Beyond Labeling: Why Emotional Granularity is the Key to Resilience in Play Therapy

Helping children and teens identify and label their emotions is a core therapeutic goal in play therapy, but simply naming a feeling isn't enough. 

In fact, an overfocus on "feeling good" can sometimes hinder the healing process. To build true resilience, we need to help clients move from basic affect to high emotional granularity.

In this free weekly podcast, we dive into the science of how emotions are constructed and how play therapists can move beyond simple labeling to help traumatized children differentiate between real and perceived threats.

What you’ll learn:

• What is Emotional Granularity? Why the ability to distinguish "frustrated" from "sad" is a predictor of better mental health and regulation.
• Affect vs. Emotion: Exploring Lisa Feldman Barrett’s research on how emotions are mental constructions based on past experience and culture.
• The Role of Emotions in Play Therapy: Using strategies that promote resilience in play therapy
• Common Mistakes with Trauma: Why we must address the belief systems (cognitions) tied to emotions to avoid over-focusing on the feeling alone.
• Predictive Brain & Safety: Using the therapeutic relationship and co-regulation to help children rewire their brain's predictive responses to trauma.

About Cathi Spooner: I help play therapists and mental health professionals master the art of play therapy with children and families. 

Subscribe for weekly discussions on building resilient hearts through play therapy.

Citation:

Feldman Barrett, L. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

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Transcript

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Welcome to Next Level Play Therapy, a weekly podcast dedicated to supporting the next generation of child and adolescent therapists to provide exceptional play therapy services. We'll explore all things play therapy to elevate your work with children and adolescents using the therapeutic powers of play. I'll discuss practical tips and ideas so you can provide a transformative experience for your young clients and make a real difference in their lives. So get ready to take your play therapy skills to the next level and make a lasting impact in the lives of children, adolescents, and families. So welcome everyone to this week's episode of Next Level Play Therapy, and today we are talking about emotional granularity. So one of the things that we do in play therapy is we help children learn to id- recognize and identify, label their emotions as part of their therapeutic goal in play therapy. And oftentimes what I f- find happening is that we kind of stop there. And so sometimes the thing that I think about is, are we over-focusing on feeling good and helping children to label their emotions so that they can feel good? Because if that's the case, and the whole focus on, is on children feeling good and feeling happy, then we have missed the boat for helping them to develop resilience. And in my mind, resilience is the goal, because that's gonna help them navigate the challenges in life rather than expecting that they're gonna be feeling good all the time, because that is not a realistic, that's not a realistic goal. And so if we're thinking about that whole idea of labeling and identifying emotions, then what, what does that mean? What are emotions? How do we help clients with their emotions? What is the purpose of identifying their emotions? And that's what we're gonna be talking about today. In this week's episode, we're gonna be talking about what is emotional granularity and why does it matter? Why is it important to be able to distinguish frustrated from sad as a predictor of better mental health outcomes? What's the difference between affect and emotion? We use those terms interchangeably, and they are not the same. So what's the difference between those two concepts? And then what's the role of emotions in play therapy? Why are we helping kids to identify their emotions? And then also I'm gonna review some common mistakes that I see happening when we're talking about emotions as a therapeutic goal in play therapy. So if that sounds like it's something that is interesting to you or useful, then keep on listening, 'cause that's what we're getting into today. So for those of you who are watching l- the live stream, I would love to know who's here. Post your name in the comments. Join the conversation. What questions do you have? What play therapy model or what modality are you using when you're working with children and teens? Um, for those of you watching the live stream replay, I would still love to know who's here. Post your name in the comments, all the things. And for those of you who are listening to the podcast, feel free to pop over to my Instagram channel, cathy- uh, renewingheartstraining. Send me a message. Um, comment in this. We always post the episodes when they come out in the podcast, s- uh, on my Instagram channel and, uh, other places including LinkedIn and, um, Face- um, YouTube. My mind's not working. Um, so feel free to comment when we post those or send me a message, and let's get started today. If you find the information useful, please feel free to share it across your social media platforms. If you're watching on YouTube, please feel free to follow the channel so, and get, hit that notification bell so that you get notified whenever we are going live again and whenever there are, um, new videos on the channel. So today we are talking about beyond labeling, why emotional granularity is the key to resilience in play therapy. The first thing we want to talk about is this fancy word called emotional granularity. Such a fancy word. And this is, um, um, basically what this word means is that we, we are helping our clients to really fully recognize and distinguish their emotions. So we're talking about emotional differentiation. How do you tell one emotion from another? And so we're identifying, labeling, and distinguishing specific emotions rather than having our clients just use a general, "I feel good," or, "I feel bad," or, um, pleasant and unpleasant. We're really wanting them to take a deeper dive into what those emotions are and distinguishing one from the other. And what, what we found, according to some of the experts in the affect of neuroscience field, is that high gran- emotional granularity leads to better mental health outcomes And better emotion regulation and less maladaptive behavior. So that would include suicide ideation or self-harm or some of the other behaviors that don't end up being helpful, shall we say. So that, um, so emotional granularity, if we're talking about this whole idea of helping clients develop an emotion vocabulary or learning to identify emotions, what we're really talking about is helping them to develop high emotional granularity for the purpose of being able to improve whatever mental health issues that they're struggling with. And so there's a, there's an affective neuroscience researcher, Lisa, uh, Feldman Barrett. She wrote a book, which has been around for a while, it's called

