CLINICAL EDITOR’S COMMENTS:


Play therapists trained and supervised in EMDR therapy can combine the approaches to decrease children’s posttraumatic stress symptoms.


left to right for limited repetitions. To achieve BLS, they also may hold electronic buzzers in each hand, receive gentle taps on their bodies, or listen to alternating sounds. As a traumatic memory is brought to awareness, both logical and emotional halves of the brain move in sync to reprocess and diminish negative thoughts. Once painful cognitions, emotions, and sensations are reduced, their positive alternatives can be installed to restore the brain’s healthy information-processing system (Shapiro, 2018).


   these contribute to posttraumatic stress symptoms. During EMDR, unprocessed memories and their negative cognitions are processed through BLS to make way for new positive cognitions (Adler-Tapia & Settle, 2008). While BLS is employed, children’s brains are able to “digest and recover” (Gomez, 2007, p. 21) material which has previously been negatively stored. Once harmful material is diminished, positive thoughts can be installed to reduce children’s problematic behavior.


Combination of Modalities EMDR is composed of eight standardized phases which help clinicians identify and treat clients’ traumatic memories. Derivative of the adaptive information processing model, EMDR credits traumatic experiences with the disruption of the brain’s information-processing system. Trauma affects the nervous system through a “loss of neural homeostasis” (Shapiro, 2018, p. 27), and EMDR enables clients to achieve a physiological state which is more conducive for information processing. Through this treatment, children can reduce and even eradicate the intensity of traumatic memories (Shapiro, 2018).


EMDR helps children desensitize distressing thoughts by using bilateral stimulation (BLS): As children bring traumatic thoughts to awareness,         


 utilize this therapy with clients under supervision. However, introductory trainings in this modality frequently focus on adult clientele. Ethically,   with children and seek supervision from trained and experienced EMDR providers. Intent on the provision of ethical treatment, the ethical codes from the three mental health organizations that most commonly represent play therapists, and the Association for Play Therapy (APT), reference practitioners’ obligations to receive appropriate training, education, and supervision before they practice new specialties (e.g., American Counseling Association, 2014, Sect. C.2.a., C.2.b.; American   Sect. D.2.; National Association of Social Workers, 2017, Sect. 1.04a, 1.04b). These tenets would include the provision of EMDR.


www.a4pt.org | June 2019 | PLAYTHERAPY | 9


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