HOW TO WORK WITH KIDS
Play Therapy and Infant Memory
Your heart is big, you love kids, and want to make a difference
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Sometimes you feel stuck and unsure what to do when you have child clients like:
an angry 8-year-old who has just climbed up on top of the car. Mom is getting frustrated trying to bring him inside for a session. You don't know what to do, so you start thinking everyone going into the office is watching you, thinking you are such a bad therapist or parent.
These things can really happen with kids.
When supporting kids, sometimes you:
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Here are some reasons struggles with kids are so common:
- Play therapy that totally follows the child's direction and the therapist passively follows the child's lead, is not the most effective at creating change. Especially long term. So clients may have a good time, but not make therapeutic progress.
- Many therapists aren't aware of their own birth trauma and early imprints to heal, and these hold them back from a deeper ability to support kids. That is when therapists feel stuck, frustrated, distracted, bored and more.
You can treat in a style that enjoyable and effective!
When you learn how to link birth trauma imprints to play therapy, working with kids gets easier and you have so many new tools.
You can feel present and alive, fully enjoying your work while treating in a style that is yours.
Meet Annie Brook
Ph.D in Perinatal and Somatic Psychology, LPC, MSME, RSME, Body-Mind Centering teacher, and a therapist in high regard in the Somatic community
YOUR INSTRUCTOR
Annie Brook
Annie Brook, with over 45 years of experience working with hundreds of children, will guide you. She was the director of the MA Program for Somatic Psychology at Naropa University and has over three decades of experience training therapists. She understands the real-life struggles therapists face and provides practical tools to apply in your practice.
Introducing Play Therapy and Infant Memory - How To Work With Kids
Annie's guidance through 10 weekly 90-minute sessions
- Gain the skills to navigate play therapy with confidence
- Learn how to navigate complex emotional challenges
- Understand the hidden stories behind difficult behavior
- Apply developmental movement to reinform the brain and repattern the body-mind
- Recognize and help treat shock patterns
- Replace unsupportive attachment patterns with secure attachment
- Create an enjoyable and effective therapeutic style
- In-depth training resources, including guided somatic exercises, guided integrative writing and exercises to help you study, and more
- Access to Annie Brook's decades of experience helping children thrive
- You can ask supervision questions to help you help others
- Dates: 10 Wednesdays beginning October23rd 2024, until January 1st. That's weekly on Wednesdays except for December 25. (will be recorded so you can watch later if you need to)
Praise for Annie's Work
“The content was very informative both from the babies perspective and parent perspective. The “birth process” and phases of the birth process affirmed for me both patterns that I have seen in my families, but also gave me pause to explore my own personal experiences”
"The perinatal information, coupled with postnatal signs and methods for interacting with parents/kids will be highly useful for me as a parent/counselor/HV..."Moe, MSW
“I began to see how children tell the stories of their birth through their behavior. You just need to be able to see.” Irina
"In your style of work, I have seen psychotherapy that is more like magic. I remember my delight as a child, when a “magician” in the circus pulled a rabbit out of his magic hat. It was the same in this training: experiments with a group, work with pre-vertebral patterns, somatic movement, drawing the experience of a cell – brought surprise and genuine childish delight: is it really possible to work like this too?! One of the famous psychotherapists said: “To be a psychotherapist means to occupy a special place among the spectators of the human drama.” The place that a psychotherapist can occupy, working the way you have shown, obviously does not relate to the position of a passive spectator. In this case, psychotherapeutic presence is active, direct, open, with a peek behind the stage of the visible and verbal, with involvement in what is happening, when both the psychotherapist and the client become parts of one movement. Each and every time I participated in such experiments to explore early experience – for example, the early song of the baby’s heart (it’s amazing how 2006 and 2024 met in this training); I found myself emotionally captured by that unfamiliar inner life, intrauterine life, both familiar and mysterious at the same time."
-Elena 2024
Perinatal Child Therapy
differs from standard play therapy
Successful perinatal play therapy is a slightly different approach than standard play therapy, where a therapist completely follows the child's lead. In perinatal work, a therapist must both engage in the child's play and identify prenatal and birth related themes as they are expressed. The therapist must recognize the child's representation in play of their birth story, and connect them to that story in a resourced manner rather than making it traumatic. Highlighting perinatal themes as they emerge brings them to the foreground, and helps behavior to resolve more efficiently and effectively. Through numerous successes with child therapy, I have discovered that linking and naming (in other words, accurately attuning to what the child is expressing via a perinatal viewpoint), rather than just following the child's lead, is a most effective method.