Emotions, How Emotions Are Made: 7:45

The Secret Life of the Brain. So if you are interested in learning a little bit more about emotions and some of the neuroscience around emotions and this theory of construction, then this would be a good book to read. She's a researcher. She is not a clinician, and I feel like betwe- we need to have a better bridge between what the research says, and then as clinicians, how are we taking that information that we're learning in research, and then what do we do with that? Because some of these concepts that we're learning about from the researchers are kind of hard to figure out what to do with that, especially when the researchers don't agree. And so one of the things that I've been doing over the last few months since I've learned a little bit more about some of those, the, you know, since the critiques came out, I think it was in January of this year, j- 2026, about polyvagal theory and some of the, what are some of the research, some of those in the research field, what are their, um, points of contention, so to speak, for a theory model that in the clinical world, we have grabbed hold of that and it has taken on like gangbusters. And I, I think, I think what has been really po- positive about the whole polyvagal discussion, one, poly- think polyvagal theory gave clinicians a way to really make sense of why we're seeing what we're seeing and why we're doing what we're doing, meaning the whole neuroscience around, um, emotions and emotion regulation and that felt sense of safety and the whole body somatic aspect of the work that we do, and it's a theory. And so there are gonna be… In the research field, what they, they do is explore the validity of various theories. And so I think it's important for us to keep up to date with that. I think the hard part for us as clinicians is what do, what do we do? H- how do we apply that information? And what do we do when the experts, the researchers, are not agreeing, especially when we're, we're doing the application part of it, and there were some parts of it that are very useful. And the truth is, the parts that were useful are still useful. Um, it just, we now have a different understanding of that, of the whole polyvagal thing. Um, in an upcoming episode, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about another article that came out last month, in April, about the body does not keep the score, and some of the critiques of that theory. What, what is, what are we keeping, and maybe what are we gonna look at in a different way? So we'll talk a little bit more about that in an upcoming episode. And as it relates to emotions, I think this is another topic where we look at what the research is saying, what are the researchers finding, and then what do we do with that? So in affective, uh, neuroscience, there are different theories of emotion and construction of emotions. So there's, uh, um, Jaak Panksepp As a affective neuroscientist, he has one theory, and Lisa Barrett, uh, Lisa Feldman Barrett has another theory. So there are two kind of different theories about emotions, and her book really focuses on how emotions are constructed using that affective neuroscience lens. And so we kind of have two competing ways of thinking about emotions, and then as play therapists, what do we do with that information? So today I thought it would be useful to take a look at this idea of, um, emotions are constructed. They are not wired in, and they are not neuro- uh, um, like innate neural pathways that are, that are present all the time for all people, as is proposed. That's a really simplistic way of saying, um, how Panksepp proposes, uh, uh, how emotions work. So this whole idea of emotions as constructed, and we're gonna be kind of looking at that idea of what is affect and what is emotion. And so according to Lisa Feldman, she takes the position that affect is your basic sense of feeling ranging on a, on a continuum, so like pleasant to unpleasant, and that, um, they get activated, so that arousal state. And that emotions are more complex mental construction. But affect is that basic sense of feeling, and it's, um, it can range from I feel good, I feel bad, anything from pleasant to unpleasant, so kind of that continuum. Whereas emotion, as Feldman Barrett proposes, m- is a more complex mental construction, um, based on experience, based on culture, and individual personality. And so she proposes that emotions are constructed as a result of brain regions becoming automatically activated by events, um, rather than they're automatically cons- um- I'm gonna back up here'cause my mouth is not keeping up with my brain. So what Feldman proposes is that emotions are constructed rather than they're kind of automatically activated and