Latest / Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence / Beyond Labeling: Why Emotional Granularity is the Key to Resilience in Play Therapy

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Beyond Labeling: Why Emotional Granularity is the Key to Resilience in Play Therapy · Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

• 0:02
  Welcome to Next Level Play Therapy, a weekly podcast dedicated to supporting the next generation of child and adolescent therapists to provide exceptional play therapy services.
• 0:14
  We'll explore all things play therapy to elevate your work with children and adolescents using the therapeutic powers of play.
• 0:23
  I'll discuss practical tips and ideas so you can provide a transformative experience for your young clients and make a real difference in their lives.
• 0:34
  So get ready to take your play therapy skills to the next level and make a lasting impact in the lives of children, adolescents, and families.
• 0:46
  So welcome everyone to this week's episode of Next Level Play Therapy, and today we are talking about emotional granularity.
• 0:57
  So one of the things that we do in play therapy is we help children learn to id- recognize and identify, label their emotions as part of their therapeutic goal in play therapy.
• 1:12
  And oftentimes what I f- find happening is that we kind of stop there.
• 1:18
  And so sometimes the thing that I think about is, are we over-focusing on feeling good and helping children to label their emotions so that they can feel good?
• 1:33
  Because if that's the case, and the whole focus on, is on children feeling good and feeling happy, then we have missed the boat for helping them to develop resilience.
• 1:49
  And in my mind, resilience is the goal, because that's gonna help them navigate the challenges in life rather than expecting that they're gonna be feeling good all the time, because that is not a realistic, that's not a realistic goal.
• 2:07
  And so if we're thinking about that whole idea of labeling and identifying emotions, then what, what does that mean?
• 2:17
  What are emotions?
• 2:20
  How do we help clients with their emotions?
• 2:23
  What is the purpose of identifying their emotions?
• 2:29
  And that's what we're gonna be talking about today.
• 2:32
  In this week's episode, we're gonna be talking about what is emotional granularity and why does it matter?
• 2:40
  Why is it important to be able to distinguish frustrated from sad as a predictor of better mental health outcomes?
• 2:49
  What's the difference between affect and emotion?
• 2:53
  We use those terms interchangeably, and they are not the same.
• 2:59
  So what's the difference between those two concepts?
• 3:03
  And then what's the role of emotions in play therapy?
• 3:07
  Why are we helping kids to identify their emotions?
• 3:13
  And then also I'm gonna review some common mistakes that I see happening when we're talking about emotions as a therapeutic goal in play therapy.
• 3:26
  So if that sounds like it's something that is interesting to you or useful, then keep on listening, 'cause that's what we're getting into today.
• 3:38
  So for those of you who are watching l- the live stream, I would love to know who's here.
• 3:45
  Post your name in the comments.
• 3:47
  Join the conversation.
• 3:49
  What questions do you have?
• 3:51
  What play therapy model or what modality are you using when you're working with children and teens?
• 3:59
  Um, for those of you watching the live stream replay, I would still love to know who's here.
• 4:07
  Post your name in the comments, all the things.
• 4:12
  And for those of you who are listening to the podcast, feel free to pop over to my Instagram channel, cathy- uh, renewingheartstraining.
• 4:23
  Send me a message.
• 4:25
  Um, comment in this.
• 4:28
  We always post the episodes when they come out in the podcast, s- uh, on my Instagram channel and, uh, other places including LinkedIn and, um, Face- um, YouTube.
• 4:46
  My mind's not working.
• 4:47
  Um, so feel free to comment when we post those or send me a message, and let's get started today.
• 4:55
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• 5:01
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• 5:21
  So today we are talking about beyond labeling, why emotional granularity is the key to resilience in play therapy.
• 5:32
  The first thing we want to talk about is this fancy word called emotional granularity.
• 5:39
  Such a fancy word.
• 5:41
  And this is, um, um, basically what this word means is that we, we are helping our clients to really fully recognize and distinguish their emotions.
• 5:57
  So we're talking about emotional differentiation.
• 6:01
  How do you tell one emotion from another?
• 6:05
  And so we're identifying, labeling, and distinguishing specific emotions rather than having our clients just use a general, "I feel good," or, "I feel bad," or, um, pleasant and unpleasant.
