When You “Should” Yourself, It’s a Betrayal to Your Authentic Self
When You "Should" Yourself, It's a Betrayal to Your Authentic Self Do you have thoughts in your head that sound like, “I should,” “I shouldn’t” or “I really need to”? Of course [...]
Balancing the Left Brain & the Right Brain in Play Therapy
Balancing the Left Brain & the Right Brain in Play Therapy By Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S Play therapy is very much a right-brain experience. When a child is playing, their right brain [...]
How Therapists Deal with Aggression in the Playroom
How Therapists Deal with Aggression in the Playroom By Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S In our culture, aggression tends to be viewed as a no-no. When a child starts to play aggressively in [...]
The Significance of Neuroscience in Play Therapy
By Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S It’s crucial to bring the brain and neuroscience into the play therapy process if we really want to understand what is happening in the mind and bodies [...]
Authenticity: The Playroom Is The Place To Be You
By Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S It happened again. I was wrapping up my two-day conference teaching play therapists all about Synergetic Play Therapy, and I cried. I cry almost every time. The [...]
Lead With Your Heart
By Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S “Lead with your heart” is what I heard myself whisper to my daughter Avery, who lay curled up in my arms with tears pouring down her face. [...]
The Therapist: The Most Important Toy in the Playroom
By Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S This is such an important question because the field has overemphasized the child’s process and has not emphasized the therapist’s process enough or the roll the therapist [...]
In the Eye of the Tornado: Finding the Blessing in Chaos
By Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S "When I sink into the tornado and allow myself to just spin and swirl, somehow I find the eye and soon the sun comes out." Have you [...]
Breaking Out of the “Shoulds”
By Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S I once worked with a nine-year-old client named Joey*. He really struggled in school. He had a very focused interest on one thing/task, and everything else was [...]
Are You Missing Something in Your Sandbox?
by Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S While not for every client or therapist, sand can calls to us and draws us in. Something about it seems to grab us and touch the depths [...]