EMDR and Play Therapy
Course Date: Refer to Calendar page.
Course Overview
|
EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy) is known worldwide as an established, evidence-based practice for adults with PTSD and other mental health disorders. However, therapists trained in EMDR have difficulty in clinical settings getting children to participate in EMDR activities and their basic EMDR training does not prepare them to handle this reluctance.
Play Therapy literature affirms that children can accomplish much digestion of traumatic experiences in play therapy, a naturalistic setting in which children participate eagerly. The therapists who have worked since EMDR ‘s earliest days to make it accessible and tolerable to children by and large have not been trained play therapists and many of their child-friendly strategies work best with older children. Prescriptive Play Therapy for Trauma. Trauma-informed play therapists are increasingly interested and engaged in EMDR-Play Therapy integration to help guide play in the avenues which will support trauma digestion and emotional regulation. They are engaging in dialogue on how to integrate it into the setting that their child clients are already at ease in – the therapy playroom. |
It is clear that children learn best through the tactile/kinesthetic or full body learning of play, thus making the integration of play therapy and EMDR therapy an important component of effective treatment for traumatized children.
This 2-day workshop will be a guide which fully integrates both the theoretical foundation and the practical application of these two models, going beyond merely making EMDR more palatable to children. The trainers will utilize EMDR therapy, play therapy, attachment theory, and polyvagal theory, and they will discuss the therapeutic power of each modality to maximize the healing of our children when reprocessing of traumatic material. The workshop will use lectures, experiential exercises and scripted interventions that will be practiced in the workshop.
This course aim is to teach therapists and clinicians how to integrate Play Therapy and EMDR for very young children as well as playful approaches for adolescents to increase the confidence of the clinician and make EMDR therapy possible in a child friendly setting. Participants will learn how to meet the needs of individual children, in complex trauma where the child has a smaller window of tolerance for the trauma work.
Workshop Trainer
This workshop is presented by Ms Ann Beckley-Forest and Ms Annie Monaco.
This workshop is presented by Ms Ann Beckley-Forest. Ann is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in the Buffalo, New York area, and has focused on interventions with children and adolescents throughout her career. She received her master’s degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1996. Ann is a registered play therapy supervisor and approved provider of play therapy education through the Association for Play Therapy and vice-president of the New York chapter of APT. Ann’s clinical specialties include intervention with very young children, adoption, problems of attachment and trauma work with adolescent and adult survivors of trauma. She is currently enrolled in the Foundation practicum for Theraplay through the Theraplay Institute.
Ann is certified in EMDR, an EMDR Approved Consultant and a faculty member of the Child Trauma Institute. She published an article on the integration of EMDR and play therapy in the fall 2015 issue of Play Therapy magazine and has offered professional trainings in play therapy and trauma treatment around the US, in China at the Sixth Hospital of Peking University, and in Singapore. Most recently she co-presented with Annie Monaco and Paris Good-year-Brown a full day pre-conference workshop for the 2018 EMDRIA international conference in Atlanta on the topic: EMDR and Play Therapy: A Powerful Combination. Ann is active in EMDRIA at the national level as the national Training Chair for the Child and Adolescent Special Interest Group of EMDRIA.
Ms Annie Monaco is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and graduated with her Masters of Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in 1992. Annie has furthered her knowledge by taking extensive additional trainings in business, family therapy, play therapy, trauma, EMDR, progressive counting, attachment and dissociation.
Annie’s early career began with treating young children and adolescents in several mental health agencies. For 10 years beginning in 1999, she was the Director of Restorative Justice programs at a local agency in Western NY and was a community organizer with many local agencies, law enforcement, probation in developing a community approach to offenders using restorative practices. She developed and directed programs for juvenile and adult offenders including family therapy, Victim Offender mediation, sex offender programs and trauma therapy. She joined the faculty of the Child Trauma Institute in 2007 and began her training career teaching therapists how to do trauma work as well as teaching many other disciplines such as schools and mediators on understanding the impact of trauma.
She has traveled extensively throughout the US and Asia teaching trauma related topics for mediators, schools, law enforcement, and colleges. Her largest trainings including teaching counselors how to be effective trauma therapists using evidence-based practices including EMDR, Progressive Counting, Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga and Play Therapy. Her specialty topics are on utilizing attachment and dissociation interventions with foster care children, out of country adoptions, teens, and complex trauma adults.
Annie is certified in EMDR, an EMDR Approved Consultant and most recently she co-presented with Ann Beckley-Forest and Paris Good-year-Brown a full day pre-conference workshop for the 2018 EMDRIA international conference in Atlanta on the topic: EMDR and Play Therapy: A Powerful Combination. Annie has been active in EMDRIA at the national level and has been part of the Child and Adolescent Special Interest Group of EMDRIA and EMDR Co-Regional Coordinators group.
Target Audience
This workshop is specifically designed for EMDR therapists who are working with children ages 3-15 years of age. The therapist must have completed the necessary EMDR training mandated by the course. Any mental health discipline with EMDR basic training may be accepted to come to this training.