• 6:22
  We're really wanting them to take a deeper dive into what those emotions are and distinguishing one from the other.
• 6:31
  And what, what we found, according to some of the experts in the affect of neuroscience field, is that high gran- emotional granularity leads to better mental health outcomes And better emotion regulation and less maladaptive behavior.
• 6:53
  So that would include suicide ideation or self-harm or some of the other behaviors that don't end up being helpful, shall we say.
• 7:08
  So that, um, so emotional granularity, if we're talking about this whole idea of helping clients develop an emotion vocabulary or learning to identify emotions, what we're really talking about is helping them to develop high emotional granularity for the purpose of being able to improve whatever mental health issues that they're struggling with.
• 7:34
  And so there's a, there's an affective neuroscience researcher, Lisa, uh, Feldman Barrett.
• 7:41
  She wrote a book, which has been around for a while, it's called
• 7:45
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.
• 7:49
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So if you are interested in learning a little bit more about emotions and some of the neuroscience around emotions and this theory of construction, then this would be a good book to read.
• 8:02
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: She's a researcher.
• 8:03
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: She is not a clinician, and I feel like betwe- we need to have a better bridge between what the research says, and then as clinicians, how are we taking that information that we're learning in research, and then what do we do with that?
• 8:23
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Because some of these concepts that we're learning about from the researchers are kind of hard to figure out what to do with that, especially when the researchers don't agree.
• 8:38
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so one of the things that I've been doing over the last few months since I've learned a little bit more about some of those, the, you know, since the critiques came out, I think it was in January of this year, j- 2026, about polyvagal theory and some of the, what are some of the research, some of those in the research field, what are their, um, points of contention, so to speak, for a theory model that in the clinical world, we have grabbed hold of that and it has taken on like gangbusters.
• 9:16
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And I, I think, I think what has been really po- positive about the whole polyvagal discussion, one, poly- think polyvagal theory gave clinicians a way to really make sense of why we're seeing what we're seeing and why we're doing what we're doing, meaning the whole neuroscience around, um, emotions and emotion regulation and that felt sense of safety and the whole body somatic aspect of the work that we do, and it's a theory.
• 10:00
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so there are gonna be… In the research field, what they, they do is explore the validity of various theories.
• 10:11
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so I think it's important for us to keep up to date with that.
• 10:16
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I think the hard part for us as clinicians is what do, what do we do?
• 10:22
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: H- how do we apply that information?
• 10:24
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And what do we do when the experts, the researchers, are not agreeing, especially when we're, we're doing the application part of it, and there were some parts of it that are very useful.
• 10:39
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And the truth is, the parts that were useful are still useful.
• 10:44
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Um, it just, we now have a different understanding of that, of the whole polyvagal thing.
• 10:51
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Um, in an upcoming episode, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about another article that came out last month, in April, about the body does not keep the score, and some of the critiques of that theory.
• 11:06
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What, what is, what are we keeping, and maybe what are we gonna look at in a different way?
• 11:11
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So we'll talk a little bit more about that in an upcoming episode.
• 11:16
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And as it relates to emotions, I think this is another topic where we look at what the research is saying, what are the researchers finding, and then what do we do with that?
• 11:30
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So in affective, uh, neuroscience, there are different theories of emotion and construction of emotions.
• 11:40
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So there's, uh, um, Jaak Panksepp As a affective neuroscientist, he has one theory, and Lisa Barrett, uh, Lisa Feldman Barrett has another theory.
• 11:54
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So there are two kind of different theories about emotions, and her book really focuses on how emotions are constructed using that affective neuroscience lens.
• 12:08
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so we kind of have two competing ways of thinking about emotions, and then as play therapists, what do we do with that information?
• 12:17
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So today I thought it would be useful to take a look at this idea of, um, emotions are constructed.
• 12:27
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: They are not wired in, and they are not neuro- uh, um, like innate neural pathways that are, that are present all the time for all people, as is proposed.
• 12:41
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: That's a really simplistic way of saying, um, how Panksepp proposes, uh, uh, how emotions work.
• 12:52
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So this whole idea of emotions as constructed, and we're gonna be kind of looking at that idea of what is affect and what is emotion.
