How to Leave Play in the Playroom (i.e. Not Take It Home)

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Have you ever gone home at the end of the day only to realize that you can’t stop thinking or dreaming about your clients? Once home, have you found yourself agitated or highly fatigued and not totally sure why?   Chances are your clients came home with you!  In this episode, Lisa will discuss what happens when we take our clients energetically home with us and offer ideas on what to do so that we can leave our clients in the playroom.

1:20 What does it look like when your child client energetically comes home with you?

3:30  Understanding what happens when we don’t leave the child energetically in the playroom

4:10 Understanding how the brain takes in information and determines whether or not there is a threat

5:00 Understanding the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system

7:00 The importance of identifying the dys-regulated symptoms in the therapist

8:20  Understanding that it is normal to have symptoms of dys-regulation

9:00 What happens when the play goes outside the therapist’s window of tolerance and how authenticity supports regulation

10:50  Why pretending in the play contributes to the therapist’s dys-regulation

11:10 Children amp up the play when the therapist isn’t authentic and congruent

12:45 Permission to regulate in the playroom and be authentic

13:20 Learning how to work with transference and counter-transference

14:25 Understanding how to regulate in the playroom when the energy is chaotic or heavy

15:30 Getting curious about naming authentic statements out loud in the room and how this dissipates the energy

16:35  What to do when the energy still leaves the playroom even if the therapist was regulating

17:40 Using mindfulness to follow the urges in your body to regulate

18:20 What happens when the therapist doesn’t listen to the wisdom of their bodies?