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

CPD

Handouts

Faculty

Janet Courtney, PhD, LCSW, RPT-S™ Related seminars and products

---

Janet A Courtney, PhD, LCSW, RPT-S™, is founder of FirstPlay Therapy®. She is a Registered Play Therapy-Supervisor, TEDx Speaker and past Chair of the Association for Play Therapy Ethics and Practice Committee and past President of the Florida Association for Play Therapy, FirstPlay Therapy was awarded third place overall in the Best Practices Showcase for FirstPlay Therapy at the First 1000 Days Infant Mental Health Summit (2018) along with the Children’s Healing Institute. She is author and editor of the following books: 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 Nature-based Play & Expressive Therapies: Interventions for Children, Teens and Families, and Touch in Child Counseling and Play Therapy: An Ethical and Clinical Guide. Her research in 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 in several books including Play-based Interventions for Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders and the book Environmental Expressive Therapies (2017), and Play Therapy Supervision (2023). She is also published in the Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture. She offers a certification in FirstPlay Therapy® and provides training to professionals in the Ethical and Clinical Competencies of Touch, FirstPlay® Therapy, Ericksonian-based StoryPlay®, Expressive Therapies, and Nature-based Play Therapy. She has been invited to speak nationally and internationally including Bali, Indonesia, the Cayman 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 health and 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

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Janet Courtney is founder of FirstPlay™ Therapy. She is in private practice and has employment relationships with Barry University and Ellen Whiteside McDonnell School of Social Work. Dr. Courtney receives royalties as a published author and receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Janet Courtney is a member of the National Association of Social Workers, World Association for Infant Mental Health, and the International Association for the Study of Affective Touch.

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