• 13:04
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so according to Lisa Feldman, she takes the position that affect is your basic sense of feeling ranging on a, on a continuum, so like pleasant to unpleasant, and that, um, they get activated, so that arousal state.
• 13:26
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And that emotions are more complex mental construction.
• 13:31
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: But affect is that basic sense of feeling, and it's, um, it can range from I feel good, I feel bad, anything from pleasant to unpleasant, so kind of that continuum.
• 13:48
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Whereas emotion, as Feldman Barrett proposes, m- is a more complex mental construction, um, based on experience, based on culture, and individual personality.
• 14:05
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so she proposes that emotions are constructed as a result of brain regions becoming automatically activated by events, um, rather than they're automatically cons- um- I'm gonna back up here'cause my mouth is not keeping up with my brain.
• 14:29
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So what Feldman proposes is that emotions are constructed rather than they're kind of automatically activated and they're there all the time and such as how Panksepp, um, proposes in his theory.
• 14:45
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so, um, i- in terms of constructed, it's kind of based on your experiences, and the emotions are also tied to the belief systems or what are your, what's your cog- what are the cognitions connected with the emotions?
• 15:04
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And this is the part I think that's, uh, um, important for play therapists is this idea of, yes, labeling is important.
• 15:17
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: For sure we wanna, we wanna identify what, what that emotion is specifically, and that they are constructed based on past experiences and the meaning made of those experiences.
• 15:33
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And then personality differences also are gonna influence that.
• 15:38
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So, um, this is also explains why you can have the same experience happen in a family where one, the one sibling makes meaning of it one way and another sibling makes meaning of it another way, and they respond to it two very different ways.
• 16:01
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so the meaning that I've made of that experience and the emotions that get activated with that experience are going to result in some type of response.
• 16:14
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And that's-- this is why we're kind of looking at that big picture of emotions.
• 16:20
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And I always think wh- when I think about this concept, I also th- always think about some of those DBT concepts, like mindfulness of emotions.
• 16:31
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: The reason, from a DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, the reason that we wanna identify emotions is because they give us good information.
• 16:41
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: They give us an idea of what's going on and what we need to do about it.
• 16:49
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Th- And then what happens is, uh, in DBT, we have this, this skill called Check the Facts.
• 16:57
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We wanna check the cognitions around what activated that emotion because maybe we are-- our cognitions are faulty.
• 17:10
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Maybe they're not accurate.
• 17:12
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so the other thing is, another DBT skill is mindfulness of emotions.
• 17:17
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Well, the whole reason that we're doing these skills tied to emotions is to improve our mental health and our emotion regulation capacity because that's going to influence how, what we do, our response to situations.
• 17:37
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So this whole idea of emotion granularity means we wanna make sense of how exactly am I feeling, and maybe I have a few feelings, right?
• 17:48
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Maybe there's layers.
• 17:50
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Maybe I'm feeling angry, and maybe anger as that secondary emotion means it's kinda covering up that deeper emotion below, and we want to get to what that deeper emotion is below because then we're gonna be looking at the cognitions tied to that emotion.
• 18:13
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And if we need to do some cognitive reframing or challenge cognitive distortions or to do, you know, check the facts, then, then we're kind of looking at that information that we've gained from our emotions to be able to do that.
• 18:33
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so for play therapy-- And that's c- that's high emotional granularity.
• 18:39
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: High emotional granularity is understanding that these emotions are tied to experiences and belief systems around that experience, and culture, and personality, and also that emotions are unique to different people.
• 18:58
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So we want to be able to, um, hold open the opportunity for our clients to explore how they're experiencing it and what emotions they're experiencing, and not kind of put any predetermined or have them think they have to be, feel a certain way.
• 19:22
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: It's really about their, their ability to think about e- emotions from their unique perspective and explore what, what that's tied to And so as far as the role of this for play therapy, we- one of the things that we do in play therapy is help our clients to explore, label, and understand their emotions.
• 19:52
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We do that for a variety of reasons.
• 19:55
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Um, we do that to help them improve emotion regulation.
• 20:01
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We do that to help them improve communication to get needs met.
