Room for everyone: EMDR and family-based play therapy in the sand tray

In the three decades since Francine Shapiro introduced the model, adaptive information processing (AIP) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) have provided mental health clinicians with a method for conceptualizing clients' responses to traumas as adaptive and protective without diminishing the pain that comes from holding stored trauma. For those working with child clients, the goal of healing emotional and relational wounds becomes substantially more attainable when caregivers also come to view children's trauma responses as adaptive and protective, all the while developing increasing capacity for being with their children's woundedness. EMDR therapists who provide family-based play therapy need ways to establish and monitor safety within family systems in order for the integration of these modalities to offer their full power. This chapter aims to offer sandtray as a modality that allows for this integration. Sandtray offers a common language for all who engage.

Book Section

English

Marshall Lyles

Lyles, M. (2021).Room for everyone: EMDR and family-based play therapy in the sand tray.  In Ann Beckley-Forest and Annie Monaco (Eds.), EMDR With Children in the Play Therapy Room: An Integrated Approach (75-108). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. doi:10.1891/9780826175939.0003