Resources and Links
Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2017). The boy who was raised as a dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: what traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing. New York: Basic Books.
Van der Kulk, B. (2015). The body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York (New York): Penguin Books.
Porges, S. W. (2015). Play as a neural exercise: Insights from the Polyvagal Theory.
Prologue
Welcome to the second episode of Play Therapy Across the Lifespan. This season, we are talking about the basics, so today I am going to discuss creating a safe space for your clients. As I mentioned in the last episode, many great approaches use play as the modality of treatment. I teach play therapy through the child-centered lens, which is based on the work of Carl Rogers. He believed that people have a natural growth potential that happens when the client is safe enough to do that changing. As the counselor or therapist, we create the safe space. In fact, Carl Rogers went so far as to say that the relationship IS the therapy – it’s that important. You may be wondering how you create that safe space. You do it by creating three conditions that facilitate a warm, trusting space. Those three conditions are empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard.
Empathy is understanding the world from the client’s perspective. It’s that sense that you get it, that a client perceives. Genuineness is being yourself. You know, we often think we need to hide behind a professional persona and be the expert, but we are much more helpful to our clients when we are genuine. That means that you won’t always be the expert! It also means that you can fully use the best tool you have in a counseling session – yourself. Unconditional positive regard is valuing your clients simply because they exist. Not for what they have or have not done, but because they are.
Empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard. If you become skilled at these three things, your clients will have better outcomes. It seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? You’d think that becoming skilled at asking the right questions or following a certain protocol would help clients more. But stop and think for a minute. How many relationships do you have where you truly feel like the other person gets you, is honest, and truly cares for you, flaws and all? Those relationships are rare at best. If you have been fortunate enough to experience it, I’d bet those are the places where you could share uncomfortable things, test out new ideas, and risk expressing something vulnerable. And when you are with the expert who seems to have it all together? Well, that’s probably when you try to perform. In counseling, that isn’t when the deep, healing work happens.
How Safety Begins Healing
I am not a neuroscientist. However, the field of neuroscience is providing evidence of what play therapists have known for years. In the previous segment, I talked about the importance of creating a safe space. Now, I want to tell you why it works. We all have these things called implicit memories, or memories that are below our conscious level. These are experiences that we don’t remember on the surface. They may be harmless or they may be traumatic, but we all have them, and they may impact our current lives without us realizing it. That’s why your clients come to see you. What neuroscientists have discovered is that when we are in connection with another person, in a relationship that feels safe, those implicit memories become more conscious.
Safety, then, begins a physical healing from that past pain that occurs in the brain, as well as emotional healing. And it happens within the context of a safe space. Carl Rogers said that the relationship is the therapy. Neuroscientists talk about connection and implicit memories. I’m telling you that regardless of which theoretical orientation you choose for play therapy, creating a safe space for your client is essential if you want to do healing work.
Research Summary
Today we’ve been talking about the importance of cultivating emotional safety in the therapeutic relationship. This is one of my favorite topics because the recent neuroscience research absolutely supports this notion that the therapeutic relationship is a crucial, if not the most crucial, component in the therapeutic process.
So today I am going to briefly describe the Polyvagal theory and how the therapist’s presence can deepen the client’s felt sense of safety.
Dr. Stephen Porges is a behavioral neuroscientist and he came up with this Polyvagal Theory.
His theory essentially says this: I am constantly scanning my environment to determine whether or not I am safe (the fancy science term for this is neuroception). This is happening via my nervous system (which is essentially my body-mind connection). And my nervous system is made up of two main circuits— one associated with defense and one associated with safety, and my body responds in different ways depending on which system or circuit is activated.
If I am the client and I don’t feel safe, my inborn defensive mechanisms are activated—fight, flight, freeze, collapse—and I am physiologically unable to open up to and trust my therapist. I may be “stuck” in feelings of anxiety, fear, or numbness and dissociation. But when safety is communicated to me by my therapist via warm facial expressions, soft eye contact, an open body posture, and a calming tone of voice, then my defenses are less, and I am more open to trusting the therapist. I am less defensive, I am more open and present in the here and now, and my physiology is calmed. It is in this space where deep healing begins. This is especially important for our clients who have experienced trauma or attachment wounds, whose bodies are likely stuck in a very defensive state.
The Polyvagal theory supports that the therapeutic alliance can help the client strengthen a new muscle and create new neural pathways, giving them greater accessibility to feelings of safety, openness, and the ability to explore themselves. This also spills over to other relationships in the client’s life—the therapeutic relationship gives them a model of how to be more connected and grounded in other relationships.
In short, our nervous system is always working to detect either safety or danger, and how we are in relationships is connected to how safe we feel. Emotional safety is crucial because it helps to lessen defense mechanisms and create optimal conditions for growth and change.
Porges, S. W. (2015). Play as a neural exercise: Insights from the Polyvagal Theory.
Credits
That’s all for today’s podcast. As always, you can find links to the research and all the resources in the show notes. Try this today: in one conversation, try to really understand the other person’s world from their perspective. Please subscribe so you know each time we release a new one. We don’t want you to miss a single episode. Play Therapy Across the Lifespan is made possible through the Lipscomb University Center for Play Therapy and Expressive Arts.
If you have any comments or questions, let us know. Thanks to Rachel Sellers for the research summary, and audio engineer Sheldon Clark, an alumnus from our play therapy program, who makes us sound really good. Finally, a big thank you to another of our talented play therapy students, Sara Beth Geoghegan, who has allowed us to use her song “Firefly.” Look for Sara Beth and Sheldon’s original songs on Spotify or wherever you find good music. I’m your host, Dr. Denis’ Thomas. Go play, create, and heal.