When obsessive-compulsive behaviors show up in the playroom, it can be tempting to focus on the rituals themselves—to help the child stop the checking, correcting, repeating, controlling, or striving for things to feel “just right.” But when we focus only on changing the behavior, we may miss the deeper experience underneath it.
Children with OCD can carry enormous internal pressure as they navigate intrusive thoughts, anxiety, uncertainty, and powerful urges in their bodies. Their rituals and compulsions may serve important regulatory functions, even when those same patterns ultimately create distress. For play therapists, the challenge is learning to understand what the behavior is communicating without inadvertently reinforcing the cycle.
In this 5-hour home study course, Lisa Dion explores working with OCD through the lenses of Synergetic Play Therapy and Interpersonal Neurobiology. You’ll deepen your understanding of common OCD themes and the ways obsessions and compulsions can present in the play therapy process. You’ll also explore both directive and non-directive play-based approaches, including the SPT Set-Up/Offering, to support children as they experience and move through anxiety without becoming overwhelmed by it.
Throughout the course, you’ll examine the therapist’s role as an external regulator and explore how your own presence can help a child develop greater capacity to experience internal intensity without needing to immediately control, avoid, or neutralize it. You’ll also consider the importance of working with the entire family system, recognizing how caregivers can become part of the child’s cycle of anxiety and compulsion.
Rather than asking, “How do we get the child to stop the ritual?” this course invites a deeper question: “What is this ritual doing for the child, and what might become possible if they no longer have to rely on it to feel okay?“
Through experiential learning and practical clinical application, you’ll discover ways to meet children beyond the symptoms—supporting them in developing a relationship with their thoughts, sensations, and emotions that allows them to experience themselves as whole and worthy, even when things don’t feel perfect.
Synergetic Play Therapy Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7450. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Synergetic Play Therapy Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