they're there all the time and such as how Panksepp, um, proposes in his theory. And so, um, i- in terms of constructed, it's kind of based on your experiences, and the emotions are also tied to the belief systems or what are your, what's your cog- what are the cognitions connected with the emotions? And this is the part I think that's, uh, um, important for play therapists is this idea of, yes, labeling is important. For sure we wanna, we wanna identify what, what that emotion is specifically, and that they are constructed based on past experiences and the meaning made of those experiences. And then personality differences also are gonna influence that. So, um, this is also explains why you can have the same experience happen in a family where one, the one sibling makes meaning of it one way and another sibling makes meaning of it another way, and they respond to it two very different ways. And so the meaning that I've made of that experience and the emotions that get activated with that experience are going to result in some type of response. And that's-- this is why we're kind of looking at that big picture of emotions. And I always think wh- when I think about this concept, I also th- always think about some of those DBT concepts, like mindfulness of emotions. The reason, from a DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, the reason that we wanna identify emotions is because they give us good information. They give us an idea of what's going on and what we need to do about it. Th- And then what happens is, uh, in DBT, we have this, this skill called Check the Facts. We wanna check the cognitions around what activated that emotion because maybe we are-- our cognitions are faulty. Maybe they're not accurate. And so the other thing is, another DBT skill is mindfulness of emotions. Well, the whole reason that we're doing these skills tied to emotions is to improve our mental health and our emotion regulation capacity because that's going to influence how, what we do, our response to situations. So this whole idea of emotion granularity means we wanna make sense of how exactly am I feeling, and maybe I have a few feelings, right? Maybe there's layers. Maybe I'm feeling angry, and maybe anger as that secondary emotion means it's kinda covering up that deeper emotion below, and we want to get to what that deeper emotion is below because then we're gonna be looking at the cognitions tied to that emotion. And if we need to do some cognitive reframing or challenge cognitive distortions or to do, you know, check the facts, then, then we're kind of looking at that information that we've gained from our emotions to be able to do that. And so for play therapy-- And that's c- that's high emotional granularity. High emotional granularity is understanding that these emotions are tied to experiences and belief systems around that experience, and culture, and personality, and also that emotions are unique to different people. So we want to be able to, um, hold open the opportunity for our clients to explore how they're experiencing it and what emotions they're experiencing, and not kind of put any predetermined or have them think they have to be, feel a certain way. It's really about their, their ability to think about e- emotions from their unique perspective and explore what, what that's tied to And so as far as the role of this for play therapy, we- one of the things that we do in play therapy is help our clients to explore, label, and understand their emotions. We do that for a variety of reasons. Um, we do that to help them improve emotion regulation. We do that to help them improve communication to get needs met. I'm feel- like how, how many times ha- have you had this conversation? I have this conversation all the time with parents, which is having parents reflect the emotion and help client… you know, help their child explore what their emotions are, and then from there we wanna go the next step, which is, so what's going on? So maybe I'm feeling sad, so what's going on? I, I always recommend don't use the why word 'cause it, it automatically makes people feel defensive. It's more about what's going on. And maybe I feel sad because my friend doesn't wanna play with me in the playground, and now I'm feeling rejected, and that's tied to thoughts of I'm not good enough or nobody likes me or I'm stupid. And you can see how all of those experiences are now tied together, right? That's the whole CBT triangle, cognitive behavioral therapy triangle of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. And we're using that to help children figure out what they d- need to do, help parents Figure out how can they help their child, and that's, that's the purpose. Not… The purpose isn't to be happy. If we focus