Over the years, one thing I’ve noticed with newer EMDR therapists working with kids is that MANY wonder if they’re doing enough. When a child wants to play for most of the session, it’s easy to think, “Shouldn’t we be doing more than this?” I remember feeling that too!!! After all, you’ve invested so much time, money, and energy learning EMDR because you want to help children heal. You don’t want to waste a single minute of their session. The turning point for me wasn’t learning another intervention. It was understanding WHY play is therapeutic. Play isn’t separate from EMDR and it doesn’t only belong in phase one and phase 2… We can integrate play therapy into all eight phases For children, it’s the way they can safely access the trauma material to re-process. Play gives children a way to approach experiences that would be too overwhelming to talk about directly. They can move closer, step back, experiment, gain mastery, and stay within what their nervous system can tolerate. Once that clicked for me, I stopped wondering if we were “just playing.” that the play IS the therapy. I started recognizing that healing doesn’t always look like talking.. the reciprocity of play offers healing through the relationship so that the child can move out of protection mode given enough safety Sometimes it looks like building a tower. Sometimes it looks like a puppet. Sometimes it looks like a child playing out the same story over and over until one day… the story changes. 💙💙 EMDR with play therapy integrated into each eight phase !