• 20:07
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I'm feel- like how, how many times ha- have you had this conversation?
• 20:12
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I have this conversation all the time with parents, which is having parents reflect the emotion and help client… you know, help their child explore what their emotions are, and then from there we wanna go the next step, which is, so what's going on?
• 20:31
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So maybe I'm feeling sad, so what's going on?
• 20:36
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I, I always recommend don't use the why word 'cause it, it automatically makes people feel defensive.
• 20:44
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: It's more about what's going on.
• 20:47
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And maybe I feel sad because my friend doesn't wanna play with me in the playground, and now I'm feeling rejected, and that's tied to thoughts of I'm not good enough or nobody likes me or I'm stupid.
• 21:03
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And you can see how all of those experiences are now tied together, right?
• 21:09
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: That's the whole CBT triangle, cognitive behavioral therapy triangle of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.
• 21:20
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And we're using that to help children figure out what they d- need to do, help parents Figure out how can they help their child, and that's, that's the purpose.
• 21:33
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Not… The purpose isn't to be happy.
• 21:37
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: If we focus on, "I want my child to be happy," then we've m- we've missed the boat, because it's never gonna be possible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• 21:49
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Nobody is happy all the time every single day.
• 21:53
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We have a variety of emotions.
• 21:56
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: The goal is resilience.
• 21:58
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: The goal is, how do we navigate through hard things when it doesn't feel good?
• 22:04
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What do I do with these emotions, and how do I tolerate them?
• 22:08
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And that's going to be tied to, what are the thoughts that I'm having about this situation, and how is that influencing my responses?
• 22:19
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And then we're kind of also helping parents know how to support their child with this information as well.
• 22:28
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So we're teaching parents how to help their child with that as well, which means parents need to have their own high emotional granularity, because in order to effectively co-regulate, they've got to check their own emotion regulation and whether or not they've gotten activated.
• 22:47
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Or if we're gonna borrow a Circle of Security term, we can say that parents need to recognize when their shark music gets activated.
• 22:55
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: If you're not familiar with that term, shark music, as it relates to attachment and parenting, I would highly recommend hopping over to the YouTube channel, um, for Circle of Security and watching their little video.
• 23:10
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I use that one all the time with parents.
• 23:13
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So p- we have to help parents develop some high emotional granularity as well if we're working on helping them to co-regulate with their kids.
• 23:25
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And I, I find a lot of the DBT skills like, uh, wise mind is a very helpful skill to teach parents Also mindfulness of emotions and, um, that whole idea of shark music to help them re- recognize when they've gotten activated.
• 23:46
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What, what are the emotions they're having?
• 23:49
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What, what are the cognitions that they have going on?
• 23:53
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So that they can get themselves regulated and help their child regulate more effectively.
• 23:59
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So the, the goal in play therapy really is helping clients improve their, um, a- accomplish high emotional granularity, including parents, that's gonna help them, oh, um, work through and resolve whatever it is that they're working on.
• 24:20
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so how do we do that?
• 24:23
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: How do we do that in play therapy?
• 24:25
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Well, the way we do that is, what is your play therapy model?
• 24:30
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Your play therapy model is going to influence how you do that.
• 24:34
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Um, so the way you do that in child-centric play therapy is going to be different than the way you're gonna do it in, um, CBT play therapy, or Gestalt play therapy, or Adlerian play therapy, or EMDR.
• 24:53
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So your play therapy model is gonna influence how you help your clients accomplish high emotional granularity.
• 25:01
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So it's tied in there.
• 25:05
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Some of the mistakes that I see, um, especially when we're talking about traumatized children, are not really thinking about this idea of if we're gonna do emotion regulation, I mean, if we're gonna identify emotions, then the other thing is we need to help them identify specifically which one.
• 25:29
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: There's a variety of ways to do that.
• 25:31
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Play therapists, we have games to do that all the time.
• 25:35
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: One of the thing you may wanna think about is, um, I heard some critiques the other day about that emotion wheel Um, which I, I'll be honest, I don't use the emotion wheel.
• 25:49
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: It just doesn't work for me.
• 25:51
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: It's, it's too… If, and this was the critique of the, the person talking about emotional granularity and those, those emotion wheels, which I thought, oh, maybe that's why I don't like using those emotion wheels.