on, "I want my child to be happy," then we've m- we've missed the boat, because it's never gonna be possible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Nobody is happy all the time every single day. We have a variety of emotions. The goal is resilience. The goal is, how do we navigate through hard things when it doesn't feel good? What do I do with these emotions, and how do I tolerate them? And that's going to be tied to, what are the thoughts that I'm having about this situation, and how is that influencing my responses? And then we're kind of also helping parents know how to support their child with this information as well. So we're teaching parents how to help their child with that as well, which means parents need to have their own high emotional granularity, because in order to effectively co-regulate, they've got to check their own emotion regulation and whether or not they've gotten activated. Or if we're gonna borrow a Circle of Security term, we can say that parents need to recognize when their shark music gets activated. If you're not familiar with that term, shark music, as it relates to attachment and parenting, I would highly recommend hopping over to the YouTube channel, um, for Circle of Security and watching their little video. I use that one all the time with parents. So p- we have to help parents develop some high emotional granularity as well if we're working on helping them to co-regulate with their kids. And I, I find a lot of the DBT skills like, uh, wise mind is a very helpful skill to teach parents Also mindfulness of emotions and, um, that whole idea of shark music to help them re- recognize when they've gotten activated. What, what are the emotions they're having? What, what are the cognitions that they have going on? So that they can get themselves regulated and help their child regulate more effectively. So the, the goal in play therapy really is helping clients improve their, um, a- accomplish high emotional granularity, including parents, that's gonna help them, oh, um, work through and resolve whatever it is that they're working on. And so how do we do that? How do we do that in play therapy? Well, the way we do that is, what is your play therapy model? Your play therapy model is going to influence how you do that. Um, so the way you do that in child-centric play therapy is going to be different than the way you're gonna do it in, um, CBT play therapy, or Gestalt play therapy, or Adlerian play therapy, or EMDR. So your play therapy model is gonna influence how you help your clients accomplish high emotional granularity. So it's tied in there. Some of the mistakes that I see, um, especially when we're talking about traumatized children, are not really thinking about this idea of if we're gonna do emotion regulation, I mean, if we're gonna identify emotions, then the other thing is we need to help them identify specifically which one. There's a variety of ways to do that. Play therapists, we have games to do that all the time. One of the thing you may wanna think about is, um, I heard some critiques the other day about that emotion wheel Um, which I, I'll be honest, I don't use the emotion wheel. It just doesn't work for me. It's, it's too… If, and this was the critique of the, the person talking about emotional granularity and those, those emotion wheels, which I thought, oh, maybe that's why I don't like using those emotion wheels. They, I find them to be, if I'm being honest, I find those emotion wheels to be annoying. They're way too constricting for me, which was his, I think it was a him, his critique of those emotion wheels. Like, you start in the middle, and if you feel sad, then you can only pick from, from that list of emotions in, in that part of the wheel, which I find that does happen. Maybe, I don't know, b- maybe some of you guys love the emotion wheel, and you don't experience it that way, but that's kinda how I experience it. Um, and the, the critique being that we need to be, create ways for clients to explore the nuanced aspects of emotion. So maybe one category of emotions doesn't really fit'cause maybe they started in one category, but what they realized was, oh no, I'm in this category over here. And his, I think it was a him, his complaint of the emotion wheel is that it doesn't really allow you to do that, which coincides with my experience of it. But I'd be curious, you know, who, who in this, who, uh, in, as play therapists and those of you working with children and adolescents, what are your thoughts about the emotion wheel? Po- post that in the comments. I would love to hear it. Start the conversation. I use a different kind of list of emotions. I've also kind of moved away from the feeling faces, just 'cause they don't, they're kind