The brain in child therapy

It’s amazing to think how much we rely on our knowledge of what happens in the brain these days. Neurophysiology has considerably changed what we think and what we do as therapists. It’s noticeable in all models of working, and especially so in EFT and EMDR which pretty much rely on it (of which more later).

Whichever way we work, we can, for instance:

• explain to teenagers how the brain works when they are anxious or traumatised or acting precipitously
• have confidence that things can change, because the brain connections are constantly being reorganised, pruned or developed
• devise helping interventions that use what we know about neurology, whereas once we might not have.

I was thinking about this recently as I read the book Play Therapy for Very Young Children edited by Charles Schaefer and his colleagues, which I said I’d report back about.

I haven’t finished reading yet, and that’s mostly because the chapters are all by different contributors and so it’s a fresh start each time (and also because it stopped raining and the grass needed cutting).

But the chapters I’ve read so far have all stood out for me as “obvious”, as in “well, of course this is what we should do”. It wouldn’t have been so obvious a few years back, before we understood so much about the brain. But when a child is traumatised, unable to attach securely or is being neglected, then it makes sense to use the brain’s plasticity to re-do what has been missing developmentally. I love the comment in the preface – that we maintain that play is how children make sense of the world non-verbally, so why do we say play therapy is for 4s-12s? Why wait till they can speak? This book is about helping under-4s.

So – our knowledge of the brain is really important to us as therapists.

For those of you interested in EFT in particular, or as an adjunct to therapy with young people, Gwyneth Moss, an EFT UK Master, recently presented to the British Psychological Association on “Tapping, Trauma and the Brain” (see her news bulletin here – scroll down). You can access her slide presentation from that link too. This is the “brain background”, this is why it works. EFT with young people is currently being masterminded in the UK by Christine Moran at her site www.eftworld.co.uk, and I leave you with that, as I go to finish off the grass…