• 26:05
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: They, I find them to be, if I'm being honest, I find those emotion wheels to be annoying.
• 26:10
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: They're way too constricting for me, which was his, I think it was a him, his critique of those emotion wheels.
• 26:19
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Like, you start in the middle, and if you feel sad, then you can only pick from, from that list of emotions in, in that part of the wheel, which I find that does happen.
• 26:32
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Maybe, I don't know, b- maybe some of you guys love the emotion wheel, and you don't experience it that way, but that's kinda how I experience it.
• 26:41
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Um, and the, the critique being that we need to be, create ways for clients to explore the nuanced aspects of emotion.
• 26:55
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So maybe one category of emotions doesn't really fit'cause maybe they started in one category, but what they realized was, oh no, I'm in this category over here.
• 27:06
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And his, I think it was a him, his complaint of the emotion wheel is that it doesn't really allow you to do that, which coincides with my experience of it.
• 27:16
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: But I'd be curious, you know, who, who in this, who, uh, in, as play therapists and those of you working with children and adolescents, what are your thoughts about the emotion wheel?
• 27:29
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Po- post that in the comments.
• 27:31
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I would love to hear it.
• 27:32
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Start the conversation.
• 27:34
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I use a different kind of list of emotions.
• 27:38
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I've also kind of moved away from the feeling faces, just 'cause they don't, they're kind of… You know, like, we have those little emojis.
• 27:45
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Um, 'cause we can't always tell what those are.
• 27:49
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Although I, they, they can be helpful, but I think, to be honest, I think we need a variety of ways, and I don't know that one way is always the best way for everybody.
• 27:59
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So being able to have a variety of ways for kids to do that, and teens, I think can be useful.
• 28:05
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I, my, I have one with a list- And it's not as crowded.
• 28:10
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: It's got a little, a little more space between the words.
• 28:14
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: 'Cause I think that's the other thing about the emotion wheel I don't like, it's just too crowded.
• 28:19
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Too many words all jammed together in one little space, and my little brain doesn't ha- it gets a little confused by all the words too close together.
• 28:29
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Um, anyways, I digress a little bit here.
• 28:33
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Emotions, one of the things that we wanna make sure is we're tying that idea of, um, we wa- what are the cognitions?
• 28:43
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What are the nuanced aspects of those emotions that are contributing to trauma?
• 28:51
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So I've been, I'm almost at the end of my playful EMDR training.
• 28:59
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Very excited.
• 28:59
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: It's been six months.
• 29:01
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Um, and one of the things that I really, really love about EMDR and working with children who've experienced tr- trauma is that we're focusing on the emotions.
• 29:13
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We're doing the SUDS, subjective units of distress, for the emotion.
• 29:19
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We're also looking at the cognitions or the belief systems.
• 29:23
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What I like about, um, one, you know, if we're talking about trauma, I think one of the things that I also have found Awesome about the EMDR focus is what is that, what does that, um, mean about me?
• 29:45
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So we're really like, I instead of like they make me angry or life's not fair.
• 29:52
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What does that mean about me?
• 29:53
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And I think if we tie emotions more specifically to what does that mean about me, when we're working with kids with trauma and when we're ki- working with kids who have other, other issues going on, like anxiety or depression or things like that, what does that mean about me?
• 30:13
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: That really brings it home.
• 30:16
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And the other mistake that I see play therapists making is, is really not understanding, especially when we're talking about trauma, is understanding that the brain is predictive.
• 30:31
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Meaning that there's this predictive coding aspect of I've made meaning of this information that I've received through my sensory circuits, through what I'm seeing.
• 30:45
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Also, the emotions that are tied with it.
• 30:48
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: If this is tied to a past experience in which there was trauma, then my brain is kind of getting stuck in this predictive feedback loop between brain and body about this is dangerous.
• 31:04
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: The problem is the, the, the, the meaning that I've made out of it, the cognition tied to it, is I'm not safe or I'm not good enough or any of the other cognitive distortions that come along with that emotion and that information being received and now the brain is, is, um, predicting danger and allocating resources.
