Play therapy provides young children an opportunity to express their deepest, subconscious worries and concerns, while learning how to regulate their emotions, and without having to be able to put all of that into words. I use Lisa Dion’s Synergetic Play Therapy model.

About Synergetic Play Therapy

Synergetic Play Therapy relies on a few very important understandings.  

One understanding is based on Social Learning theory, which proposes that children make their caregivers feel how they feel, in order to watch them deal with that feeling, and learn from them how to do it.  Lisa Dion calls this the “set up.”  

For me as the therapist in the room, I am always feeling into the “set up.” What is this play making me feel—scared, sad, tired, lonely, bad, attacked, etc? And my job is to say how I am feeling in that moment. In doing so, I am modeling the emotional self expression the child may or may not be able to achieve. 

And then, I regulate the feeling. I regulate with movement, with breath, with grounding, or any other adaptive strategy that brings my nervous system back to a regulated state.  The child sees this and feels it. 

Based on nervous system science

This brings up another important understanding for the model.

Lisa Dion’s model recognizes the nervous system states of the child in the room, and realizes that as human animals, our nervous systems respond to each other through facial expressions, non-verbals and other subtle signals. 

So, I feel what the child is feeling with true empathy, and when I regulate, the child unknowingly feels the shift and follows.  There will inevitably be a moment where the child in the room “downloads” my regulation strategy and starts using it on their own either in session or at home.  Often, by the sixth or seventh session, children begin taking spontaneous deep breaths, expressing their emotion in a more articulate way, or shaking off their stress.  

Parents often report that at home the child uses their emotional vocabulary more or take a moment to relax when they otherwise would have continued down a spiraling path to upset and melt down.

Another important understanding of this work, and of the other modalities of therapy I provide, is the essential inclusion of parent support, education, coaching and therapy.

Get in Touch

Contact me at 303-889-9364 for a free consultation to see if we’re a good fit.