Play therapy is a relatively new concept to the UK offering a multidisciplinary approach to working with children.

This is a specialist interest of mine, predominately aimed at the younger generation (children and adolescents), but aspects can be used for all ages. Play therapy offers a therapeutic way of working with children to enable them to reach their full potential and to overcome emotional and behavioural problems.

Therapy will draw largely from the skills of counselling, but may also involve goal setting. Imagery and imagination are used through creative play and art activities. The language of children is play and as such play is used as a tool to unlock the unconscious, so that the unconscious becomes conscious and can be processed. Unconscious forces impact our everyday life, causing us to behave and think in specific ways which may cause us conflict in our everyday lives. Therapy enables exploration of the unconscious, of trying out new ways of behaving and relating.