Expressive Arts in Play Therapy with Adolescents
with Non Contact/ Distance Learning CE Hours
Cathi Spooner | Trainer
Using expressive arts with a neuroscience and attachment lens to help your adolescent clients engage more deeply in the change process.
Expressive Arts in Play Therapy with Adolescents
with Non Contact/ Distance Learning CE Hours
Cathi Spooner | Trainer
Using expressive arts with a neuroscience and attachment lens to help your adolescent clients engage more deeply in the change process.
Course Description:
Expressive arts provide a powerful tool for your adolescent clients in the play therapy process to express themselves, identify cognitive distortions and shame, explore self-concept and their relationships, and develop resiliency through the creative process. This course uses a neuroscience and attachment lens in play therapy to give you a framework to recognize what factors may be contributing to your client's mental health challenges. You'll use this "lens" to explore and address these core issues underlying many mental health challenges for adolescents. You'll learn a variety of expressive arts activities using mindfulness, art, poetry, and music to explore these keys areas with your young clients. These activities will help them explore painful emotions and experiences using expressive arts to help them engage in the change process more deeply. You'll learn a neuroscience and attachment-informed framework to help you ground your expressive arts strategies in theory and application in the play therapy process.
This course provides 8 non-contact/distance learning CE hours for the following organizations based on completing the course in its entirety, engagement in the Community Group discussion for each course module, and successfully passing the Quiz with 85% accuracy:
Association for Play Therapy
NASW UT Chapter - currently pending approval for distance learning/home study.
If you are not interested in the Non-contact distance learning CE hours, please go to the version of this course without CEs.
What you will learn:
1) Define the concept of mentalization and its relationship with attachment and emotion regulation in play therapy
2) Learn the relationship between attachment, mentalization, and our conceptualization of self, others, and relationships in play therapy for adolescents
3) Explain the mind-body connection for emotion regulation in play therapy
4) Identify at least three therapeutic powers of play to use with expressive modalities
5) Explain the archetypes and shadow and light attributes of attachment and how to use them to integrate expressive arts activities in the play therapy process
6) Describe the elements of the Be 5 Framework to apply clinical decision-making for integrating expressive arts in play therapy and establish a strong therapeutic relationship to facilitate change
7) Demonstrate at least four expressive arts activities to use with adolescents in the play therapy process to explore self-concept, relationships, regulate emotions, develop coping skills, and increase resiliency
To help you apply the information learned in the training, there is a Community Group (like a Facebook Group) to share ideas, ask questions, and get feedback that's available 24/7. There are additional Live Zoom Calls scheduled periodically for additional consultation support to help you effectively and confidently use the information learned in the course. You'll have lifetime access to the course as long as the course is available with access to the training material, Community group, and periodic Zoom calls, including any updates made to the course along the way.
For mental health professionals pursuing a Registered Play Therapy (RPT) credential through the Association for Play Therapy, this training fits into Category 3: Play Therapy Skills and Methods.
Here’s the rationale for Category 3: the seminal and historically significant theories underlying this training is Child Centered Play Therapy/Humanistic because the use of the therapeutic relationship is critical for the change process. Ecosystemic/Prescriptive play therapy models provide a framework for integration of theories to individualize the interventions used to meet the needs of individual clients. This training uses these seminal and historically significant theories as the foundation for the inclusion of neuroscience to inform the treatment process and use interventions based on the needs of each client/family within a safe, strong therapeutic
Integrating Expressive Arts into Clinical Practice
Sometimes traditional talk therapy doesn't help clients to fully and effectively explore and address the issues underlying their mental health challenges.
This training will help you understand role of neuroscience and attachment in the development of self-concept and relationship patterns to help you integrate expressive arts in the treatment process with your clients.
You'll learn expressive arts strategies you can use immediately with your clients. Live online group consultation meetings and the Community Group feature provide additional support to help you confidently use expressive arts with your clients and help them engage in the change process.
—Jessica B.
As a self-proclaimed psychotherapy “nerd,” I love helping child, adolescent, and family therapists confidently use play therapy and expressive arts with their clients so that they can experience the magic of play therapy and expressive arts in the healing process. Learning to provide play therapy and expressive arts with your child and adolescent clients can be overwhelming and confusing so it’s important to make sure you get great training that’s grounded in theory and research as well as working with a supervisor/consultant to help you apply what you learn in trainings to meet the needs of each of your clients. Using expressive arts with adolescents provides a powerful tool to help your young clients engage more fully and deeply in the change process. An important goal of expressive arts modalities is to elicit projective content and allow self-expression, so it’s important to make sure you have a framework to help you through the ethical and clinical decision-making process. I LOVE using expressive arts with adolescents and adults because it allows them to explore and process painful experiences and beliefs in a safe place that will support the healing process.
Why am I qualified to train people?
As a mental health professional working with children, adolescents, adults, and families since 1992, I’ve gained a wealth of “nerdy” knowledge and experience to help you identify the “roots” of your young client’s presenting issues and use a strong clinical and ethical decision-making process to navigate the treatment process in a variety of clinical settings. I’m a licensed clinical social worker (since 1997), Registered Play Therapist Supervisor, Certified in Basic Sand Therapy, Certified Trauma Specialist (currently inactive), and foundationally trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). I’ve been training and supervising mental health professionals to use play therapy and expressive arts with children, adolescents, and families since 2007. I’ve conducted play therapy and expressive arts trainings at the local, state, national, and international level to help mental health professionals understand and learn to use the magic of play therapy and expressive arts.
Enroll Today!
If you've wanted to learn how to effectively and confidently use expressive arts in the treatment process with your adolescent clients, this course will give you a solid foundation to enhance your clinical work and great ideas to use with your clients.
CE hours included
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