Healing Child and Family Trauma through Expressive and Play Therapies: Art, Nature, Storytelling, Body & Mindfulness

Download or read book Healing Child and Family Trauma through Expressive and Play Therapies: Art, Nature, Storytelling, Body & Mindfulness written by Janet A. Courtney PhD, RPT-S and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Healing assessments and interventions from disparate areas of knowledge such as art, nature, and storytelling. There are many ways to help children and families heal from trauma. Leaning on our ancestral wisdom of healing through play, art, nature, storytelling, body, touch, imagination, and mindfulness practice, Janet A. Courtney helps the clinician bring a variety of practices into the therapy room. This book identifies seven stages of therapy that provide a framework for working with client’s emotional, cognitive, somatic, and sensory experiences to heal from trauma. Through composite case illustrations, practitioners will learn how to safely mitigate a range of trauma content, including complicated grief, natural disaster, children in foster care, aggression, toxic divorce, traumatized infants diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome, and young mothers recovering from opioid addiction. Practice exercises interspersed throughout guide practitioners to personally engage in the creative expressive and play therapy techniques presented in each chapter, augmenting professional self- awareness and skill- building competencies.