my father was back home in Ormond-by-the-Sea,

Florida, he fell, and sadly he never recovered from his injuries. In
September 2006, we had a small memorial gathering to say our goodbyes,
and we all contributed our gifts of creativity: My sister (an elementary
school teacher) read a children’s storybook, my brother recounted stories,
my sons played guitar, and we sang songs we knew he liked: “Does anyone
know ‘The Church in the Wildwood’?” And I created an art and craft table,
where I sat in honor of my father’s creative endeavors and we crafted
coquina shell crosses for all to take home as special memories. It was
therefore due to his (and my family’s) enduring, innate ability to imagine,
create, and play—my father’s default saving grace—that I have dedicated
my life in service of understanding. It is that unifying inherent human
resilience that is universally common to us all.

JOURNEY OF CREATIVE AWAKENING

As I write this preface, my mind turns to my journey of discovery as a
social worker and as a play therapist. I reflect on the teachers on whose
shoulders I stand who helped shape my career, and I get teary-eyed, for to
take the role of student is a humbling experience. It all overwhelms me as I
recount the hundreds of people who have helped shape who I am in this
moment of time. Surely, to write a book on any topic of depth, we must
synthesize all the sources of learning. So, it is here that I share a brief
collection of my creative journey of awakening.

Beginnings
As a freshman at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida in
1979, I landed a position as the secretary to “Unit 8,” which was designated
as the psychology and sociology department. Being connected to some
brilliant and very skilled therapists turned professors opened a whole new
world of exploration. Beyond my course work, I attended classes in yoga,
body work, dance and movement, and groups on growing intuition,
exploring spirituality, and seeking an inner peace meditation, which I still
practice today. I joined a research group on biofeedback, learned hypnosis,
attended healing sweat lodges, joined a children’s theater group, and then
later took courses in improv at Florida State University as I began my social
work career. In graduate school and beyond, I attended years of gestalt
human potential training to explore my own inner depths of being, as well
as understanding body-centered practices of healing for clients.

The Work
My first social work internship was in a domestic crisis shelter, where I
worked with children and families in crisis. It was my first exposure to
working with traumatized children and families, for which I was little
prepared. But I saw the depth of the pain, hurt, fear, and betrayal these
families experienced as they sought safety from abuse. I also witnessed the
complexity of domestic violence as some people returned to their abusive
situations, only to return to the shelter soon thereafter. My intensive work
on an adult psychiatric and substance abuse inpatient unit and then later a
children’s psychiatric hospital formulated my understanding about the
tenuous fine line of human consciousness and the trauma-related ripple
effect of mental illness upon the whole family and social system. It was at
the psychiatric children’s hospital and a separate children’s agency in the
late 1980s where I began my play therapy experience—mostly working by
the seat of my pants—as there were few opportunities for play therapy
training at the time. Armed with a few good books, my foundations in social
work, a strong intuition about holding a creative space for children, and a
well-stocked playroom—I had no idea how good I had it!—I worked with
children incorporating play therapy in groups, family therapy, and
individual counseling.
At this time I began my career specialty, working in infant mental health
in foster care and adoption. Parallel to the current opioid crisis, there were
thousands of babies nationwide entering foster care in the late 1980s and
early 1990s born with neonatal drug withdrawal syndrome, predominantly
due to maternal cocaine intake during pregnancy. This close contact with
traumatized infants led me on a lifetime mission to seek out ways to bring
healing to infants and children through the study of attachment theory and
later a comprehension of neurobiological influences. My years of full-time
private practice, teaching graduate courses in the School of Social Work at
Barry University, and my doctoral research in developmental play therapy,
attachment theory, and practitioner experiences of touch eventually
supported further research into the clinical and ethical implications of touch
in therapy sessions with children. Please see the book Touch in Child
Counseling and Play Therapy: An Ethical and Clinical Guide (Courtney &
Nolan, 2017). My therapeutic model, called First-Play Therapy (presented
in Chapters 9 and 10), is an accumulation of all my years of education,
training, research, and clinical experience.