of… You know, like, we have those little emojis. Um, 'cause we can't always tell what those are. Although I, they, they can be helpful, but I think, to be honest, I think we need a variety of ways, and I don't know that one way is always the best way for everybody. So being able to have a variety of ways for kids to do that, and teens, I think can be useful. I, my, I have one with a list- And it's not as crowded. It's got a little, a little more space between the words.'Cause I think that's the other thing about the emotion wheel I don't like, it's just too crowded. Too many words all jammed together in one little space, and my little brain doesn't ha- it gets a little confused by all the words too close together. Um, anyways, I digress a little bit here. Emotions, one of the things that we wanna make sure is we're tying that idea of, um, we wa- what are the cognitions? What are the nuanced aspects of those emotions that are contributing to trauma? So I've been, I'm almost at the end of my playful EMDR training. Very excited. It's been six months. Um, and one of the things that I really, really love about EMDR and working with children who've experienced tr- trauma is that we're focusing on the emotions. We're doing the SUDS, subjective units of distress, for the emotion. We're also looking at the cognitions or the belief systems. What I like about, um, one, you know, if we're talking about trauma, I think one of the things that I also have found Awesome about the EMDR focus is what is that, what does that, um, mean about me? So we're really like, I instead of like they make me angry or life's not fair. What does that mean about me? And I think if we tie emotions more specifically to what does that mean about me, when we're working with kids with trauma and when we're ki- working with kids who have other, other issues going on, like anxiety or depression or things like that, what does that mean about me? That really brings it home. And the other mistake that I see play therapists making is, is really not understanding, especially when we're talking about trauma, is understanding that the brain is predictive. Meaning that there's this predictive coding aspect of I've made meaning of this information that I've received through my sensory circuits, through what I'm seeing. Also, the emotions that are tied with it. If this is tied to a past experience in which there was trauma, then my brain is kind of getting stuck in this predictive feedback loop between brain and body about this is dangerous. The problem is the, the, the, the meaning that I've made out of it, the cognition tied to it, is I'm not safe or I'm not good enough or any of the other cognitive distortions that come along with that emotion and that information being received and now the brain is, is, um, predicting danger and allocating resources. So activating that parasympathetic if we're going to freeze or that sympathetic response if we're going to fight or flight. And the problem is, if it's not an accurate assessment, if the meaning that I've made is not accurate but my brain is stuck in that loop, then that's gonna keep me kind of stuck in that trauma response on a repeated basis. And so really helping to identify the emotions and the beliefs around that information being received and how do we help the brain, um, kind of rewire a little bit and get a more accurate understanding of what's happening to get out of that loop. And so the, what we, one of the things that we have to help our traumatized clients recognize is when there's real threat versus perceived threat, and using that as part of kind of rewiring some of those belief systems around what is danger and what is not danger. But that also means that we're gonna have to get in there with some of those trauma memories and help our clients to rewire those a little bit, which means we're also wanting to help them understand the nuances of their different emotions and to, to make sense of those and help them reprocess those emotions. And then the, the third mistake is, um Really not understanding how that plays into behavior. So here's what I mean by that, is if we only focus on behavior and we don't focus on what's beneath it, then we've missed the boat. So a lot of times what happens is the behavior is very distressing, and so all of the focus gets, gets put on the behavior, 'cause you're getting phone calls from parents or caregivers. S- parents and caregivers are getting phone calls from the school if there's a lot of emotion dysregulation. And so then the beha- then the focus becomes on the behavior when what you really wanna do is go down to the root of it. And when we're talking about trauma, we're talking about safety. We really need to focus on how to help that child feel safe, which