These feelings are also common in the child’s family members as they live alongside the child through the medical trauma and in some cases also experience the medical trauma themselves. Medical Trauma symptoms include:

• Physical sensations – pain, sweating and continual discomfort
• Avoidance and emotional numbing
• Depression and anxiety
• Difficulties with self-regulation
• Attention and academic difficulties
• Regression and loss of previously acquired skills
• Older clients may use drugs or alcohol and behave in risky ways

Without knowing that the child may have undergone medical trauma, and how the symptoms manifest; play therapists can inadvertently miss the signs of medical trauma or jump to conclusions regarding the child’s behaviour and play. Medical trauma can thus be easily overlooked in therapy with young clients.

Therefore, it is critical for play therapists to understand what medical trauma is and how to use play therapy and the therapeutic powers of play to help children, teens and their families integrate their medical experiences and progress confidently with fulfilling lives.

At this practical, therapeutically oriented 3-hour workshop, play therapists will:

• Explore medical trauma from the perspective of neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology while drawing from Gestalt Play Therapy, Synergetic Play Therapy and Nature Based Play principles.
• Using creative play-based ways to support children and their family’s healing process, participants will learn how to create emotional and relational safety for trauma integration
• We will learn what it means to become a child’s external regulator to help integrate the activation in a child / teen’s nervous system while safely allowing the child / teen to access the stored trauma in their body from the medical trauma
• Explore the symptoms often associated with medical trauma as the symptoms can often be confused with sexual or sensory trauma
• Explain the most important goal when applying play therapy to your work with both children and parents
• Discuss how to accelerate a child / teen’s psychological development, increasing self-regulation and increasing their self-esteem

Whether the client has experienced a single incident trauma or is struggling with a chronic illness, participants will learn what it really takes to integrate their experiences.  As children / teens are not the only ones affected by medical trauma, care for their caregivers will also be addressed, as well as exploration of creative play-based ways to help the entire family system heal.

© nscience 2023 / 2024