• 31:32
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So activating that parasympathetic if we're going to freeze or that sympathetic response if we're going to fight or flight.
• 31:42
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And the problem is, if it's not an accurate assessment, if the meaning that I've made is not accurate but my brain is stuck in that loop, then that's gonna keep me kind of stuck in that trauma response on a repeated basis.
• 32:01
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so really helping to identify the emotions and the beliefs around that information being received and how do we help the brain, um, kind of rewire a little bit and get a more accurate understanding of what's happening to get out of that loop.
• 32:26
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so the, what we, one of the things that we have to help our traumatized clients recognize is when there's real threat versus perceived threat, and using that as part of kind of rewiring some of those belief systems around what is danger and what is not danger.
• 32:51
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: But that also means that we're gonna have to get in there with some of those trauma memories and help our clients to rewire those a little bit, which means we're also wanting to help them understand the nuances of their different emotions and to, to make sense of those and help them reprocess those emotions.
• 33:17
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And then the, the third mistake is, um Really not understanding how that plays into behavior.
• 33:30
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So here's what I mean by that, is if we only focus on behavior and we don't focus on what's beneath it, then we've missed the boat.
• 33:41
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So a lot of times what happens is the behavior is very distressing, and so all of the focus gets, gets put on the behavior, 'cause you're getting phone calls from parents or caregivers.
• 33:56
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: S- parents and caregivers are getting phone calls from the school if there's a lot of emotion dysregulation.
• 34:03
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so then the beha- then the focus becomes on the behavior when what you really wanna do is go down to the root of it.
• 34:10
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And when we're talking about trauma, we're talking about safety.
• 34:14
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We really need to focus on how to help that child feel safe, which is, again, because the brain is stuck in that predictive danger loop, it's gonna be hard for them to believe what you're saying to them versus what their brain is telling them.
• 34:34
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: My brain is telling me that's dangerous, and I'm getting all this information from my body, like all my fight or flight or freeze response which is telling me it must be true, because it feels dangerous, therefore it must be dangerous.
• 34:48
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And the, the problem is that if it's not and we're just focusing on the behavior and not getting down to the safety and establishing safety, then it's gonna be really hard to make that shift.
• 35:02
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so a lot of the work that we do when we're working with children who've experienced trauma, um, is that we're, we're helping caregivers and we're helping to figure out ways for that child to feel safe.
• 35:19
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What needs to be put in place to establish a sense of safety?
• 35:24
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Because what we know is we're not gonna be able to really work through the whole… all the stages of the play therapy process unless we can get a sense of safety.
• 35:37
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: There will be times when, um, you know, we go back and forth.
• 35:41
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: T- healing is not linear, right?
• 35:44
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: It goes all around the place back and forth depending on what's going on for the child, and that's throughout that process though, we are using that therapeutic relationship for safety for the child and also for the parents.
• 35:58
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We need to support them as well, and then we're also using our relationship with parents to help parents respond to these alarming behaviors or things going on with their child to help their child feel safe.
• 36:16
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so at the heart of a lot of this work is this idea of emotional granularity and helping clients and parents to develop a high sense of emotion granularity, and your play therapy model is gonna influence how you do that.
• 36:38
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: When we're working with trauma, there's typically a specific way that we want to go through that process, because what we're working with are those trauma memories, and tied into those trauma memories are emotions.
• 36:56
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: How are they experiencing emotions in their body, and what's the meaning that they're making out of what's going on?
• 37:02
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And how are those all tied together, and how are those tied to those past traumatic experiences?
• 37:09
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And how are we helping clients- Rewire essentially and reprocess those memories.
• 37:18
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: I always say kind of to take the sting out of it and, 'cause the memories are always gonna be there.
• 37:24
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: The, what happened, happened.
• 37:25
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: We can't change that with trauma.
• 37:28
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: There, there's, we can't change it.
• 37:30
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: What we can change is the, um, meaning that we've made about it, and reestablishing a sense of safety so that it's no longer something that continually activates a threat response when there isn't a current threat response going on.
• 37:55
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: That's the key when you're working with trauma, is how do I help my clients distinguish between real threat, 'cause we want them to, to know when real threat is actually happening, and distinguish that from situations that are not dangerous or there is no threat present.
