The Healing Power of Play Therapy: Advance Your Trauma Treatment with Children & Adolescent – Jennifer Lefebre

Faculty:
Jennifer Lefebre
Duration:
6 Hours 25 Minutes
Format:
Audio and Video
Copyright:
Dec 12, 2018
Description

Millions of traumatic events each year damage children emotionally and physiologically leaving them overwhelmed, unable to sleep, anxious, depressed, failing in school, angry and socially isolated. If left untreated, a child’s developmental trajectory can be compromised.

How do you as a professional get to the root of their pain?

What do you do when words and language can’t be accessed, when conventional interventions aren’t enough?

Watch trauma expert and play therapy supervisor, Dr. Jennifer Lefebre, in this experiential, interactive recording that will give you creative play therapy techniques and effective trauma-informed treatment strategies and interventions that are:

Child-centered
Playful
Developmentally appropriate
Culturally sensitive

Integrate play therapy principles into the work you do with children in schools and therapeutic environments. Through the power of play, you can help children explore their traumatic memories, learn to manage experiences that are overwhelming, and formulate their narrative to process their trauma.

Walk away with play therapy strategies to improve a child’s ability to self-regulate while building their sense of competence and worth, furthering their abilities to relate with others and within their environments!

Handouts

Manual – The Healing Power of Play Therapy (9.72 MB) 48 Pages Available after Purchase

Instructions for ASHA Credit – SELF STUDY ONLY – 12/12/18 (0.03 MB)
Available after Purchase
Outline

Neuroscience of Trauma and Attachment

Trauma & Attachment Theory
Regulatory processing, executive functioning, memory and language
The Neuroscience of Play Therapy
What Play Does for You and Your Brain, and
What Happens to You if You Don’t Play
Neuroscience and Fight-or-Flight
Parasympathetic / sympathetic nervous system
Trauma and Stress Disorders
Classification, symptoms & labels
Current Evidence-Based Treatment
Where are we stuck?

​​​A New Clinical Framework – Integrating Evidenced Based Treatment with Play Therapy

Establishing safety and a sense of competence/worth
Appropriate attachments & relational engagement
Self-regulation (body & emotions)
Self-reflection & Introspection
Integration of Traumatic Experiences
(Acknowledgment & Processing of the trauma)
Future safety
Transitioning beyond the Trauma

Advancing Trauma Treatment with Play Therapy

Verbal vs Nonverbal responses
How to recognize trauma without a verbal report
Bottom-up versus Top-down processing
Embodied play & sensory integration rather than verbal strategies
Non-directive versus directive play therapy techniques – How to integrate both
Widen the window of tolerance through up-regulating and down-regulating using embodied therapy activities

Play Therapy Activities

Psychoeducation of brain-body relationship
Charades
Flip your Lid
Target shame, self-doubt, and self-compassion
Safe place sandtrays
Drawings
All About Me
Integrate traumatic experiences to acknowledge and process the trauma
Narrative work through sandtrays
Drawings
Dramatic play
Target the parent-child relationship – Interpersonal reactivity and social skills
Weather Massage
Invisible String
Family Sandtrays
Drawings
Improve emotional and bodily regulation
Be Spaghetti
Trashballs
Oobleck
Feelings Maps
Yoga
Floor is Lava & more!
Faculty
Jennifer Lefebre, Psy.D., RPT-S Related seminars and products: 8

Jennifer Lefebre, Psy.D., RPT-S, TCTSY-F, is a clinical psychologist, registered play therapist supervisor, and trauma-sensitive yoga facilitator. She is the president-elect for the New England Association for Play Therapy. Her clinical and research interests focus on the assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, adults and families whose lives have been impacted by complex trauma. Dr. Lefebre has extensive experience working with young children (0-5), adult survivors of severe childhood abuse and neglect, first responders, and combat veterans.

Dr. Lefebre is the clinical director at Healing the Child Within, a holistic trauma center in northwestern Connecticut which integrates psychotherapy, yoga, play, and expressive arts therapies into the treatment of complex trauma. She also provides clinical supervision and play therapy consultation throughout New England and online, and an adjunct faculty member at several universities, teaching both at the undergraduate and graduate level. In addition to being an experienced play therapist and professor, Dr. Lefebre is a sought-after expert for speaking engagements, podcasts and webinars on the topics of play therapy and complex childhood trauma.

Speaker Disclosures:

Financial: Jennifer Lefebre is in private practice. She receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.

Non-financial: Jennifer Lefebre is a member of the Association of Play Therapy.