Play Therapy for Adults: How Play Therapy Can Help Your Healing Journey

When people hear that I use play therapy with my clients, frequently I am asked if I ever use play therapy with adults. And the answer is yes! The questions that follow are, “Really? What is that like? And why is that helpful?”

Play therapy is an approach that uses play to access emotions and beliefs in order to facilitate change and healing. Though it may look different at each life stage, play is essential for all ages. And play therapy may look different for each life stage as well.

So then what is it like to do play therapy as an adult? The short answer is that play therapy can look a lot of different ways, depending on what a person needs. Just like there are different approaches to talk therapy there are also many ways to approach play therapy. It can involve tools such as art, music, fidgets, stories, creating symbolic worlds in the sand (often called sand tray) and so much more. We get to be creative and see what forms of play will be most supportive to you. You don’t have to be “good” at playing and you don’t have to consider yourself a creative person either. Sometimes we might still talk about things as well or we might be silent while you engage in play. We might do things completely out of your comfort zone or things right up your alley. Similar to talk therapies, you and your therapist get to decide together what will work best for you.

Here are some reasons play therapy might be helpful in your healing process as an adult and why you might try it out:

Play is how we first learn, explore, and connect with people and the world around us. Children play as a critical part in development and growth. There are specific developmental stages and milestones that we have to go through to mature and develop who we are, and play helps support that. Many adults go to therapy to work on things related to their childhood experiences and past wounding. Because of this, play therapy can be really supportive to work through those things that happened during our younger years. Just as kids use play to process things in the moment, adults might need play to process things from when we were kids. It can be a helpful tool to get in touch with our inner child by using an approach that connects us to that time of life more.

Another reason play therapy may be helpful, is that sometimes talking isn’t enough. Even as adults we don’t have the words to express everything we are experiencing. And sometimes we feel like we have talked our way through everything and still don’t feel a change. Play therapy involves more of our senses and different forms of expression besides just language. A play therapy approach involves many different forms of expression and may help deepen and integrate things you are working on in ways that talking alone cannot reach.

Play therapy can also help us approach things that are too difficult to verbalize. Therapy can be really heavy and is not easy, so involving play therapy as another form of expression and processing can be helpful. Play can help create enough distance from our fears, wounds, and traumas to finally approach some of those things and start the healing work. It doesn’t necessarily mean it is easy, but sometimes the verbal world feels too vulnerable to get started.

So maybe you have been stuck in a rut and want to try a different approach to therapy. Or maybe you just have a sense that this is something for you. If this is something you are interested in, seek out a therapist who specializes in using play, sand tray or expressive arts.

Play around with it and see what happens!'

To schedule with a play therapist in our office, call 801.955.4555 or click here!