is, again, because the brain is stuck in that predictive danger loop, it's gonna be hard for them to believe what you're saying to them versus what their brain is telling them. My brain is telling me that's dangerous, and I'm getting all this information from my body, like all my fight or flight or freeze response which is telling me it must be true, because it feels dangerous, therefore it must be dangerous. And the, the problem is that if it's not and we're just focusing on the behavior and not getting down to the safety and establishing safety, then it's gonna be really hard to make that shift. And so a lot of the work that we do when we're working with children who've experienced trauma, um, is that we're, we're helping caregivers and we're helping to figure out ways for that child to feel safe. What needs to be put in place to establish a sense of safety? Because what we know is we're not gonna be able to really work through the whole… all the stages of the play therapy process unless we can get a sense of safety. There will be times when, um, you know, we go back and forth. T- healing is not linear, right? It goes all around the place back and forth depending on what's going on for the child, and that's throughout that process though, we are using that therapeutic relationship for safety for the child and also for the parents. We need to support them as well, and then we're also using our relationship with parents to help parents respond to these alarming behaviors or things going on with their child to help their child feel safe. And so at the heart of a lot of this work is this idea of emotional granularity and helping clients and parents to develop a high sense of emotion granularity, and your play therapy model is gonna influence how you do that. When we're working with trauma, there's typically a specific way that we want to go through that process, because what we're working with are those trauma memories, and tied into those trauma memories are emotions. How are they experiencing emotions in their body, and what's the meaning that they're making out of what's going on? And how are those all tied together, and how are those tied to those past traumatic experiences? And how are we helping clients- Rewire essentially and reprocess those memories. I always say kind of to take the sting out of it and, 'cause the memories are always gonna be there. The, what happened, happened. We can't change that with trauma. There, there's, we can't change it. What we can change is the, um, meaning that we've made about it, and reestablishing a sense of safety so that it's no longer something that continually activates a threat response when there isn't a current threat response going on. That's the key when you're working with trauma, is how do I help my clients distinguish between real threat, 'cause we want them to, to know when real threat is actually happening, and distinguish that from situations that are not dangerous or there is no threat present. So that's kind of what we're working on in that and, uh, with our clients who've experienced trauma. So that is it for today, and let me just do a quick recap. So what we're, we're talking about today is what is this idea of emotional granularity, and why does that make a difference when we are working with our clients, and understanding that emot- if we're looking at this from that theory developed by Lisa Feldman Barrett, that emotions are cons- constructed, then we're thinking also about how this ties in with trauma. If, if emotions are constructed based on past experiences, culture, and throw in some indi- unique personality wire in there, 'cause we're all unique individuals. And so it would make sense that how we, how we experience emotions is going to be influenced by that as well. So we're, we're thinking about emotional granularity as we're looking at reprocessing those trauma memories and getting out of that predictive feedback loop of danger and the role of emotions when we're doing that. Emotions are one part of that process, and what we know is, what the researchers are telling us, is that people who have a high emotional granularity have impr- better mental health, better emotion regulation, and overall higher resiliency rates, I would say. And how does that apply to play therapists, especially when we're working with clients who've experienced trauma? W- w- we're gonna use our play therapy model, and if you're interested in … If you, if you're working with clients who have trauma and you're interested in learning how to, um, use a framework grounded in attachment and neuroscience to help your clients with trauma overcome their trauma, I'm gonna talk a little bit about a training that I have coming up in a couple of weeks, Healing Trauma Through

