Playing Perfectly: A Play Therapist’s Guide for Working with OCD

We know that supporting a child struggling with obsessive compulsions can be incredibly challenging. Often, the desire to move the child out of their rigidity and rituals can overshadow the deeper issues and stressors driving the behaviors.  

We also know that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a complex disorder as the reasons behind the behaviors vary widely from managing anxiety to past traumas to focused energy inside of a child driving them towards their genius and that which is most meaningful.  

Due to the complexity, we can often mis-label, mis-understand, and mis-guide these children in how to work with and understand their rituals and need for perfectionism. We also can inadvertently intensify the inner struggle that is often experienced by these children as they attempt to stop, control, and even deny the urges in their bodies.   

And that is why we created this course, so you know what to do when OCD shows up in your play therapy sessions!

Drawing from Synergetic Play Therapy and Interpersonal Neurobiology, this course explores non-directive and directive play based interventions to help support play therapists on a path to understand the perfection in these children’s perfection, while teaching the child how to do the same. Play therapists will take a deeper look at the regulatory function of the child’s behaviors that manage the internal conflicts and anxieties these children often carry. 

Through discussion topics and experiential exercises, play therapists will learn how to separate the underlying drivers from the wisdom of the rituals themselves. With this knowledge, play therapists will learn how to use themselves and many forms of play to help these children access an understanding of the greatest perfection that exists, the child just as they are.

“I loved Lisa’s knowledge and approach – very open minded but also structured. Her personal stories of working with clients were very impactful and made it easy to attach the theories to real scenarios.” – Student testimonial

See the full course description below.