Therapeutic Self-Care for Therapists Carrying Vicarious Trauma

About this training

There are very few trainings that continue to nourish ME every time I experience them. This is one of them. Over the past year and a half, I have facilitated this experiential play therapy training several times. Each time, I chose to participate alongside the play therapists rather than simply teach. I expected to revisit familiar play therapy realted activities. Instead, I found something entirely new. Each experience uncovered a different layer, helping me release the emotional weight of clinical play therapy work, reconnect with my creativity, and return to the play therapy room feeling more present than before. How Can This Training Help YOU? If you've ever found yourself thinking about a play therapy client long after the session ended, feeling emotionally drained, or noticing that your creativity has become harder to access, you are not alone. ☀️ This course is an invitation to set down some of that weight. ☀️ Together, we will create, reflect, explore therapy cards, and intentionally make space for the person behind the clinician. ☀️ Every play therapy activity is fully written out in the portal, and throughout the training we discuss practical ways to thoughtfully adapt each experience for use with children, teens, adults, families, and supervision. ☀️☀️ One of my favorite parts of this training is a live sand tray demonstration where I process the emotional impact of clinical work in real time. It offers an opportunity to experience symbolic processing for yourself while also observing a sand tray process that can inform your own clinical work. ☀️☀️☀️ Because this is the recorded version of a live experiential training, I encourage you to pause the video and complete every activity alongside the live participants. Learning Objectives By the end of this section, participants will be able to: 🍎 Demonstrate an image-based, card-guided self-care exercise that can be adapted for play therapy client use to support emotional regulation and resilience. 🍎 Apply a guided playful visualization protocol to identify early indicators of compassion fatigue and to re-center therapeutic presence. 🍎 Identify and reimagine how personal energy is currently spent versus how it is most desired, by engaging in play therapy based art projects and card-based prompts. 🍎. Observe and reflect on a sand tray demonstration of a therapist externalizing accumulated trauma from sessions. Participants will experience how symbolic expression can create immediate relief, deepen emotional clarity, and model sustainable practices for well-being. 🍎 Develop a personal action plan for sustaining resilience by integrating at least one experiential self-care practice from the training into daily life, with consideration for how modeling these practices benefits clients and supervisees. 🍎 Evaluate how experiential self-care practices (art, cards, visualization, sand tray) can be adapted to support play therapists working with diverse clients, including those presenting with complex trauma and challenging behaviors, while maintaining cultural sensitivity and ethical standards.