Duration
2 days (9 - 4.30 pm)
Workshop Topics:
This 2-day workshop will be a guide which fully integrates both the theoretical foundation and the practical application of these two models, going beyond merely making EMDR more palatable to children. The trainers will utilize EMDR therapy, play therapy, attachment theory, and polyvagal theory, and they will discuss the therapeutic power of each modality to maximize the healing of our children when reprocessing of traumatic material. The workshop will use lectures, experiential exercises and scripted interventions that will be practiced in the workshop.
This course aim is to teach therapists and clinicians how to integrate Play Therapy and EMDR for very young children as well as playful approaches for adolescents to increase the confidence of the clinician and make EMDR therapy possible in a child friendly setting. Participants will learn how to meet the needs of individual children, in complex trauma where the child has a smaller window of tolerance for the trauma work.
Workshop Trainer
This workshop is presented by Ms Ann Beckley-Forest and Ms Annie Monaco.
This workshop is presented by Ms Ann Beckley-Forest. Ann is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in the Buffalo, New York area, and has focused on interventions with children and adolescents throughout her career. She received her master’s degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1996. Ann is a registered play therapy supervisor and approved provider of play therapy education through the Association for Play Therapy and vice-president of the New York chapter of APT. Ann’s clinical specialties include intervention with very young children, adoption, problems of attachment and trauma work with adolescent and adult survivors of trauma. She is currently enrolled in the Foundation practicum for Theraplay through the Theraplay Institute.
Ann is certified in EMDR, an EMDR Approved Consultant and a faculty member of the Child Trauma Institute. She published an article on the integration of EMDR and play therapy in the fall 2015 issue of Play Therapy magazine and has offered professional trainings in play therapy and trauma treatment around the US, in China at the Sixth Hospital of Peking University, and in Singapore. Most recently she co-presented with Annie Monaco and Paris Good-year-Brown a full day pre-conference workshop for the 2018 EMDRIA international conference in Atlanta on the topic: EMDR and Play Therapy: A Powerful Combination. Ann is active in EMDRIA at the national level as the national Training Chair for the Child and Adolescent Special Interest Group of EMDRIA.
Ms Annie Monaco is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and graduated with her Masters of Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in 1992. Annie has furthered her knowledge by taking extensive additional trainings in business, family therapy, play therapy, trauma, EMDR, progressive counting, attachment and dissociation.
Annie’s early career began with treating young children and adolescents in several mental health agencies. For 10 years beginning in 1999, she was the Director of Restorative Justice programs at a local agency in Western NY and was a community organizer with many local agencies, law enforcement, probation in developing a community approach to offenders using restorative practices. She developed and directed programs for juvenile and adult offenders including family therapy, Victim Offender mediation, sex offender programs and trauma therapy. She joined the faculty of the Child Trauma Institute in 2007 and began her training career teaching therapists how to do trauma work as well as teaching many other disciplines such as schools and mediators on understanding the impact of trauma.
She has traveled extensively throughout the US and Asia teaching trauma related topics for mediators, schools, law enforcement, and colleges. Her largest trainings including teaching counselors how to be effective trauma therapists using evidence-based practices including EMDR, Progressive Counting, Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga and Play Therapy. Her specialty topics are on utilizing attachment and dissociation interventions with foster care children, out of country adoptions, teens, and complex trauma adults.
Annie is certified in EMDR, an EMDR Approved Consultant and most recently she co-presented with Ann Beckley-Forest and Paris Good-year-Brown a full day pre-conference workshop for the 2018 EMDRIA international conference in Atlanta on the topic: EMDR and Play Therapy: A Powerful Combination. Annie has been active in EMDRIA at the national level and has been part of the Child and Adolescent Special Interest Group of EMDRIA and EMDR Co-Regional Coordinators group.
Target Audience
This workshop is specifically designed for EMDR therapists who are working with children ages 3-15 years of age. The therapist must have completed the necessary EMDR training mandated by the course. Any mental health discipline with EMDR basic training may be accepted to come to this training.
Duration
2 days (9 - 4.30 pm)
Workshop Topics:
- Construct a framework of how to integrate play therapy within the AIP model with an emphasis on how play allows for the full body learning that is developmentally appropriate for younger children
- Apply by practicing a playful scripted technique for obtaining a trauma history from the child in a developmentally sensitive way during phase one
- Perform an in-depth attachment history to assess for early attachment wounds and disruptions, including pre-verbal trauma
- Practice a play therapy intervention to install and enhance positive beliefs and resources during phase two to make the client stronger
- Master child-friendly options for bilateral stimulation
- Explain 2 ways of inviting and guiding play narratives that titrate the approach to traumatic material during assessment, desensitization and reprocessing phases
- Apply attachment and dissociation theory to educate parents about their child’s problematic behaviors through the lens of dissociation
- Recognize opportunities to integrate attachment repair play with the EMDR protocol