• 38:17
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So that's kind of what we're working on in that and, uh, with our clients who've experienced trauma.
• 38:25
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So that is it for today, and let me just do a quick recap.
• 38:32
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So what we're, we're talking about today is what is this idea of emotional granularity, and why does that make a difference when we are working with our clients, and understanding that emot- if we're looking at this from that theory developed by Lisa Feldman Barrett, that emotions are cons- constructed, then we're thinking also about how this ties in with trauma.
• 39:01
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: If, if emotions are constructed based on past experiences, culture, and throw in some indi- unique personality wire in there, 'cause we're all unique individuals.
• 39:16
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And so it would make sense that how we, how we experience emotions is going to be influenced by that as well.
• 39:25
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: So we're, we're thinking about emotional granularity as we're looking at reprocessing those trauma memories and getting out of that predictive feedback loop of danger and the role of emotions when we're doing that.
• 39:44
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: Emotions are one part of that process, and what we know is, what the researchers are telling us, is that people who have a high emotional granularity have impr- better mental health, better emotion regulation, and overall higher resiliency rates, I would say.
• 40:09
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: And how does that apply to play therapists, especially when we're working with clients who've experienced trauma?
• 40:17
  Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: W- w- we're gonna use our play therapy model, and if you're interested in … If you, if you're working with clients who have trauma and you're interested in learning how to, um, use a framework grounded in attachment and neuroscience to help your clients with trauma overcome their trauma, I'm gonna talk a little bit about a training that I have coming up in a couple of weeks, Healing Trauma Through
• 40:45
  Play Therapy: A Neuroscience and Attachment Approach.
• 40:48
  Play Therapy: So I'll talk a little bit more about that if you're interested, so stay tuned.
• 40:53
  Play Therapy: Um, so one of the things that we're doing in play therapy is how do we take all of this information that we're learning from the researchers, and how do we apply that in real time with a variety of different clients in a way that is grounded?
• 41:12
  Play Therapy: And so what I would say to that is, as play therapists, we're going to use our play therapy model, because our model is g- our theoretical model is gonna influence the way in which we make sense of what's going on with our clients and why it's happening, the patterns, and then it's go- that's gonna influence, we're gonna use our treatment model, our play therapy theory model, to, uh, to know what we do, how are we gonna do it, and when are we gonna do it through every stage of play therapy.
• 41:45
  Play Therapy: So if we're trying to make sense of, oh, is my client making progress?
• 41:50
  Play Therapy: Well, that's where you're going back to your play therapy model to see what stage they're in, and you're gonna figure out what stage they're in based on what you're seeing in the playroom, and kind of consistently what are you seeing, and that's gonna be influenced by your play therapy model, and that's also gonna be influenced, uh, influence what stage they're in.
• 42:14
  Play Therapy: 'Cause your play therapy model is going to, um, influence w- how you show up in the playroom, so what you do and how you do it and when you do it.
• 42:27
  Play Therapy: It's also gonna influence who's gonna be involved in the play therapy process, i- AKA how are p- how are caregivers going to be involved in the play therapy process?
• 42:41
  Play Therapy: So you're looking at all of those, and it's all w- influenced by your play therapy model.
• 42:47
  Play Therapy: So as play therapists, we're, we're keeping up to date with the latest research, and then we're looking at our play therapy model to see what that means in terms of application.
• 43:02
  Play Therapy: So that is it for today.
• 43:05
  Play Therapy: If you're interested in my upcoming training, it is called Healing Trauma Through Play Therapy.
• 43:14
  Play Therapy: It's gonna be, um, in person.
• 43:17
  Play Therapy: There's also a virtual option, and there's also an option to register for the recorded, recorded training.
• 43:27
  Play Therapy: So if you can't be there virtually or in person, I am gonna record the training, and then those of you who would prefer to get the recording, you can register for that option.
• 43:38
  Play Therapy: It'll be available about seven to 10 days after the training.
• 43:43
  Play Therapy: We'll put it in modules where you can watch the recordings, and you'll have all the handouts in there.
• 43:52
  Play Therapy: Um- And that training is coming up on June 6th.