The Parallel Process of Transformation

This book has been a labor of love. It has called forth much perseverance,
grit, and countless hours to conceptualize just that one more paragraph, or
being awakened from sleep with the “Aha!” of how best to articulate that
sentence I was wrestling with and writing over and over prior to giving up
and going to sleep at midnight, or to look up just one more supportive
reference to make this book stand on a solid, credible foundation. For
writing this book, composed with heart, has challenged and transformed
me.
At a deeper level, to write a book about the healing of family and child
trauma inevitably points back to self. And it calls to mind my own hard
stories of trauma experiences, which I addressed on my personal journey of
healing. I have also engaged many of the expressive modalities discussed
throughout this book as faithful resources for healing: journaling, dream
work, art, yoga, mindfulness, storytelling, nature, the body work of gestalt
processes, and walking with mindful intention through the labyrinth. And I
think of my own therapists who listened and cared for me unconditionally
and helped me to see my potential, even when life felt so dark that I could
not see it for myself. Those life learnings I see now as gifts of
understanding, of courage, and of hope that I bring to the moment of
meeting with another human being. For all of us here on this amazing Earth
share in universal sufferings of grief, loss, and emotional, psychological,
and somatic pain that take many different forms. In this, we can develop a
deeper sense of compassion to hold a safe sanctuary of containment to hear
the difficult and heartbreaking stories of children and families that need to
be heard, without judgment and offered with an authentic kindheartedness
to honor the healing journey.
 Introduction

