20: Safety and Security Themes
Note: Play Therapy Across the Lifespan is created to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio so that you are able to appreciate the emotion and emphasis that cannot be captured by text alone. Transcripts may contain errors and differ slightly from the audio. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it in print.
Resources and Links
Creative Play Therapy with Adolescents and Adults on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Play-Therapy-Adolescents-Adults
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-term Effects of Childhood Adversity on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Deepest-Well-Long-Term-Childhood-Adversity
Season 4 Episode 20 Outline
Prologue
Introduction
The play themes I want to explore with you this week are around safety, security, and protection.
I’m starting with this one on purpose because it really is our most basic need.
If a client is unsafe, then little else matters except for survival. Even basic needs.
This is going to inform your treatment goals. Establish trust.
If a client has ever had this need threatened, then it will activate this core need. We are going to talk about 25 or so themes, but I like to group them into core needs. I explain this more in Chapter 4 of my book, Creative Play Therapy with Adolescents and Adults.
This category is always the most pressing need.
Safety – The need to be safe physically and emotionally.
If a client has experienced or witnessed physical or emotional violence, abuse, frightening oppression, been physically overpowered, or in other ways had safety threatened, you will probably see play around these safety themes.
Security – The need to be free from danger.
Play around security themes often includes fear, the fear that basic needs won’t be met. This can be real or perceived, but it still is the threat of danger to basic needs. Food insecurity, threats of harm, financial instability, and anything that risks food, shelter, clothing, and transportation would prompt this play theme. I think you may see security needs emerging from the coronavirus pandemic.
Protection – The need for other people and things to provide safety.
Some things are supposed to keep us safe, things like parents, teachers, police, homes, God, our bodies, etc. When they don’t, you may see play themes around protection. We need to be protected.
The important thing to remember about safety and security themes in play is that this is an area that needs repair. The child you are working may be trying to shore up security through fortifying a safe place for the baby animals. The adult you are working with may be creating rows of boundaries in her sand tray.
Whether the need is real or perceived doesn’t matter for the client. It’s the same core need that needs to be met. Example: adult hoards to provide excessively.
Your reflections help with this repair work. “This is a safe place.” “You can help the baby zebra stay safe now.” “It’s very important that the soldier watches the bad guy.” Your words help to fortify the unsafe places, the threats to security, and the protection that is needed. Your words also recognize the reality that this client wasn’t safe, the threat was real, and those people and things that should have protected didn’t. Trying to make the client feel better does not help him do the work. Sometimes that work is facing what is unacceptable.
Rachel’s Book Review
Hi everyone! Welcome to Season 4! We’re so glad you’re here. This season, instead of synthesizing and sharing research articles, I’m going to pivot and talk about books instead. I’ve chosen 7 books that I feel are “must-reads” for play therapists, as well as therapists who work with families. These books have shaped my perspective of play therapy, trauma, and human growth and development. So, let’s dive right in!
Today, I’m sharing a book called, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-term Effects of Childhood Adversity, written by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. Dr. Harris is a pediatrician and the founder of the Center of Youth Wellness in San Francisco. She was also most recently named California’s Surgeon General. I first learned about her when I began looking more closely at ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and how ACEs impact mental and physical health.
In her book, she describes her experience of discovering the research on ACEs and the proven link between toxic stress in childhood and poor health outcomes. She describes learning about the ACE’s study and her shock that this information had yet— and still really hasn’t-- become common knowledge to the world. One of my favorite parts of the book was her perspective on why the ACE study isn’t common knowledge yet, and I want to share what she has to say.
First, she explains that it could be a misconception with the ACE study itself, and the popular belief that increased health risks are only due to behavior. She says, “Popular thinking goes that if you live in poverty or have a rough childhood, you inevitably cope by drinking and smoking and doing other risky things that damage your health. But if you’re smart and strong, you rise above what you were born and raised with and leave the bad things behind. At first, this construct seemed to make sense, but remember, at one point it made perfect sense that the Earth was flat” (p. 40). She is fierce and feisty, and I love it.
What she is saying is this — Even if a person doesn’t engage in any health-damaging behaviors as a means to cope with trauma, a person with a high number of ACEs is still more likely to develop heart and liver disease and even cancer during their lifetime.
The second reason this study isn’t common knowledge yet, she says, is because it’s scary and emotional stuff. And she’s right, it is. She says, “It’s possible that we marginalize the impact of trauma on health because it does apply to us. It’s hard, after all, to accept that there might be biological implications that persist whether people are sinners or saints. Maybe it’s just easier to see it in other zip codes.” I think those words are profound.
Sometimes when medical doctors write books, all of the medical jargon can make it difficult to understand. But not this book. Dr. Harris is a gifted writer and a good storyteller. She concisely explains how toxic stress affects the body in a way that those of us without a degree in medicine can understand. Though the beginning of the book explains the ACE study and the neurophysiological impact of trauma, the final third of the book is dedicated to offering ideas and solutions about how we can start to heal our world. A good primer to this book is listening to Dr. Harris’s Ted Talk called “How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across A Lifetime.” Give it a Google search. You won’t regret that you did.
Conclusion
Today we talked about the play themes of safety, security, and protection. Even though they are closely related, they aren’t the same themes. I like to group them into one category that I call safety and security, and then tease out whether it is a physical or emotional threat (safety), a risk to meeting basic needs (security), or a lack of people or things that protect those needs (protection).
If a client is expressing these themes, your role is to reflect content around safety, security, and protection as the client attempts repair work. In client-centered work, the relationship is an important avenue for this to happen. You may need to spend extra time establishing trust.
When it comes to progress notes, treatment summaries, and caregiver consultations, you can conceptualize the client’s work through these themes instead of specific play behaviors. Instead of describing the child fortifying a safe place for the baby zebra toy, you can describe it in terms of safety, security, or protection play themes, whichever the child seemed to be expressing.
This week, look for play that expresses a need for safety and security with your clients.
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