Synergetic Play Therapy®

Are you ready for your child to experience real transformation?

Synergetic Play Therapy® isn’t just about play.

Your child has been struggling for awhile now. Which means you have too. The pain and bewilderment squeezes at your heart, and you scramble to try anything to help. Books, social media accounts, even prior therapists. But they haven’t worked.

One therapist even had you try something called “targeted ignoring” which made you feel punched in the gut!

Just the name of it felt wrong.

Other professionals have used bribes or reward systems but those don’t work for your kid, and make it worse.

Let me welcome you to a new world of play therapy. It is different, respectful, collaborative, and transformational. And it’s more than simply “playing” with kids.

While play is incredibly therapeutic all on its own, Synergetic Play Therapy® (SPT) takes it to a whole new level.

SPT is an elegant and complex framework that involves the therapeutic powers of play, therapist development, and the science of what we know about relationship, or “relational neuroscience.” It is the interplay between these three systems that allows for deep transformation in both the child and the therapist.

The name itself describes what happens in the playroom. Synergetics is the study of “systems in transformation.”

In SPT, when the therapist and child are attuned, a below conscious connection at the brain level occurs allowing co-regulation, and both of their systems are able undergo transformation and integration.

At the child’s pace, gradually (and sometimes quickly) your child will learn to recognize when she is dysregulated, notice there are options for how to manage that dysregulation in the body, and then begin trying on some of those options. Over time, the unwanted behaviors, and big feelings that take over begin to soften and your child will feel empowered and capable even when facing overwhelming events and emotions.

Synergetic Play Therapy Might be a good fit for your child and you if:

  • Your child seems to be struggling to process an event

  • Your child is having a lot of emotions that seem to have no explanation

  • You feel lost when you try to support your child emotionally

  • You are hoping to collaborate with the therapist

  • You aren’t looking for someone to “fix” your child

  • You long for parenting support from someone you can trust

  • You are ready and able to invest

9 TENETS OF SYNERGETIC PLAY THERAPY®

1. The therapist supports the child in changing his/her/their perceptions of the perceived challenging events and thoughts in his/her/their lives.

2. Attunement between therapist and child is essential in order to heal disorganization in the lower brain stem and re-pattern their nervous system.

3. The therapist models self-regulation to the child, because children learn most through observation.

4. The therapist’s ability to use mindfulness to be congruent and authentic in language and non-verbal signals allows the child to feel safe in the relationship and engage in reflective awareness.

5. The child’s symptoms are understood as symptoms of dys-regulated states of the nervous system.

6. The therapist is the most important toy in the playroom. Toys are used to help facilitate the relationship between the therapist and the child. In SPT’s truest form toys and language are not required.

7. The therapist supports the child in getting in touch with the child’s authentic self; who the child truly is rather than who the child thinks he/she/they should be.

8. The synergy between the therapist’s authenticity, attunement, congruence, and nervous system regulation support the child in learning how to attach to self, the cornerstone of all healing.

9. The child projects his/her/their inner world onto the toys and therapist setting them up to experience his/her/their perception of what it feels like to be him/her/them.

© 2011..2020 Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S Learn more here.