Building a calm/safe place in the play therapy room

When children are exposed to toxic environments for many years of their childhood, they may have a difficult time even imagining a calm or safe place. Fort Tent has been adapted from Francine Shapiro's Calm Place exercise. This adaptation is designed to better suit children's needs. Abused and neglected children have very few internal and external resources to enhance the original Calm Place. The initial goal of this intervention is to create a specific experience of a Calm Place. The Fort Tent Calm/Safe Place (Fort Tent) is an intervention designed to help create safety within the constructs of the therapy office. This creative intervention heightens present moment experience of safety in real time. The Fort Tent allows clients who need a more concrete, kinesthetic intervention to be involved in the development of the safe place, thus empowering them to have a level of control in their own sense of safety.

Book Section

English

Alice Stricklin

Stricklin, A. (2021). Building a calm/safe place in the play therapy room. In Ann Beckley-Forest and Annie Monaco (Eds.), EMDR With Children in the Play Therapy Room: An Integrated Approach (pp. 301-310). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. doi:10.1891/9780826175939.0010