• 43:59
  Play Therapy: So registration is gonna close June 4th.
• 44:03
  Play Therapy: If you're interested in the training, then you can pop over to my website at rhplaytherapytraining.com.
• 44:12
  Play Therapy: That's rhplaytherapytraining.com, Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training.
• 44:18
  Play Therapy: Here's the thing about this training.
• 44:21
  Play Therapy: Um, I'm a firm believer that we provide our best services when, one, when we have training, of course, and also when we have a community of supportive play therapists around us.
• 44:37
  Play Therapy: So when we're stuck, we don't have to figure it out all by ourselves.
• 44:41
  Play Therapy: We have a c- a community where we can go and get feedback, which is the reason that I created Play Therapy Elevation Circle, which is my online membership to-- for play therapists, where we meet once a month and get consultation with… We also have a monthly book club talking about a play therapy specific book, and then in the book club meetings, we talk about, well, how do we take that information and apply it in our play therapy practice?
• 45:14
  Play Therapy: There's also a monthly newsletter in there, and there's a group chat space where we get specific support.
• 45:22
  Play Therapy: Um, and so when you register for… Right now, uh, um, enrollment for Elevation Cir- Play Therapy Elevation Circle is closed.
• 45:34
  Play Therapy: And if you register for Healing Trauma Through Play Therapy, then you get two months access.
• 45:43
  Play Therapy: Included in your registration is two months access to Elevation Circle at no additional cost if you're a new member to Elevation Circle.
• 45:54
  Play Therapy: That-- the purpose of that is to give you some more support after the training, where you can take the information we've learned in the training and then have you apply that with your clients.
• 46:09
  Play Therapy: You can stay past the 60 days for sure, and a lot of people do, and at least you have some support to, um, some access to some support through Play Therapy Elevation Circle.
• 46:23
  Play Therapy: So your registration includes 60 days, uh, at no cost to Elevation Circle for new members And also my, so my other membership that I have is Play Therapy Academy.
• 46:38
  Play Therapy: Um, that one's not included in the, the training.
• 46:41
  Play Therapy: Play Therapy Academy, I do have openings in Play Therapy Academy if you are at a point in your career where you want to get some consultation to take a deep dive.
• 46:55
  Play Therapy: We focus on skill building, learning a play therapy model, and how are you applying that play therapy model through all the stages.
• 47:05
  Play Therapy: That one, if you're interested in becoming a registered play therapist, then Play Therapy Academy is the one that you want to, um, register for or a- actually schedule a, a video call with me to see if it's a good fit for you.
• 47:23
  Play Therapy: So that one, that one's really limited.
• 47:26
  Play Therapy: I have a few spots open in, in Play Therapy Academy, so you're gonna wanna schedule a 30-minute video call with me.
• 47:36
  Play Therapy: If you're not sure if Elevation Circle is a better fit or Play Therapy Academy, just schedule a video call with me and we'll figure it out.
• 47:44
  Play Therapy: If you register for the Healing Trauma Through Play Therapy training, then you'll get two months of Elevation Circle, and you can see if that one is a good fit for more ongoing support.
• 47:59
  Play Therapy: And if you have questions, just message me.
• 48:01
  Play Therapy: I'm happy to answer any of those questions.
• 48:04
  Play Therapy: And I will see you next week.
• 48:07
  Play Therapy: Bye for now.
• 48:12
  Play Therapy: Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy.
• 48:16
  Play Therapy: I hope you found the discussion valuable and gained new insights and ideas to support your work helping children, adolescents, and families heal.
• 48:26
  Play Therapy: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.
• 48:31
  Play Therapy: Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information.
• 48:37
  Play Therapy: Remember, play therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth.
• 48:42
  Play Therapy: Whether you're a new play therapist or experienced, I encourage you to continue your learning journey to unlock the potential of play in your own work and relationships.
• 48:53
  Play Therapy: If you have any questions or topic suggestions for future episodes, I'd love to hear from you.
• 49:00
  Play Therapy: Connect with me on social media and visit my website at Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training to stay updated on upcoming episodes, trainings, and resources.
• 49:12
  Play Therapy: Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy.
• 49:16
  Play Therapy: Until next time, keep playing, learning, and growing.