COMMENTS BY CLINICAL EDITOR: Author offers sage advice on stress reduction.
tress and burnout are consistent
problems for all counselors, particularly play therapists. Like all counselors, play therapists have concerns about billing, continuing education, clients, marketing, ethics, liability, and efficacy of services. Unlike counseling generalists, play therapists face specific stressors when addressing the aforementioned tasks. Insurance companies often do not recognize the specialty training that goes into becoming a play therapist and as a result refuse to reimburse at a higher rate of pay, despite other specialties receiving a different pay structure. When considering continued education, play therapists are more limited in the specialty- specific training offered to improve their skills or learn a new technique. Marketing and ethics can also be very tough tasks for private practice play therapists, as few individuals outside of the play therapy field understand the skill and intentionality that comes with utilizing play therapy effectively. The stress of not only running a clinical practice but also having to defend our specialty can be very taxing. This increased level of stress can lead to burnout among many practitioners.
Meditation One solution for the alleviation of stress is through the practice of meditation. Health care professionals have long used meditation practices to help their patients in a variety of settings to help deal with feelings related to anxiety, stress, and anger (Young, DeLorenzi, & Cunningham, 2011). Charoensukmonkol (2013) found that individuals who had regularly practiced mindfulness meditation tended to report lower rates of burnout and adopt more problem-focused coping strategies that contributed indirectly to higher job satisfaction. In addition, meditation is often seen as a coping skill for stress management because of its low cost and, once learned, ease of use. Unlike psychotropic medications and other substances, meditation is free and accessible to practitioners of all skill levels (Young et al., 2011). Several types of meditation are practiced throughout the
world. In general, they can be broken into three groups: (a) devotional meditation, (b) mantra meditation, and (c) mindfulness meditation (Young et al., 2011). Devotional
meditation “involves contemplation on a particular prayer, positive thought, or biblical passage” (Young et al., 2011, p. 61). In mantra meditation, the practitioner repeats a word or phrase to focus the practitioner’s mind during the meditation practice (Young et al., 2011). Lastly, during mindful meditation, the practitioner “exercises intentional awareness and focuses the attention on breathing while striving to become keenly aware of what is happening in the present moment, both during and outside of meditation” (Young et al., 2011, p. 62). While there are several different disciples of meditation, for this article I will examine the positive effects of mindfulness
meditation. An important note is that while mindfulness can often lead to states of relaxation, the ultimate goal of mindfulness differs from relaxation training. While the goal of relaxation exercises is to replace a less desirable mental and physical state with a more desirable state, in mindfulness practices the goal is to be present in the moment (Christopher, Christopher, Dunnagan, & Schure, 2006).
Benefits There are three major categories of benefit in the practice of meditation, including the areas of physical, mental, and emotional improvement (Benefits of Meditation, 2009; Davidson et al., 2003). The first category of benefit is the physical benefits that one may gain. One of the primary ways that meditation physically helps practitioners is through deep, controlled breathing. Deep breathing reduces fatigue and tension by increasing the circulation of oxygen to the muscles. Meditation lowers high blood cholesterol due to its ability to decrease stress (Benefits of Meditation, 2009; Davidson et al., 2003). Meditation also helps to reduce pain, insomnia, and headaches (Benefits of Meditation, 2009). In addition, one study found that regular meditation practice increased immune system resiliency (Davidson et al., 2003). The second category of benefit is a gain in emotional control.
Emotional benefits include less irritability, reduction in the “fight or flight” response, and more self-control (Benefits of Meditation, 2009). Meditation also helps practitioners gain perspective when confronted with stress or times of crisis. The stressors of play therapists’ personal and professional lives may often become overwhelming. With meditation, play therapists can take a small amount of time to meditate daily. This practice can help to bring the perspective needed to manage a busy schedule and learn self-soothing skills (Benefits of Meditation, 2009). The third and final category of benefit is mental enhancement. Some
of the gains that practitioners can obtain include improved focus, concentration, creativity, and decreased stress (Benefits of Meditation, 2009). Meditation helps practitioners identify and address negative thoughts and feelings and gain necessary perspectives to deal with them (Benefits of Meditation, 2009). Neuroscientists found that meditation practitioners shift brain activity to different areas of the brain (Davidson et al., 2003). They stated that brain waves in the frontal cortex switched sides of the brain. Neuroscientists theorized that this shift decreases the negative effects of stress, mild depression, and anxiety. They also found that less
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PLAYTHERAPY | September 2016 |
www.a4pt.org
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