Play Therapy: 40:45

A Neuroscience and Attachment Approach. So I'll talk a little bit more about that if you're interested, so stay tuned. Um, so one of the things that we're doing in play therapy is how do we take all of this information that we're learning from the researchers, and how do we apply that in real time with a variety of different clients in a way that is grounded? And so what I would say to that is, as play therapists, we're going to use our play therapy model, because our model is g- our theoretical model is gonna influence the way in which we make sense of what's going on with our clients and why it's happening, the patterns, and then it's go- that's gonna influence, we're gonna use our treatment model, our play therapy theory model, to, uh, to know what we do, how are we gonna do it, and when are we gonna do it through every stage of play therapy. So if we're trying to make sense of, oh, is my client making progress? Well, that's where you're going back to your play therapy model to see what stage they're in, and you're gonna figure out what stage they're in based on what you're seeing in the playroom, and kind of consistently what are you seeing, and that's gonna be influenced by your play therapy model, and that's also gonna be influenced, uh, influence what stage they're in.'Cause your play therapy model is going to, um, influence w- how you show up in the playroom, so what you do and how you do it and when you do it. It's also gonna influence who's gonna be involved in the play therapy process, i- AKA how are p- how are caregivers going to be involved in the play therapy process? So you're looking at all of those, and it's all w- influenced by your play therapy model. So as play therapists, we're, we're keeping up to date with the latest research, and then we're looking at our play therapy model to see what that means in terms of application. So that is it for today. If you're interested in my upcoming training, it is called Healing Trauma Through Play Therapy. It's gonna be, um, in person. There's also a virtual option, and there's also an option to register for the recorded, recorded training. So if you can't be there virtually or in person, I am gonna record the training, and then those of you who would prefer to get the recording, you can register for that option. It'll be available about seven to 10 days after the training. We'll put it in modules where you can watch the recordings, and you'll have all the handouts in there. Um- And that training is coming up on June 6th. So registration is gonna close June 4th. If you're interested in the training, then you can pop over to my website at rhplaytherapytraining.com. That's rhplaytherapytraining.com, Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training. Here's the thing about this training. Um, I'm a firm believer that we provide our best services when, one, when we have training, of course, and also when we have a community of supportive play therapists around us. So when we're stuck, we don't have to figure it out all by ourselves. We have a c- a community where we can go and get feedback, which is the reason that I created Play Therapy Elevation Circle, which is my online membership to-- for play therapists, where we meet once a month and get consultation with… We also have a monthly book club talking about a play therapy specific book, and then in the book club meetings, we talk about, well, how do we take that information and apply it in our play therapy practice? There's also a monthly newsletter in there, and there's a group chat space where we get specific support. Um, and so when you register for… Right now, uh, um, enrollment for Elevation Cir- Play Therapy Elevation Circle is closed. And if you register for Healing Trauma Through Play Therapy, then you get two months access. Included in your registration is two months access to Elevation Circle at no additional cost if you're a new member to Elevation Circle. That-- the purpose of that is to give you some more support after the training, where you can take the information we've learned in the training and then have you apply that with your clients. You can stay past the 60 days for sure, and a lot of people do, and at least you have some support to, um, some access to some support through Play Therapy Elevation Circle. So your registration includes 60 days, uh, at no cost to Elevation Circle for new members And also my, so my other membership that I have is Play Therapy Academy. Um, that one's not included in the, the training. Play Therapy Academy, I do have openings in Play Therapy Academy if you are at a point in your career where you want to get some consultation to take a deep dive. We focus on skill building, learning a play therapy model, and how are you applying that play therapy model through all the stages. That one, if you're interested in becoming a registered play therapist, then Play Therapy Academy is the one that you want to, um, register for or a- actually schedule a, a video call with me to see if it's a good fit for you. So that one, that one's really limited. I have a few spots open in, in Play Therapy Academy, so you're gonna wanna schedule a 30-minute video call with me. If you're not sure if Elevation Circle is a better fit or Play Therapy Academy, just schedule a video call with me and we'll figure it out. If you register for the Healing Trauma Through Play Therapy training, then you'll get two months of Elevation Circle, and you can see if that one is a good fit for more ongoing support. And if you have questions, just message me. I'm happy to answer any of those questions. And I will see you next week. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy. I hope you found the discussion valuable and gained new insights and ideas to support your work helping children, adolescents, and families heal. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information. Remember, play therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth. Whether you're a new play therapist or experienced, I encourage you to continue your learning journey to unlock the potential of play in your own work and relationships. If you have any questions or topic suggestions for future episodes, I'd love to hear from you. Connect with me on social media and visit my website at Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training to stay updated on upcoming episodes, trainings, and resources. Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy. Until next time, keep playing, learning, and growing.