Gaming psychotherapy is a method of psychotherapy with the use of games. The essence of the method is that the therapist enters into such contact with the client, who is perceived as a personal friendly contact.
This is a method of working with clients to help them to eliminate factors that interfere with effective life. Depending on the symptoms and difficulties, specific methods are used.
A person discouraged by life and overwhelmed by his inability to achieve goals can be anxious. The therapeutic goal is to help a person in eliminating a sense of anxiety, learning to work with stress and its consequences.
In addition, it is an effective aid in recognizing your potential, in using this potential.
Tasks
The main play therapy function of the game is to identify and correct deviations in behavior and psyche in relaxed conditions. To implement it, depending on the specific problem, specialists solve several problems at once:
- restoration of trust in others, assistance in social adaptation, development of the communicative sphere, optimization of relations in the systems “child – parents”, “child – adults”, “child – other children” (similar schemes are being worked out for adults as well);
- deactualization of phobic manifestations;
- demonstration of various ways of solving difficult life situations;
- correction of deformations in the formation of the “Self-concept”;
- correction of negative character traits and behavioral deviations;
- treatment of borderline personality and behavior disorders;
- relief of psychological distress;
- increasing self-esteem, getting rid of internal complexes;
- creating favorable conditions for the development of speech, thinking, memory and other cognitive abilities.
To summarize all these tasks, specialists diagnose the problem with the help of game therapy and either correct it (in psychology) or treat it (in psychotherapy) and also teach.
Objectives
Play psychotherapy:
- helps in establishing a diagnosis;
- helps in establishing contact between the psychotherapist and the child-patient;
- provides tools for working with the mechanisms of psychological protection of the child (which play an important role in the development of emotional and behavioral disorders);
- helps verbal expression of feelings;
- helps the child to express unconscious conflicts and thereby reduce emotional stress;
- expands the range of interests of the child.
Currently, play psychotherapy has found wide application not only in inpatient and outpatient psychotherapeutic practice, but also in pedagogical practice, as well as in general hospitals.
Kinds
- Sand therapy. one of the methods of psychotherapy that arose in the framework of analytical psychology
- Role-playing games. Role-playing games are usually used to play situations or to teach new behaviors.
- Art therapy. In a narrow sense this term is applied to drawing therapy, in a broad sense it includes music, dance, drama therapy, bibliotherapy.
- Drawing therapy. It is used to establish contact with a person, communicate, experience insight and resolve emotional conflicts; it also enables the psychologist to understand through symbols what is happening to a person.