Welcome to Healing Child and Family Trauma through Expressive &

Play Therapies: Art, Nature, Storytelling, Body, & Mindfulness! The
inspiration for this book evolved over the past 35 years, during a long,
fascinating journey of discovery in the fields of play therapy and expressive
therapy. These two separate experiential fields of practice dovetail together
perfectly to meet the unique developmental needs of children. Although my
expertise is firmly grounded within the fields of social work and play
therapy (I have a master’s and a doctorate in social work and am
credentialed as a Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor) I wanted to expand
my horizons and find new ways to help, and heal, children. Although I do
not have a degree nor am I credentialed in any of the expressive arts fields,
I supplemented my play therapy knowledge by attending many expressive
arts training sessions—including art, music, dance, drama, nature, body,
journaling, gestalt—and obtained supervision and consultation to expand
my expertise beyond my training and supervision in social work and play
therapy methods. What I share in this book are many of the expressive arts
interventions I learned from those years of exploration, which I then
successfully integrated into play therapy sessions with children and
families.
Although this book provides some general foundations in play therapy
and the field of expressive arts, it is not exhaustive. This brings to light an
important ethical consideration. Since all professionals are ethically
mandated to practice within the boundaries of their educational
backgrounds, training, supervision, and professional experience, readers are
encouraged to seek out additional training and supervision from disciplines
that are beyond their training. Therefore, any of the expressive arts, body
and play therapy modalities presented in this book requires in-depth study
and experiential learning, and readers are urged to seek out any topics that
pique their interest and delve into deeper study and training.
This book is written to contribute to the literature by providing mental
health practitioners from all fields, and graduate students, with creative
ways to grow their therapeutic toolkits in work with infants, children,
adolescents, and families. There are two parts to this book. Part I comprises
Chapters 1 through 3 and provides the necessary foundations to formulate
the framework related to the clinical applications found in Part II. Chapter 1
cross-walks between the two fields of expressive arts and play therapies to
highlight the common underpinnings, as well as recognizing the shapers of
both fields. It also recognizes the ancient forms of healing—storytelling,
dance, music, play, nature, ritual—that our ancestors innately drew upon to
heal from the vast traumas that confronted them.
Research since the 1990s has generated a broader understanding of
trauma and the (brain)-mind-body connection, creating a paradigm shift in
our thinking about best practice interventions in the healing of clients.
Chapter 2 provides an overview of the current literature and research within
the fields of trauma and neurobiology, and provides a basis for trauma-
informed work as the topics of expressive and play therapies are explored
throughout the book. Chapter 3 highlights the therapeutic elements that are
foundational to the therapeutic process and further expounded in Part II of
the clinical applications. It identifies seven stages of therapy that provide a
framework for working with clients’ emotional, cognitive, somatic, and
sensory experiences to heal from trauma.
Part II comprises the expressive and play therapy clinical adaptations.
Chapter 4 explores the field of art therapy, synthesizing the relevant
literature on the topic and provides supporting therapeutic assessment and
intervention strategies for working individually with a child. Chapter 5
provides work with the family through art assessment, and Chapter 6
expands on the family expressive and play therapy applications through
puppet storytelling and structured art interventions. Chapter 7 draws upon
the healing forces of the natural world to provide experiences of healing
with children and families. Chapter 8 explores several healing interventions
for children through mindfulness practice, journaling exercises, dream
exploration, mindful labyrinth walks, and healing through body therapies,
with a focus on yoga. Chapters 9 and 10 provide my own therapeutic model
of FirstPlay Therapy conceptualized for two different developmental levels.
Chapter 9 highlights FirstPlay Kinesthetic Storytelling designed, for ages
two years and beyond, and includes a composite case of a child in foster
care to illustrate this therapy in action. Chapter 10 presents FirstPlay Infant
Story-Massage (birth to two years) in practice with a group of young
mothers residing in a residential substance abuse treatment center with their
infants, who were born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. The group case
study demonstrates how the mothers were guided in FirstPlay interventions
to provide reparative experiences of touch, and were supported to attach
and bond with their infants.
Many of the expressive and play therapy techniques are presented with
detailed steps of implementation found throughout each chapter so that
readers can gain a clear understanding of how the assessment or
intervention can be suitably utilized. Additionally, interspersed throughout
each chapter are experiential activities so readers can also experience the
modalities firsthand through personal learning and reflection. These
experientials, called “The Practice,” guide opportunities for readers to
engage personally in the creative expressive and play therapy techniques
presented in each chapter and thereby augment professional self-awareness
and skill-building competencies.
The future, I predict, will become more interdisciplinary as we step out
of our chosen, familiar disciplines to embrace the understandings of other
professional fields of healing. My many years’ experience working with
children has shown me that they may resonate with only a few expressive
and play therapy modalities. It has therefore been helpful for me to have a
variety of therapeutic tools at my fingertips so I can quickly adapt to a
child’s needs within the moment. A child frozen in trauma may shun the
idea of a movement process, but he may be willing to take his hand and hit
a drum, or pound it in clay. That same child may decide that journaling is
more a “girl thing,” but he may be willing to engage in a nature-based
expressive intervention. Having the know-how to adjust to the child’s and
the family’s needs provides more opportunities to enrich healing. As we
cross-fertilize knowledge between fields of practice, we all broaden our
ways of knowing to bring healing to the hearts and minds of the children
and families we serve. I am thrilled you found your way to this book, and I
thank you for taking this journey with me.
Part I
EXPRESSIVE AND PLAY THERAPY
FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 1

EXPRESSIVE ARTS AND PLAY

THERAPIES: A RETURN TO ROOTS

“There is something to be learned from our ancestors.”

Bruce Perry, MD, Ph.D.