Such methods support the child to enter territory that is uncomfortable, as was the initial perinatal experience they are representing in play. Meeting discomfort and releasing the body-centered shock is essential for nervous system healing. Shock must release at a tissue level and therapists who work with perinatal material do best to include work with body tissue and confusing or protective brain states that registered in the nervous system through sensory input and motor response to early experience. so regulation must be reintroduced by the therapist. This occurs through a supportive combination of body tracking, story listening, and engaged play, and skillful pacing of the expression of memory. therapists must engage the difficulty without prematurely eliciting a threat response and shock expression.
Children organically dive into deeper material they initially avoided as sessions progressed. Meeting these difficult experience memories with body patterning and reflective function ultimately leads to a child feeling understood and safe. They release the blaming identity beliefs that were created to manage sensation overwhelm, confusion, and lack of protection or connection with their parents.
Release the parental and generational shock
Therapists do best to think in a family system model when working prenatally. Treatment for a child is most effective if the parents release shock and imprints related to the birth, and if generational shock is also addressed. Doing so greatly relieves a child of burdens carried unconsciously that create an internalized stress. A child's difficult behavior often disappears when parents work on the shock that occurred in them during a difficult birth, followed by work with multi-generational issues.
Excellent Professional Training Resources
Unlock the secrets to healing birth trauma and providing relief for infant shock experiences.
Many children face sensory issues, struggle with transitions, procrastinate, or suffer from anxiety.
We'll show you how to access their cellular memory and help them heal their earliest impressions.
- Access deep-rooted memories stored in children's brains
- Transform child behaviors, relationships, and functionality
- Earn the gratitude of parents by creating lasting changes in just a few sessions
Start date: Wednesday October 23rd 9:30-11 am MT 2024
YOU WILL LEARN TO STAY PRESENT BY
LISTENING FOR HIDDEN STORIES BEHIND DIFFICULT BEHAVIOR
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I apply this professionally with children
A: At 0-18 months of age, the bodymind forms the first neural pathways; dismantling behavior patterns at their matrix of origin produces lasting results. You can be an effective change agent when you learn to help children access this early memory, They heal nameless fears, self-doubt, aggression, and controlling behaviors when traced back through the bodymind.
Q: What if I am cannot have the parents in the treatment?
A: You have to see what is possible, and I highly recommend parents attendance because they were present at the birth. If not for every session, do invite them in when you are doing the deep birth process inquiry session.
Q: You talk a lot about being play therapy that works. Mine already works!
A: You could already be an amazing play therapist, and I can guarantee that if the child had attachment or birth trauma (precognitive, even prenatal events) and you learn how to address this, your work will explode in its' value! And, you will get the added bonus of understanding the 4 types of dissociation and how to treat.
Q: What do you mean about shock imprints and why does it matter?
A: Shock indicates a time when a child was overwhelmed and out of control, maybe even "left their body," or left their ability to think clearly. Shock indicates an internal freeze response and a kind of dissociation.
This early freeze is common during infant overwhelm, and this course provides you an incredible skill set. You can actually help children to go back and integrate the earliest pre-cognitive experiences during their play therapy sessions!, You will learn the child friendly language to do speak about trauma and precognitive experiences.
Q: So I study all these tools. How do they make a difference?
A: Professionally and personally! You will have more impact with your child clients and feel better about your work. You will gain not just the understanding, but recognize shock and trauma in a different way. It's the felt sense you develop once you start working with birth imprints. This is the experiential embodiment piece, and that's when lasting change can happen for those kiddos.
Q: If I do all this work myself, what changes in my life?
A: Unwrapping shock patterns allows natural life force to flow through. You are better able to stay present in life when there is stress; the natural stressors of daily life. When there is increased stress, you have a sense of your habits and how to interrupt them and return to health. Eventually they release and integrate and life so so much easier!
Q: What if I am triggered by adding infant memory healing to my skill set with children?
A: The good news is you are learning from the inside out. There are many body resources to help regulation found in Volume 2 of Birth's Hidden Legacy. You will also gain keen insights regarding attachment. You will be guided how to work with your triggers and use that energy when treating children! There are many resources in the membership site. In addition, I can help you get your own therapist on board. I have trained professionals who know my work and can offer services.
Q: How long can I access this material for study?
A: You have a full year so you can revisit the depth of treating birth trauma with children. The results are so worth your study efforts. I am excited for the children you will be helping!