Nowadays, there is no doubt of the importance and the long-term effects that the connection between infant and primary caregiver has on brain development and disease. The child is provided, at nonverbal levels beneath conscious awareness, with self-object experiences that affect in a direct way the vitalization and structural cohesion of the self (Schore, 2002).
Interplay Therapy
Interplay combines humanistic ideas with attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology to understand how relationships affect the mind.
What is Interplay Therapy?
Interplay is a non-directive approach that combines humanistic principles with attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology (how the mind is shaped by relationship). In Interplay Therapy parents and care givers become central to the child’s therapeutic process. Our core belief is that therapists should see children within their family system and for optimal growth and healing within their attachment relationships.
Interplay therapists enter the child and parents/carers world through play and take note of the interaction/reaction and the child and parents’ response. By validating and responding to this experience offering therapeutic insight and support through coregulation, both children and parents develop self-insight, insight into each other, integration, and regulation, strengthening the child and parent/carer relationship. Interplay supports children and parents/carers to explore and reorganise experiences that may have contributed to their wellbeing, enabling growth and healing to occur and a beautiful canvas for a new beginning.
As you have seen our play therapy room is set up for children to explore and process their conscious (cognitive memory) and unconscious (body memory) experiences through their play. This is very powerful for the child in rewriting their attachment story.
Some of the things you might see in the play therapy room is:
- Attachment repair (Baby dolls, self-nurturing activities)
- Regression in age (attachment repair)
- Expression play that may look violent (processing, emotional release)
- Use of symbols to tell a story (unconscious meaning making)
- Art Therapy (Expression through art where words are not available)
The key is to just be you and respond as you. It is my role to facilitate the play in a non-directive way, validate experience and feelings and give meaning to the play if needed.