“The expressive arts are ancient forms being rebirthed to bring

much needed integration and balance into our world.”
Natalie Rogers, Ph.D., REAT

Imagine for a moment an ancestor who lived two or three centuries back,
perhaps a long-ago grandmother. Imagine how very harsh life was back
then: There were no modern medicines or vaccines to fight off infection,
and many people witnessed friends and family who succumbed to disease.
Tragically, many children died in early childhood, and mothers often died in
childbirth. Locating clean water and proper sanitation was difficult, and
traveling took days with horses that became lame or and sick. Shelter from
the elements was painstaking to build, and people shivered in the frigid cold
and sweated in the sweltering heat because there was no electricity. Life
was extremely harrowing, as they were subjected to daily stress and trauma.
The question arises: How did your ancient grandmother help heal herself—
emotionally, psychologically, and physically—to overcome such
challenges? Over the centuries, many cultures healed mind, body, and soul
effectively in community, family, and individually through song, dance,
visual arts, play, storytelling, nature, touch, dreams, spirituality, and ritual.
These expressive ways of being evolved in our human species over
millennia and were very much a part of daily life and community. We built
our own homes, carved our own tools, and hand-fashioned our own
furniture. We planted seeds and farmed our own food and sculpted pots
from clay. We spun wool for our clothes and shaped materials to protect our
feet. We created toys for children to play with, and games for social
engagement. We painted symbols on rocks and walls. We touched one
another to heal disease. We spent extended time in nature and created rituals
in saunas made with fire, water, and hot stones. We knelt in ritual and
prayer and searched for insight in our dreams. We crafted our own
instruments, sang our age-old songs, danced hand in hand, and told stories
that were passed down through generations. These creative endeavors
helped to strengthen family bonds and united communities together to
support emotional, psychological, physical, social, and spiritual well-being.
While modern-day societies and family systems may have lost memory
of their ancestral ways of creating and healing, in many cultures those
traditions of healing are still very much alive. Consider the following
example: A psychologist was hired by an American company based in an
African nation to intervene with a tragic disaster that had occurred at the
facility, resulting in the deaths of some of the employees. Trained in crisis
intervention debriefing, the psychologist gathered the employees (all
citizens of the African nation) in a room, where he opened the group for
discussion of the incident. The room remained silent as they all sat still and
stared blankly at the floor. The psychologist tried his best skills to engage
and empathize with the group and the deep pain they must all be feeling.
Still silence and a heaviness in the room loomed. Finally, one of the
employees in the group spoke up and said to the psychologist: “You don’t
get it, do you?”
Puzzled by the question, the psychologist said, “Get what?” Again, the
employee, now shaking his head and looking directly at the psychologist,
repeated the statement: “You just don’t get it!”
Exasperated, the psychologist said, “What? What don’t I get?”
After a long pause, the one deemed group representative replied: “This
is not how we heal. We heal through drumming. We heal through song. We
heal through dance.” Now enlightened, the psychologist sat back in his
chair with a new insight for contemplation that totally changed his
paradigm of how he practiced therapy.
While expressive and play therapies may be perceived as seemingly
modern-day treatment methods, there is nothing new about them. They are
ancient forms of healing—storytelling, art, dance, music, play, nature, ritual
—that our ancestors innately drew upon to heal from the vast traumas that
troubled them. McNiff (2005) found inspiration from our “shamanic
forebears” that used ritual and symbolic forms of expression to “heal the
soul” (p. xi). Bruce Perry (2015) viewed our ancestral resilience from a
holistic neurobiological perspective:

“Our ancestors had to learn to cope with trauma in order to survive;

somehow traumatized people had to find ways to continue to sustain
family, community, and culture and move forward. These core
elements . . . touch, the patterned repetitive movements of dance,
and song—all provided in an intensely relational
experience. . . . The most remarkable quality of these elements is
that together they create a total neurobiological experience
influencing cortical, limbic, diencephalic, and brainstem systems.
(p. xi).

From a Jungian perspective, perhaps we are each individually touching

into our cultural and societal collective unconscious—the part of our inner
knowing derived from ancestral memory and experience that is common to
all humanity (Jung, 1964). Perhaps within me, within you, we are tapping
into our own inner wisdom of healing and resilience that has been passed
down through the ages. This book will hold our collective traditional forms
of healing and how they are currently adapted and utilized as contemporary
therapies to support an organizing framework to work with children and
families within play therapy sessions.

FAMILY & CULTURAL RESILIENCE

With the above section in mind, I invite you to take a few minutes to engage
in the following practice exercise: Family & Cultural Resilience.

THE PRACTICE

Family and Cultural Resilience

With a partner, take a few minutes to reflect on the following: